Tag: cdc

New CDC Director Defends Vaccine Mandates, School Closures

The new director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Nov. 30 defended COVID-era policies like vaccine mandates in her first appearance before Congress.

“I’m very proud of the work we did in North Carolina,” Dr. Mandy Cohen, the new director, told Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) after he asked if she regretted any of the policies put into place in North Carolina, such as school closures, when she was the state’s health secretary.

“I feel like we did that in a way that was very inclusive,” she added.

When Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) noted that Dr. Cohen supported harsh measures as health secretary, including vaccine mandates, Dr. Cohen said it was time to “look forward” and start a “new chapter.”

“You have to remember, at different moments in time, we needed different solutions,” she said in response to how Americans would know whether the new director will support the same measures at the federal level.

“The good news is that we’re in a different place than we were before. We both have different tools and have different mechanisms to respond,” she said to another question, about whether she’d shut down schools if a pandemic happened again. “I can’t really address a hypothetical but I think we’ve learned a lot about how to approach things.”

Did closing schools harm students?

“We always knew in-person instruction was incredibly beneficial,” Dr. Cohen said.

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CDC: Last Year’s Flu Shot Was Less Than 50% Effective For Children And Adolescents

During the 2022–2023 flu season, the influenza vaccine was less than 50 percent effective at preventing emergency department/urgent care visits and hospitalizations among children and adolescents, according to a study funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The analysis, published Nov. 16, 2023, in Clinical Infectious Diseases, found the seasonal influenza vaccine was only 48 percent effective overall at reducing the risk of influenza-A-associated emergency department (ED) or urgent care (UC) visits, and only 40 percent effective at preventing hospitalizations.

Researchers analyzed acute respiratory illness-associated ED and UC visits or hospitalizations at 55 hospitals and 107 ED or UC sites within the VISION vaccine effectiveness network—a multistate collaboration with the CDC. Children and adolescents 6 months to 17 years were tested for influenza between October 2022 and March 2023.

Researchers estimated influenza A vaccine effectiveness using a test-negative design—a popular method for determining vaccine efficacy that uses the same clinical case definition for both cases and controls and distinguishes which patients are in each group with subsequent laboratory testing. In other words, the effectiveness of the influenza vaccine was estimated by comparing influenza vaccination status in patients testing positive for influenza with those testing negative for influenza.

According to the study, 13,547 of 44,787 qualified ED/UC visits and 263 of 1,862 hospitalizations were positive for influenza A. Among ED/UC patients, 15.2 percent of influenza-positive cases and 27.1 percent of influenza-negative cases were vaccinated.

The vaccine was 44 to 52 percent effective—or 48 percent effective “overall,” 47 to 58 percent effective among children aged 6 months to 4 years, and 30 to 45 percent effective among those aged 9 to 17 years old.

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CDC reports biggest infant mortality rate surge in 20 years

The rate of infants dying before their first birthday jumped 3% in 2022, the biggest surge in 20 years, according to new provisional federal data.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Wednesday that the U.S. infant mortality rate hit 5.6 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2022, up roughly 3% from 5.44 in 2021. The CDC previously reported in September that the rate edged up in 2021 by about 0.4% from 5.42 deaths per 1,000 births in 2020.

The 2022 spike represents the first “statistically significant” increase in infant mortality since the rate jumped from 6.8 deaths per 1,000 births in 2001 to 7 deaths per 1,000 births in 2002, the federal agency noted.

The CDC found the number of infant deaths also increased by about 3% — from 19,928 in 2021 to 20,538 last year. In 2021, it rose by 2% from 19,578 deaths in 2020.

According to the same report, Americans had 3,446 more children last year, as live births increased from 3,664,292 in 2021 to 3,667,758 in 2022.

In 2021, Americans had 50,645 more children amid a pandemic-era baby boom, with live births jumping sharply from 3,613,647 in 2020.

“The number of infant deaths can increase and there will not be a significant increase in the rate because the rate accounts for the variation in the number of births,” Danielle Ely, a CDC statistician and co-author of the report, told The Washington Times.

According to CDC records, the infant mortality rate has increased annually on only five occasions — 2002, 2005, 2015, 2021 and 2022 — since the federal agency first linked infant births and deaths in a single file in 1995.

The 2022 rate remains 18.5% lower than the agency’s “recent high” of 6.86 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2005.

From 2021 to 2022, CDC researchers found the neonatal death rate for babies who died before 28 days increased by 3% from 3.49 to 3.58 deaths per 1,000 live births. The post-neonatal death rate for those who died after 28 days increased by 4% from 1.95 to 2.02 deaths per 1,000 live births.

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CDC Journal And Five Others Rejected Key Paper On COVID Vaccines, Heart Inflammation

Six medical journals rejected a key paper on COVID-19 vaccines and heart inflammation, a condition the vaccines cause, according to documents reviewed by The Epoch Times.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s journal, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), was one of them.

CDC officials falsely told the paper’s authors that the paper did not add anything to a previously published CDC report, which estimated more COVID-19 hospitalizations would be prevented than cases of heart inflammation, or myocarditis, caused.

“I ran this by the MMWR lead editorial staff members; they felt that while the report was interesting, they did not feel that there was anything that was not already relayed,” Dr. Jacqueline Gindler, one of the officials, said in an Aug. 10, 2021, email.

The CDC a month earlier in a non-peer-reviewed paper estimated that among males aged 12 to 17, one million second Pfizer doses would cause up to 69 myocarditis cases but prevent some 5,700 COVID-19 cases and 215 COVID-19 hospitalizations.

The new paper clarified the risk-benefit calculus by separating children without serious underlying conditions such as obesity from children with one or more of the problems. It broke down the age group into two parts, 12- to 15 and 16- to 17. And it subtracted incidental hospitalizations, or hospitalizations where people test positive for COVID-19 but are actually being treated for other conditions.

The researchers estimated, using similar methods as the CDC, that one million doses would cause more cardiac adverse events in healthy boys than COVID-19 hospitalizations prevented. Among boys aged 12 to 15 without comorbidities, they calculated up to 6.1 times more adverse events among the vaccinated.

Both the CDC and the new paper utilized reports to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which the CDC co-manages.

Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, one of the paper’s co-authors, said that the CDC’s position that the paper did not add anything “was laughable.”

“What we added was stratification for non high-risk vs high-risk children, which was new,” Dr. Hoeg told The Epoch Times in an email. “We also reported a higher rate in 12-17 year olds than CDC had been reporting in males after dose two. Finally we removed incidental COVID-19 hospitalizations, when estimating potential vaccine benefits, which CDC had not been doing up to that point.”

Benjamin Hayes, a CDC spokesman who answered a query sent to Dr. Gindler, told The Epoch Times in an email that MMWR had to be “highly selective” due to receiving many submissions during the pandemic.

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False, Misleading Information About COVID-19 Vaccines And Myocarditis Spreads Widely

False and misleading information about COVID-19 vaccines and heart inflammation is being spread widely, including by doctors.

That includes claims that data clearly show myocarditis, or heart inflammation, is more prevalent after COVID-19 infection when compared to COVID-19 vaccination.

“Teen boys have been up to five times as likely to have heart inflammation after having a COVID infection than after getting vaccinated,” Dr. Mandy Cohen, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said in a video encouraging nearly all Americans to get one of the new COVID-19 vaccines.

A similar claim was made by Dr. Scott Rivkees, Florida’s former surgeon general, to ABC.

The claims are largely based on a non-peer reviewed study from the CDC from April 2022.

“At this point it does not seem like an intellectually honest attempt to conduct a risk-benefit analysis,” Allison Krug, an epidemiologist, told The Epoch Times. “I’m just dismayed that they don’t seem genuinely interested in repairing the credibility with parents lost over the last two-and-a-half years.”

The CDC did not respond to a request for comment.

Dr. Rivkees, presented with studies that have found people in at least some populations are at a higher risk of myocarditis after vaccination when compared to after a positive test, doubled down on his claim.

“In articles that compare risks of myocarditis from COVID vs. following vaccination … the risk of myocarditis is greater after COVID than after vaccination,” Dr. Rivkees, professor of the practice of health services, policy, and practice at Brown University, told The Epoch Times via email.

In one of the papers, English researchers found a higher risk for men under 40 who were vaccinated with Moderna’s shot.

Nordic researchers also identified a higher risk for men under 40, as well as some females.

German researchers found 655 cases related to a COVID-19 vaccine, versus 77 related to COVID-19.

The CDC researchers found a higher rate of cardiac complications after a positive COVID-19 test than after COVID-19 vaccination in 40 U.S. health care systems. They did not include all COVID-19 infections.

Dr. Rivkees later sent meta-analyses that confirm the COVID-19 vaccines increase the risk of myocarditis, with no tabulations for the risk following COVID-19.

Dr. Rivkees was quoted by ABC as countering recommendations from Florida to people under 65 to avoid new COVID-19 vaccines, which have virtually no clinical trial data behind them.

Florida’s recommendations contradict the CDC, which advises nearly all Americans receive one of the new shots, but align with or are close to the recommendations from much of the rest of the world, including many European countries and Israel.

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Dr. Robert Redfield Comes Clean On Government Censorship

“My position was just tell the American public the truth. There are side effects to vaccines. Tell them the truth and don’t try to package it.”

That was Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control during the administration of Donald Trump.

Dr. Redfield recently went on record that the government health bureaucracy tried to quash discussion about the ineffectiveness of Covid vaccines.

“There was such an attempt to not let anybody get any hint that maybe vaccines weren’t foolproof, which, of course, we now know they have significant limitations,” said Redfield, who co-founded the University of Maryland’s Institute of Human Virology and served as the Chief of Infectious Diseases and Vice Chair of Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

“I think we should have really confidence and not be afraid to debate the issues that we think are in the public’s interest and just tell the public the truth,” said the former CDC director. This wasn’t the first time Dr. Redfield had been at odds with the government health establishment.

“I’m of the point of view that I still think the most likely etiology of this pathology in Wuhan was from a laboratory, you know, escaped,” Redfield told CNN in 2021.

“Other people don’t believe that. That’s fine. Science will eventually figure it out.”

After these statements, as Vanity Fair reported, “death threats flooded his inbox,” some from prominent scientists.

“I was threatened and ostracized because I proposed another hypothesis,” Redfield explained.

“I expected it from politicians. I didn’t expect it from science.”

The people might expect the FBI to investigate death threats against a public official, but reports of any such investigation are hard to find.

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CDC Quietly Removes COVID Vaccine Adverse Events Collection From Website

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has halted the collection of COVID-19 vaccine adverse events reports through the agency’s V-Safe page even as millions of Americans reported being “impacted” by such vaccines.

When visiting the V-Safe page, a message shows: “Thank you for your participation. Data collection for COVID-19 vaccines concluded on June 30, 2023. If you have symptoms or health problems following your COVID-19 vaccination that concern you, please contact your healthcare provider. You can also report to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).”

While V-Safe was created by the CDC to collect COVID-19 vaccination health assessments, VAERS is an older system that is co-managed by the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The CDC says that it closed enrollment in V-safe on May 19, as the program was “developed specifically for COVID-19 vaccines.” According to the agency, it is “developing a new version of v-safe which will allow users to share their post-vaccination experiences with new vaccines.”

The CDC states that since the launch of V-Safe in December 2020, it has registered 10.1 million participants who completed over 151 million health surveys regarding their experiences following the COVID-19 vaccination.

According to V-Safe data accessed by the advocacy Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) in September 2022, out of the 10.1 million users who reported on the platform, 3.53 million people claimed to have been adversely “impacted” by the vaccination.

While 1.2 million reported that they were “unable” to conduct normal activities, 1.3 million missed school/work, and 800,000 required medical care.

In total, 6.45 million health impacts were reported to V-Safe.

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Shocked!? CDC Says New COVID-19 Variant Could Cause Infections In Vaccinated People

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated Wednesday the new BA.2.86 COVID-19 lineage may cause infection in people who received vaccines or previously had the virus.

The CDC said it is too soon to know whether this might cause more severe illness compared with previous variants. But due to the high number of mutations detected in this lineage, there were concerns about its impact on immunity from vaccines and previous infections, the agency said.

“The large number of mutations in this variant raises concerns of greater escape from existing immunity from vaccines and previous infections compared with other recent variants,” the CDC stated in its assessment.

“For example, one analysis of mutations suggests the difference may be as large as or greater than that between BA.2 and XBB.1.5, which circulated nearly a year apart.”

But it said that “virus samples are not yet broadly available for more reliable laboratory testing of antibodies, and it is too soon to know the real-world impacts on immunity.”

The agency added that it detected at least two cases with the BA.2.86 variant in the United States, although few other details were provided. It was also found in Israel, the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Denmark, the agency said.

One of the BA.2.86 cases was found in a person detected via the CDC’s traveler surveillance system, while it added that cases being found in several countries is evidence of international transmission.

“Notably, the amount of genomic sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 globally has declined substantially from previous years, meaning more variants may emerge and spread undetected for longer periods of time,” according to the assessment.

“It is also important to note that the current increase in hospitalizations in the United States is not likely driven by the BA.2.86 variant. This assessment may change as additional data become available.”

The CDC noted that most of the U.S. population has COVID-19 antibodies from a previous infection, vaccination, or both. It’s likely that the antibodies will provide some protection against the variant, said the CDC.

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Secret Letter to CDC: Top Epidemiologist Suggests Agency Misrepresented Scientific Data to Support Mask Narrative

Documents recently obtained from the National Institutes of Health suggest public health officials used inaccurate information and misrepresented medical research to advance their policy objective that masks prevent severe COVID-19 and virus transmission—despite opposing scientific evidence received from experts.

In a recently obtained letter (pdf) sent in November 2021 to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), top epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, and seven colleagues informed the agency it was promoting flawed data and excluding data that did not reinforce their narrative.

The letter warned the agency that misrepresenting data on trusted websites such as the CDC and the COVID-19 Real-Time Learning Network—jointly created by the CDC and Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA)—would “damage the credibility of science,” endanger public trust by “misrepresenting the evidence,” and give the public “false expectations” masking would protect them from the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19.

“We believe the information and recommendations as provided may actually put an individual at increased risk of becoming infected with SARS-CoV-2 and for them to experience a serious or even life-threatening infection,” Mr. Osterhom wrote.

The authors urged the IDSA to remove the suggestion that masking prevents severe disease from its website and asked the CDC to reconsider its statements about the “efficacy of masks and face coverings for preventing transmission of SARS-CoV-2.”

Osterholm also noted a pattern of selectively choosing data that supported the desired narrative that masks prevent severe COVID-19 disease and transmission—claims he said are unsupported by the scientific evidence provided by the CDC and IDSA on their websites.

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Red Meat Allergies from Tick Bites Are on the Rise. It Fits Conveniently into an Agenda

Dairy and red meat allergies may now be the 10th most common food allergies in the U.S., according to CDC estimates.  In case you haven’t heard, alpha-Gal syndrome is on the rise, and it’s still largely unrecognized.

What is this new syndrome?  Who needs to avoid red meat and dairy?  Might something else be going on here? Let’s look a little deeper at how a simple tick bite can have lifelong, devastating effects – and not just from Lyme disease.

What is alpha-Gal syndrome?

Alpha-Gal syndrome begins with a bite from an infected tick or chigger.  The tick or chigger bites some kind of mammal and ingests its blood, which contains alpha-Gal, a type of sugar molecule.  If that tick or chigger goes on to bite a human, it can transmit some of the alpha-Gal-tainted blood to the human, which may then trigger an allergic reaction to red meat or dairy products.

One of the stranger things about alpha-Gal syndrome is the time in which it takes for symptoms to present themselves.  It typically takes a few months after the tick bite for the person’s antibodies to alpha-Gal to build up, and then it is often several hours after a person eats meat that they have their allergic reaction. (source)  The time delay makes diagnosis really difficult because victims often feel like their allergic reactions appear out of nowhere.  Before people knew what to look for, an alpha-Gal syndrome diagnosis took some sleuthing.

Alpha-Gal is something to be aware of, particularly since it can be triggered not only by meat and dairy but also drugs containing mammal products, and even carrageenan, an Irish moss used as a food thickener.  If you’ve got allergic reactions you can’t explain, you could ask your doctor about getting a blood test to rule this out.

However, for those of us familiar with all our allergies, this is not something to lose sleep over.

In fact, overdiagnosis of alpha-Gal syndrome may be a bigger concern.  Detailed studies have shown that about a third of the American population has antibodies to alpha-Gal, which means they’ve already encountered it somewhere.  And yet the overwhelming majority of us can eat red meat without ill effects.

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