CDC ACIP Meeting, Feb. 5, 2022 – Meryl Nass, M.D.
Welcome to the Feb. 5 ACIP meeting. As usual, CDC does not want anyone to actually see the faces of the speakers. So the “livestream” streams a photo of the CDC Building.
Dr. Fink makes introductory announcements. First, Spikevax was approved on Jan. 31 as a 2-dose primary series for adults 18 years and older, based on updated data and analyses of the 30,000K phase 3 trial. FDA also considered real-world experience in millions of individuals. They still use the 93% efficacy starting 2 weeks post dose 2, and 98% efficacy for serious disease. The real-world data do not support this — but I guess they didn’t use real word data to assess efficacy.
Note that something very important happens between dose one and the 6 weeks or more until 2 weeks after dose 2.
That is something bad: temporary impaired immunity associated with surges in shingles and other endogenous viruses, as well as higher than normal rates of COVID occurring.
That is why the time period is scrubbed from all the analyses.
Then he promises a transparent VRBPAC meeting coming up. We can only hope.
Matt Daley of CDC starts off. There have been over 74 M cases of COVID — elsewhere CDC has estimated over 144 M (on Oct. 2)
He gives the bogus chart of death rates based on vaccination status: these numbers fly in the face of data from multiple other countries.
CDC claims that 95% of Americans over 65 have been vaccinated, and 75% of those over age 18.
CDC estimates all sorts of benefits from vaccination, but they never give you the real numbers.
The reason myocarditis is the primary issue covered regarding safety is because it could not be covered up. Myocarditis almost always occurs within 4 days of a shot and is usually associated with dramatic symptoms like chest pain, making it very hard to ignore.
Now Moderna’s Rita Das presents. She notes that the data precede Omicron.
The study began in July. Solicited adverse reactions were collected for one week after each shot. Then there were weekly and monthly checks. There were telemed visits for side effects.
15,210 subjects got 100 mcg Mod 1273 and the same number got a saline placebo.
Subjects were tested to see if there was evidence of prior immunity.
The “solicited systemic reactions” are always mild and temporary, so the company can appear to be checking systemic reactions when they avoid all the serious ones
Dr. Nass is currently caught in a power outage, her blogging will continue when the power returns.
It is 12:27 pm and I just got power back.
The committee is looking at recovery and lack of recovery in a group with myocarditis.
Of 989 reports that met the CDC case definition, 850 were aged 12-29. However, higher rates of myocarditis were noted in males aged up to age 50.
360 cases were interviewed with questionnaires.
It was pointed out that by restricting cases to 7 days post each dose, CDC managed to discard the pericarditis cases, which occur later and tend to occur in an older age group.
Although CDC has earlier claimed that practically all myocarditis cases fully resolve, that is not what the data show–and these cases are being evaluated on average 6 months after symptom onset.
On average, at 190 days after diagnosis, 39% of cases STILL had their activity restricted by their doctors. 32% of cases STILL reported chest pain; 22% still had shortness of breath, 22% had palpitations and 25% still reported fatigue. Nearly half the cases still had symptoms.
While up to 80% of doctors said they thought the patients were fully, or probably fully recovered, it was made clear they had not returned to normal–rather, they were not expected to show additional improvement.
Helen Talbot claims that 69% of cases had recovered from symptoms at the time the VAERS report was filed — but the speaker right before her showed that six months after onset, over 40% of cases were still experiencing symptoms. Furthermore, about 45% had anxiety or depression, in addition to the physical symptoms
As usual, CDC tries to gloss over the actual facts. As usual, each speaker brags about the hard work they and their team did to gather the info in their presentation. Talbor said they had 45 meetings and everyone showed up ready to work. Well, then why did her presentation fail to include a single new fact? Or a single new analysis?
17-minute lunch break.
I forgot: when the myocarditis cases were queried, about 6 months after onset, 20% were still taking a medication they had been given for their heart. Just more evidence that a large subset of myocarditis patients, perhaps about half, never return to their baseline. When you consider that these are college and high school kids, mostly, it is a terrible stain on these public health “experts” who never do their job, which is to balance risk and benefit for each demographic group to decide what should be recommended. AND these people know that most of their “recommendations” will be enforced as mandates, but they remain silent on that issue.
Dr. Shimabukuro was asked if there were any myocarditis deaths? Ah yes, that little subject was omitted, but amazingly, he had a slide about it — he just hadn’t shown it. It turns out that VAERS had received 13 reports of myocarditis deaths (can’t be certain if it was in the 12-29 age group). What did CDC do with the information? I guess there were three they did not want to deal with, so they threw them out due to lack of information, such as no autopsy. But CDC has every US death certificate; did the doctor say the patient died of myocarditis? Of the 10 cases left, 8 were evaluated and 2 are pending. CDC decided that 3 did not meet their case definition. (Was their definition designed to be exclusionary? I know it changed since 2003 when CDC had to deal with the smallpox vaccine-induced myocarditis cases. That left 5 cases who all died with myocarditis. CDC claimed that yes, each died of myocarditis, and no, CDC did not deny they were vaccinated–but instead, Dr. Shimabukuro said they might have had other infectious illnesses that led to myocarditis. Might. Possibly. So CDC decided they were not due to an mRNA vaccine.
Can someone FOIA for these analyses? It seems like CDC is bending over backward to deny their gene therapy inoculations are killing teenagers. Hey, did you see any athletes fall over on the field and die? Do you think they had some other infectious disease that caused their myocarditis but did not stop them from playing world-class soccer?
We’re back — CDC gives a fluffy description of lots of data they used to assess efficacy, failing to be specific about anything
Their evidence synthesis included only 2 CDC sources (of about a possible dozen) and they whittled the data sources down to 33. These included preprints and “most representative” studies. They include different populations and times. They miss Omicron.
Why do they always discuss the GRADE evidence method, when everyone is very familiar with it?
I guess the idea is to make people think the CDC does things scientifically. The only RCT to provide data on cases is the Moderna trial, which we already heard about this am.
Why must we keep hearing about these bogus data, which have been reported for the past year? I say bogus because the real-world data shows the efficacy estimate was a pipe dream. Furthermore, the most recent data in the 11 observational studies were collected in Sept-Oct and were therefore from Delta cases, or earlier variants.
Sara never explains why CDC drops several studies for each analysis, after having selected them for its 33 high-quality data sets.
Sara says several studies yield heterogeneous estimates of prevention of asymptomatic infection. Supposedly the vaccine is 57% effective at preventing asymptomatic disease. Why did efficacy drop so much? It makes no sense.
CDC claims anaphylaxis rate of 5/ million doses–which was also the VAERS reporting rate — indicating their arithmetic is way off. This is a sad joke. Sara omitted providing the data on anaphylaxis, so you could not identify how the results were fixed.
Side effects are being swept under the rug by never identifying what they actually were.
I love Sara Oliver because she is the embodiment of GIGO: Garbage In, Garbage Out. When she opens her mouth, you know that GIGO is about to appear. Let me briefly summarize: CDC cherrypicks a small number of data sources. They are not specified. CDC further cherrypicks them to get smaller subsets to obtain desired results.
CDC fails to specify anything that one can assess independently. The use of GRADE further muddies the water. Sorry, it was Megan Wallace, not Sara Oliver who provided the gobbledygook. It is interesting that the quality of presentations has dropped so dramatically that even the ACIP members have no questions.
Now it is time for Sara Oliver to chirp at us, as if we are her kindergarten class, talking about PICO questions and ETR frameworks.
We recently experienced a substantial surge, declining since mid-January. Doesn’t that tell these idiots that the vaccines don’t work???
Sara presents the faked CDC data on unvaccinated deaths and cases–15x greater risk of death, she claims. This is because CDC fakes the data, both wrt hospitalizations and deaths. Remember, CDC hand-codes all COVID deaths, despite what the medical provider wrote. And CDC collects hospitalization data in such a way that most of the vaccinated are counted as unvaccinated. If they are within 2 weeks of a dose they are unvaccinated. If the hospital is unaware of their vaccine status, they count as unvaccinated. How do I know they fudge the data? Well, some states publish their data: Massachusetts showed CDC was not reporting their numbers accurately. Furthermore, the data from Denmark, Israel, Scotland, England, etc. show that hospitalizations are HIGHER in the vaccinated.
Now Sara claims that serious adverse events occurred about the same rate in those receiving the vaccine and those receiving placebo. This is nonsensical. It also is not what the data showed today.
See how Sara ignores the 45% of myocarditis cases with anxiety and depression, and the nearly 50% with persisting cardiac symptoms. She simply says that most are better.
CDC reports myocarditis at 67.5/million doses or about 1/15,000 2nd doses. The Hong Kong study and the Oregon Kaiser study both found a rate of 1 in 2,700 boys aged 12-17, and about 1/2,000 in the males aged 18-24.
But Sara’s GIGO estimates that each case of myocarditis is far outweighed by hospitalizations in that age group–except the hospitalization rate in this age group is tiny, and the cases of myocarditis are at least 6x higher than she claims.
CDC’s data magicians can make anything look good — as long as you control the data, or ignore the data and use estimates, and avoid looking for subclinical cases of myocarditis.
The other thing CDC did was to pretend that Moderna’s vaccine only causes 2 side effects: anaphylaxis and myocarditis. The two they cannot hide since they occur so quickly after vaccination are severe. All the other side effects simply do not exist for this crowd.
Now Sara’s chirps regarding a survey of the unvaccinated are making sense. It turns out that some segment of the unvaccinated told C DC pollsters that they might go ahead and get vaccinated if it was licensed. It “may be more acceptable” to key stakeholders with a license. And so that is why we are pushing for licensure
OMG, now we are splitting up the vaccinees by sexual orientation.
But it’s all about equity. The workgroup doesn’t think that rolling out a licensed Spikevax will affect equity. Aren’t you relieved? But what she forgot to say is that they are NOT rolling out Spikevax, but only continuing to make the EUA Moderna vaccine available.
Sara thanked her “Small but mighty team” which will now make me see her as Mighty Mouse from now on.
How can these ACIP members call this drivel a “wonderful presentation”?
Now Sara asked if there was “diversity” in the workgroup vote on the vaccine. Interesting use fo the term. Apparently, the question was whether the workgroup unanimously approved the recommendation for the Moderna BLA (“Spikevax”) vaccine from an interim rec to a full rec.
Sara said there was no diversity.
The ACIP voted unanimously to recommend Spikevax fully. No one mentioned that it won’t be available and so nothing just happened. The latest commenter, Dr. Daley, said he has a sense of wonder about what was accomplished here today… We should not take this for granted, he says, this marvelous rapid rollout of these magical vaccines.
Next commenter, Dr. Bell, says how much the ACIP values transparency and science, and hopes by this comprehensive, transparent process of looking at data, that the huge value and benefit of getting vaccinated, will become clear and help get more vaccinated. All I can say is, what planet do these people live on? I want to thank the committee for getting done early, before I died of boredom and horror. But oh no, they are going to go on after a 15-minute break.
And then there will be more patting of backs about the wonderful work they have done.
Sorry, I had issues with my computer and boiler after the power outage and had to go deal with them.
Now we hear that vaccine effectiveness improves if 7-8 weeks elapse between doses. Why did it take vaccinating about 220 million Americans before this was figured out?
In the UK, children are recommended to receive vaccination with an 8-12 week interval
Remember that the advisory committee in the UK recommended against vaccinating children, but the government went against their recommendation.
Singapore does not recommend Moderna’s vaccine for kids.
France recommends Pfizer for under 30s; Germany does the same.
Another missing fact is the rapid waning of efficacy over time — how did CDC manage to whitewash that?
CDC simply did not include a single slide that showed efficacy as a function of time. Easy peasy.
Now Sara Oliver washes away the myocarditis risk–it will drop with an extended duration between doses. She does not explain how it still caused high rates of myocarditis in Europe despite their prolonged dosing duration. The CDC VAERS data indicates that Pfizer and Moderna have about the same rate of myocarditis, whereas the VSD data suggest Moderna is higher.
Now Sara claims that Moderna would prevent 2-3,000 hospitalizations/ million recipients aged 18-39. Which is ridiculous, suggesting extremely high rates of hospitalization in young adults; it also entirely ignores the fact that early treatment can prevent the majority of hospitalizations.
Ah — she is offering parents a way to reduce the myocarditis risk–they are desperate to vaccinate kids for whom the vaccine is unnecessary, and so are going to spin this as parents being able to make a choice to lower their children’s risk of vaccination by expanding the duration between shots.
not duration, time
While the ACIP yammers about whether extending the period between initial Moderna doses from 4 to 8 weeks, Israel, the world’s most vaccinated country, just reached the highest rate of deaths. I think I finally understand what this is about: providing a headline for the media that CDC has figured out a way to give kids COVID vaccines more safely. This is a PR shot across the bow as the FDA and CDC get ready to start vaccinating kids aged 6 months to 5 years. That VRBPAC meeting is scheduled for February 15. This will be the punchline (even though there are no data to support safety or efficacy in that age group)
Watch the headlines. I am sure CDC has already issued the press releases, even though the discussion is ongoing.
CDC discovers a safer way to vaccinate kids for COVID! watch for it.
I just noticed that Dr. Jeffrey Duchin, health officer for Public Health-Seattle and King County is an ACIP member. He is responsible for vaccinating kids 121 years and up WITHOUT PARENTAL PERMISSION. In other words, he is someone who acted against the law to push more vaccinations on kids, even though he is well aware that parental consent is needed. He, and some other health officers, probably were exhorted by CDC to do this. They were probably told that while they used an EUA product there could be no personal liability. However, fraud or malfeasance potentially remove the liability shield. I would call him an unindicted criminal who should be personally financially responsible for any side effects occurring in children vaccinated without parental knowledge or consent.
Finally, this day of the dead is over. The next VRBPAC should be even worse. See you then.
Sign up for free news and updates from Children’s Health Defense. CHD focuses on legal strategies to defend the health of our children and obtain justice for those injured. We can't do it without your support.