Tag: cdc

More than 50% of CDC employees end up working for Pharma

A study conducted by researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) and Harvard University and published in the journal Health Affairs found that 54 percent of the staff members, who were employed at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and left the federal health agency during 2004-2020, went on to work for the pharmaceutical industry.

According to the study:

Exiting staff went to not only biopharmaceutical and device manufacturers, but also health insurers, information and communication technology firms, real estate firms with medical property portfolios, and consulting firms.

The study researchers, Genevieve Kanter, PhD and Daniel Carpenter, PhD, stated that the “high rates of exit” to pharmaceutical companies suggests that CDC employees, as well as employees of other operating divisions of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (DHHS), are highly valued and make them attractive hires for pharmaceutical companies, and that this value could “derive from policy expertise, extended professional networks, or prestige.”

But Drs. Kanter and Carpenter also pointed out that there is concern that some of the value of people who used to work for the CDC may come from the perceived “potential influence” that these hires can “exert on former colleagues post-departure, or from favorable actions taken before departure, that could compromise agency decision making.

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CDC Finds Youth Marijuana Use Fell In Washington State’s Largest County After Adult-Use Legalization

Marijuana use among teens in Washington State’s most populous county declined after legalization of cannabis for adults, according to a new federal study published on Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The prevalence of current and frequent use fell significantly among youth in grades 8, 10 and 12 between 2008 and 2021.

According to the study, published in CDC’s latest Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, current and frequent use of marijuana among teens in King County has fallen significantly since state voters legalized adult-use cannabis by initiative in November 2012.

Researchers said legalization and related regulations and age controls could have have fueled the trend by making marijuana harder for teens to access, though they also said the COVID pandemic may have contributed to more recent declines.

Between 2008 and 2021, current use—defined as having used marijuana at least once in the past month—fell from highs of 20.4 percent among males (in 2010) and 15.5 percent among females (in 2012) down to 7.7 percent and 9.0 percent, respectively, in 2021.

“The legalization of nonmedical cannabis for adults aged ≥21 years in Washington with licensed dispensaries requiring proof of age might have affected availability of cannabis to younger persons as well as their opportunities to engage in its use,” the CDC report says. “This, in turn, might have had an impact on use prevalence.”

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CDC Drafted Alert For Myocarditis And COVID-19 Vaccines, But Never Sent It

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) prepared to alert state and local officials to an emerging connection between heart inflammation and COVID-19 vaccines, but ultimately did not send the alert, according to a new document obtained by The Epoch Times.

All four COVID-19 vaccines that are or have been available in the United States can cause the heart inflammation, or myocarditis, according to studies, experts, and agencies like the CDC. The first cases were reported shortly after the vaccines became available in late 2020.

The CDC sends alerts to federal, state, and local public health officials and doctors across the nation through a system called the Health Alert Network (HAN). Messaging through the system conveys “vital health information,” according to the CDC.

In May 2021, CDC officials drafted an alert on myocarditis and the two most widely used COVID-19 shots, according to the newly obtained document, which is being made public for the first time by The Epoch Times.

“This is the most recent draft of an alert as discussed. Happy to discuss,” Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, the CDC’s top official for equity in COVID-19 data and engagement, told two other high-ranking CDC colleagues in the email.

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CDC Ordered To Disclose Crucial Information From COVID-19 Vaccine Surveillance System

The top U.S. public health agency must disclose information provided by people who experienced problems following COVID-19 vaccination, a federal court has ruled.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is being ordered to produce 7.8 million free-text entries from V-safe, one of its vaccine surveillance systems.

Data from the system released under court order in 2022 showed that 25 percent of V-safe participants missed school, work, or other normal activities due to post-vaccination issues, and nearly 8 percent of participants reported seeking medical attention, such as hospitalization after receiving a shot. That data, from boxes checked by users, came through an order in a case that started as a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

But the CDC resisted releasing the free-text entries, arguing that many of them include information that should remain private.

“CDC determined that many of these responses contain personally identifiable information, the disclosure of which would publicly link participants to highly sensitive health information,” government lawyers representing the agency said in one brief. “And because it would take tens of thousands of workhours to manually review and redact millions of free-text responses, CDC determined that segregating the non-exempt information within these responses would be unreasonably burdensome and was therefore beyond its FOIA obligations.”

The CDC said it would take one worker 59 years to complete the work if it were ordered.

The government’s arguments were rejected by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, in response to a fresh lawsuit.

“While the burden to produce the requested free-text responses may be heavy, this court does not find that it is unreasonable,” he said in the new ruling.

The CDC can go through the records and redact personally identifiable information as allowed by FOIA but must do the work and produce the records with the redactions, he added later. Evidence produced in the case indicates that about 93 percent of the records will require no redactions.

The materials will be important for people who experienced problems following vaccination, the judge said.

“Production of the free-text data will permit independent researchers to put the government agencies to their proof by considering all of the available data,” he said. He noted that CDC studies on v-safe data only covered data from the first week or two after vaccination but that the surveys collected data for up to one year after receipt of a shot.

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A DEFENSE-LINKED CONTRACTOR TOOK OVER A SUCCESSFUL CDC ANTI-OVERDOSE INITIATIVE. IT IMPLODED IN A DAY.

A GROUNDBREAKING Centers for Disease Control and Prevention initiative to support harm-reduction groups across the country fell apart this month after the program came under the control of a federal contractor that has done no public health work for the government.

The National Harm Reduction Technical Assistance Center, or TA Center, was founded in 2019 as a coalition of harm-reduction groups partnered with the CDC to offer training, funding, and guidance to those working to reduce overdose deaths. Its success rested on the deep experience and the trust community members had for the three main partner organizations, which included the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors, or NASTAD; the National Harm Reduction Coalition, or NHRC; the University of Washington’s Supporting Harm Reduction Programs; and a handful of other groups.

This month, the TA Center ceased functioning as it had for more than three years: Instead of a partnership, the project would be administered as a federal contract. And the CDC gave the sole-source contract to the Florida-based firm H2 PCI, a relatively new federal contractor with close links to the defense industry and the murky world of military special operations.

H2 PCI entered negotiations with the primary partners in the center to make them subcontractors but did not send proposed subcontracts to the groups until early November. Rushed by deadlines, those talks broke down in late November, according to Laura Guzman, executive director of NHRC.

As the H2 PCI contract went into effect on December 1, the primary partner organizations that had made the TA Center a success parted ways with the project, Guzman told The Intercept.

“From the beginning, it was clear that they had zero experience in the public health field and absolutely zero experience in harm reduction,” Guzman said. “It would be really challenging to work with a contractor who has zero understanding of our world.”

Advocates fear the takeover could wash away the years of painstaking work of building up the TA Center and sever its vital connection to on-the-ground harm reduction providers, making it harder for them to serve the people who rely on them for clean needles, naloxone, and other services, according to Maya Doe-Simkins, a veteran harm reductionist who has worked closely with the program.

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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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