Connect with us

COVID-19

CDC Quietly Admits to Covid Policy Failures

Published

7 minute read

From the Brownstone Institute

BY Harvey RischHARVEY RISCH 

Instead of admitting policy error that the Covid vaccines do not much control virus spread, our public health administration doubled down, attempting then to compel vaccination on as many more people as could be threatened by mandates.

In so many words—and data—CDC has quietly admitted that all of the indignities of the Covid-19 pandemic management have failed: the masks, the distancing, the lockdowns, the closures, and especially the vaccines; all of it failed to control the pandemic.

It’s not like we didn’t know that all this was going to fail, because we said so as events unfolded early on in 2020, that the public health management of this respiratory virus was almost completely opposite to principles that had been well established through the influenza period, in 2006. The spread of a new virus with replication factor R0 of about 3, with more than one million cases across the country by April 2020, with no potentially virus-sterilizing vaccine in sight for at least several months, almost certainly made this infection eventually endemic and universal.

Covid-19 starts as an annoying, intense, uncomfortable flu-like illness, and for most people, ends uneventfully 2-3 weeks later. Thus, management of the Covid-19 pandemic should not have relied upon counts of cases or infections, but on numbers of deaths, numbers of people hospitalized or with serious long-term outcomes of the infection, and of serious health, economic, and psychological damages caused by the actions and policies made in response to the pandemic, in that order of decreasing priorities.

Even though numbers of Covid cases correlate with these severe manifestations, that is not a justification for case numbers to be used as the actionable measure, because Covid-19 infection mortality is estimated to range below 0.1% in the mean across all ages, and post-infection immunity provides a public good in protecting people from severe reinfection outcomes for the great majority who do not get serious “long-Covid” on first infection.

Nevertheless, once the Covid-19 vaccines were rolled out, with a new large wave of the Delta strain spreading across the US in July-August 2021 even after eight months of the vaccines taken by half of Americans, instead of admitting policy error that the Covid vaccines do not much control virus spread, our public health administration doubled down, attempting then to compel vaccination on as many more people as could be threatened by mandates. That didn’t work out too well as seen when the large Omicron wave hit the country during December 2021-January 2022 in spite of some 10% more of the population getting vaccinated from September through December of 2021.

A typical mandate example: in September 2021, Washington Governor Jay Inslee issued Emergency Proclamation 21-14.2, requiring Covid-19 vaccination for various groups of state workers. In the proclamation, the stated goal was, “WHEREAS, COVID-19 vaccines are effective in reducing infection and serious disease, and widespread vaccination is the primary means we have as a state to protect everyone…from COVID-19 infections.” That is, the stated goal was to reduce the number of infections.

What the CDC recently reported (see chart below), however, is that by the end of 2023, cumulatively, at least 87% of Americans had anti-nucleocapsid antibodies to and thus had been infected with SARS-CoV-2, this in spite of the mammoth, protracted and booster-repeated vaccination campaign that led to about 90% of Americans taking the shots. My argument is that by making policies based on number of infections a higher priority than ones based on the more serious but less common consequences of both infections and policy damages, the proclaimed goal of the vaccine mandate to reduce spread failed in that 87% of Americans eventually became infected anyway.

In reality, neither vaccine immunity nor post-infection immunity were ever able fully to control the spread of the infection. On August 11, 2022, the CDC stated, “Receipt of a primary series alone, in the absence of being up to date with vaccination* through receipt of all recommended booster doses, provides minimal protection against infection and transmission (3,6). Being up to date with vaccination provides a transient period of increased protection against infection and transmission after the most recent dose, although protection can wane over time.” Public health pandemic measures that “wane over time” are very unlikely to be useful for control of infection spread, at least without very frequent and impractical revaccinations every few months.

Nevertheless, infection spread per se is not of consequence, because count of infections is not and should not have been the main priority of public health pandemic management. Rather, the consequences of the spread and the negative consequences of the policies invoked should have been the priorities. Our public health agencies chose to prioritize a failed policy of reducing the spread rather than reducing the mortality or the lockdown and school and business closure harms, which led to unnecessary and avoidable damage to millions of lives. We deserved better from our public health institutions.

Republished from the author’s Substack

Author

  • Harvey Risch

    Harvey Risch, Senior Scholar at Brownstone Institute, is a physician and a Professor Emeritus of Epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health and Yale School of Medicine. His main research interests are in cancer etiology, prevention and early diagnosis, and in epidemiologic methods.

Todayville is a digital media and technology company. We profile unique stories and events in our community. Register and promote your community event for free.

Follow Author

Alberta

AMA challenged to debate Alberta COVID-19 Review

Published on

Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms

Justice Centre President sends an open letter to Dr. Shelley Duggan, President of the Alberta Medical Association

Dear Dr. Duggan,

I write in response to the AMA’s Statement regarding the Final Report of the Alberta Covid Pandemic Data Review Task Force. Although you did not sign your name to the AMA Statement, I assume that you approved of it, and that you agree with its contents.

I hereby request your response to my questions about your AMA Statement.

You assert that this Final Report “advances misinformation.” Can you provide me with one or two examples of this “misinformation”?

Why, specifically, do you see this Final Report as “anti–science and anti–evidence”? Can you provide an example or two?

Considering that you denounced the entire 269-page report as “anti­–science and anti–evidence,” it should be very easy for you to choose from among dozens and dozens of examples.

You assert that the Final Report “speaks against the broadest, and most diligent, international scientific collaboration and consensus in history.”

As a medical doctor, you are no doubt aware of the “consensus” whereby medical authorities in Canada and around the world approved the use of thalidomide for pregnant women in the 1950s and 1960s, resulting in miscarriages and deformed babies. No doubt you are aware that for many centuries the “consensus” amongst scientists was that physicians need not wash their hands before delivering babies, resulting in high death rates among women after giving birth. This “international scientific consensus” was disrupted in the 1850s by a true scientist, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, who advocated for hand-washing.

As a medical doctor, you should know that science is not consensus, and that consensus is not science.

It is unfortunate that your AMA Statement appeals to consensus rather than to science. In fact, your AMA Statement is devoid of science, and appeals to nothing other than consensus. A scientific Statement from the AMA would challenge specific assertions in the Final Report, point to inadequate evidence, debunk flawed methodologies, and expose incorrect conclusions. Your Statement does none of the foregoing.

You assert that “science and evidence brought us through [Covid] and saved millions of lives.” Considering your use of the word “millions,” I assume this statement refers to the lockdowns and vaccine mandates imposed by governments and medical establishments around the world, and not the response of the Alberta government alone.

What evidence do you rely on for your assertion that lockdowns saved lives? You are no doubt aware that lockdowns did not stop Covid from spreading to every city, town, village and hamlet, and that lockdowns did not stop Covid from spreading into nursing homes (long-term care facilities) where Covid claimed about 80% of its victims. How, then, did lockdowns save lives? If your assertion about “saving millions of lives” is true, it should be very easy for you to explain how lockdowns saved lives, rather than merely asserting that they did.

Seeing as you are confident that the governments’ response to Covid saved “millions” of lives, have you balanced that vague number against the number of people who died as a result of lockdowns? Have you studied or even considered what harms lockdowns inflicted on people?

If you are confident that lockdowns did more good than harm, on what is your confidence based? Can you provide data to support your position?

As a medical doctor, you are no doubt aware that the mRNA vaccine, introduced and then made mandatory in 2021, did not stop the transmission of Covid. Nor did the mRNA vaccine prevent people from getting sick with Covid, or dying from Covid. Why would it not have sufficed in 2021 to let each individual make her or his own choice about getting injected with the mRNA vaccine? Do you still believe today that mandatory vaccination policies had an actual scientific basis? If yes, what was that basis?

You assert that the Final Report “sows distrust” and “criticizes proven preventive public health measures while advancing fringe approaches.”

When the AMA Statement mentions “proven preventive public health measures,” I assume you are referring to lockdowns. If my assumption is correct, can you explain when, where and how lockdowns were “proven” to be effective, prior to 2020? Or would you agree with me that locking down billions of healthy people across the globe in 2020 was a brand new experiment, never tried before in human history? If it was a brand new experiment, how could it have been previously “proven” effective prior to 2020? Alternatively, if you are asserting that lockdowns and vaccine passports were “proven” effective in the years 2020-2022, what is your evidentiary basis for that assertion?

Your reference to “fringe approaches” is particularly troubling, because it suggests that the majority must be right just because it’s the majority, which is the antithesis of science.

Remember that the first doctors to advocate against the use of thalidomide by pregnant women, along with Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis advocating for hand-washing, were also viewed as “advancing fringe approaches” by those in authority. It would not be difficult to provide dozens, and likely hundreds, of other examples showing that true science is a process of open-minded discovery and honest debate, not a process of dismissing as “fringe” the individuals who challenge the reigning consensus.”

The AMA Statement asserts that the Final Report “makes recommendations for the future that have real potential to cause harm.” Specifically, which of the Final Report’s recommendations have a real potential to cause harm? Can you provide even one example of such a recommendation, and explain the nature of the harm you have in mind?

The AMA Statement asserts that “many colleagues and experts have commented eloquently on the deficiencies and biases [the Final Report] presents.” Could you provide some examples of these eloquent comments? Did any of your colleagues and “experts” point to specific deficiencies in the Final Report, or provide specific examples of bias? Or were these “eloquent” comments limited to innuendo and generalized assertions like those contained in the AMA Statement?

In closing, I invite you to a public, livestreamed debate on the merits of Alberta’s lockdowns and vaccine passports. I would argue for the following: “Be it resolved that lockdowns and vaccine passports imposed on Albertans from 2020 to 2022 did more harm than good,” and you would argue against this resolution.

Seeing as you are a medical doctor who has a much greater knowledge and a much deeper understanding of these issues than I do, I’m sure you will have an easy time defending the Alberta government’s response to Covid.

If you are not available, I would be happy to debate one of your colleagues, or any AMA member.

I request your answers to the questions I have asked of you in this letter.

Further, please let me know if you are willing to debate publicly the merits of lockdowns and vaccine passports, or if one of your colleagues is available to do so.

Yours sincerely,

John Carpay, B.A., LL.B.
President
Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms

Continue Reading

Alberta

Alberta health ministry to ‘consider’ report calling for end to COVID shots for healthy kids

Published on

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

The report recommended halting “the use of COVID-19 vaccines without full disclosure of their potential risks” as well as outright ending their use “for healthy children and teenagers as other jurisdictions have done,” mentioning countries like “Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and the U.K.”

Alberta’s health minister says she will “consider” the findings of a report published last week which recommends the immediate halt of the COVID shots for healthy children and teenagers. 

In a statement sent to the media, the office of Alberta’s Health Minister Adriana LaGrange said that the provincial government will “review and consider this report and its findings,” while at the same time noting that “no policy decisions have been made in relation to it at this time.” 

The statement came in reference to the Alberta COVID-19 Pandemic Data Review Task Force’s “COVID Pandemic Response” 269-page final report, which was released last Friday. The report, which was commissioned by Premier Danielle Smith, recommended the halting of “the use of COVID-19 vaccines without full disclosure of their potential risks” as well as outright ending their use “for healthy children and teenagers as other jurisdictions have done,” mentioning countries like “Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and the U.K.” 

LaGrange’s office noted that the report’s findings build on efforts it says the government has already made to “enhance Alberta’s ability to respond to future public emergencies.” 

Among the recommendations of the task force was the call to “[f]urther research to establish the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines is necessary before widespread use in adults and children,” the establishment of “a website and/or call-in center for the vaccine injured in Alberta” as well as establishing a “mechanism for opting out of federal health policy until provincial due process has been satisfied.” 

The report also noted that “[c]hildren and teenagers have a very low risk of serious illness from COVID-19. COVID-19 vaccines were not designed to halt transmission and there is a lack of reliable data showing that the vaccines protect children from severe COVID-19.”   

It is worth noting that Alberta Health Services (AHS) is still promoting the COVID shots for babies as young as six months old.  

LifeSiteNews has published an extensive amount of research on the dangers of the experimental COVID mRNA jabs, which include heart damage and blood clots.   

The mRNA shots have also been linked to a multitude of negative and often severe side effects in children and all have connections to cell lines derived from aborted babies.    

Danielle Smith still silent on report

At the time of publication, Premier Danielle Smith has still not commented on the bombshell report.

Smith’s lack of commentary on the issue comes despite the fact that she was the one who commissioned the report last year, giving the task force a sweeping mandate to investigation her predecessor’s COVID-era mandates and policies.

After assuming her role as premier in late 2022, Smith promptly fired the province’s top doctor, Deena Hinshaw, and the entire AHS board of directors, all of whom oversaw the implementation of COVID mandates.   

Under Smith’s predecessor Jason Kenney, thousands of nurses, doctors, and other healthcare and government workers lost their jobs for choosing to not get the jabs, leading Smith to say – only minutes after being sworn in – that over the past year the “unvaccinated” were the “most discriminated against” group of people in her lifetime.

Continue Reading

Trending

X