Late into the COVID pandemic, CDC officials are starting to speak up about the lack of data quality behind decision making.
When it comes to authorization of COVID vaccines for babies and young children, a CDC physician said that it “seems criminal that we put out the recommendation to give mRNA Covid vaccines to babies without good data. We really don’t know what the risks are yet. So why push it so hard?”
A high-level FDA official felt the same way, stating that the public “has no idea how bad this data really is. It would not pass muster for any other authorization.”
These sentiments were heard by Tracy Beth Høeg, M.D., Ph.D., consultant epidemiologist with the Florida Department of Health, PM&R physician in Northern California and Marty Makary, M.D., M.P.H., a Johns Hopkins professor and public policy researcher.
They were allowed to publish this information as long as they promised to keep names of CDC officials off the record.
“Another CDC scientist told us: “I used to be proud to tell people I work at the CDC. Now I’m embarrassed.” Why are they embarrassed? In short, bad science. The longer answer: that the heads of their agencies are using weak or flawed data to make critically important public health decisions. That such decisions are being driven by what’s politically palatable to people in Washington or to the Biden administration. And that they have a myopic focus on one virus instead of overall health.”
Marty Makary M.D., M.P.H. and Tracy Beth Høeg M.D., Ph.D. U.S. Public Health Agencies Aren’t ‘Following the Science,’ Officials Say.
They expressed that doctors and scientists at the top levels of the NIH, FDA and CDC are “variously frustrated, exasperated and alarmed about the direction of the agencies to which they have devoted their careers.”
“It’s like a horror movie I’m being forced to watch and I can’t close my eyes,” one senior FDA official told them. “People are getting bad advice and we can’t say anything.”
“That particular FDA doctor was referring to two recent developments inside the agency. First, how, with no solid clinical data, the agency authorized Covid vaccines for infants and toddlers, including those who already had Covid. And second, the fact that just months before, the FDA bypassed their external experts to authorize booster shots for young children.”
Marty Makary M.D., M.P.H. and Tracy Beth Høeg M.D., Ph.D.
An official at the FDA put it this way: “I can’t tell you how many people at the FDA have told me, ‘I don’t like any of this, but I just need to make it to my retirement.’”
Scientists within the CDC have been concerned about this type of corruption for quite some time, well before the rollout of COVID vaccines.
For example, in 2017 a group calling itself CDC Scientists Preserving Integrity, Diligence and Ethics in Research, or CDC SPIDER, put a list of complaints in a letter to the CDC Chief of Staff and provided a copy of the letter to the public watchdog organization U.S. Right to Know (USRTK). The members of the group elected to file the complaint anonymously for fear of retribution.
“It appears that our mission is being influenced and shaped by outside parties and rogue interests… and Congressional intent for our agency is being circumvented by some of our leaders. What concerns us most, is that it is becoming the norm and not the rare exception. Some senior management officials at CDC are clearly aware and even condone these behaviors. Others see it and turn the other way. Some staff are intimidated and pressed to do things they know are not right. We have representatives from across the agency that witness this unacceptable behaviour. It occurs at all levels and in all of our respective units. These questionable and unethical practices threaten to undermine our credibility and reputation as a trusted leader in public health.”
CDC SPIDER
Beyond vaccines, Høeg and Makary’s article explains how children in school were forced to wear masks, despite the science showing they were useless. It also points out how government health authorities completely ignored the science behind natural immunity, and the tremendous harms that lockdowns caused. Not to mention the fact that they were practically useless for stopping the spread of COVID.
When it comes to vaccines for kids, referring to Pfizer’s vaccine efficacy in healthy young children, one high-level CDC official—whose expertise is in the evaluation of clinical data—joked: “You can inject them with it or squirt it in their face, and you’ll get the same benefit.”
You can refer to their article with regards to their explanations and the science as to why vaccines should not be recommended to infants, the main reason is because the clinical trials did not really show any efficacy at all.
At The Pulse, we’ve covered why some countries don’t recommend COVID vaccines for children.
For example, according to a March 2022 report released by the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Finland has shown that there have been zero COVID deaths in young people throughout the entire pandemic. Only 26 percent of children ages 5-11 and 80 percent of children ages 12-17 have received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine. Children under 12 were never masked and only 9 percent of children ages 5-11 are fully vaccinated.
This data correlates with other data across the globe. Children are at the lowest risk from COVID, at least not anymore at risk from other common viruses like the flu, many of which are actually some type of coronavirus.
A study published at the end of 2021 provided the following numbers regarding kids and COVID in Germany:
- For healthy kids, the risk of going to the hospital is 51 per 100,000
- For healthy kids, the risk of going to the ICU is 8 per 100,000
- For healthy kids, the risk of death is 3 per 1,000,000 with no deaths reported in kids older than 5
- Kids 5 to 11 have a lower risk than kids <5 and adolescents 12 to 17
- Kids 5 to 11 have a risk of going to the ICU of 2 in 100,000; 0 died
Early on in the pandemic Jonas F. Ludvigsson, a paediatrician at Örebro University Hospital and professor of clinical epidemiology at the Karolinska Institute, published research showing that out of nearly 2 million school children, zero died from COVID despite no lockdowns, school closings or mask mandates during the first wave of the pandemic. After he published his research he was bombarded with an onslaught of intimidating comments. As a result Ludvigsson quit his research which led the Swedish government to strengthen their laws on academic freedom.
Høeg and Makary do not address vaccine injuries in their article. In fact, approximately 50% of serious vaccine injuries reported in the last 30 years, in the U.S. alone, are from Covid shots. A 12 year old girl was also severely injured during Pfizer’s clinical trial, and multiple autopsies of deaths of children shortly after Covid vaccine administration have been published, here’s one example.
The point is, a proper cost/benefit analysis has not been done, and again, the main point of Høeg and Makary’s article is explaining that there really is no benefit for young children.