A recent article by New York Times explains that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) only publishes a small part of the Covid data it collects. One of the main reasons: The data could be “misunderstood” – they strengthen the arguments of those who are critical of the Covid compulsory vaccination.
In addition to data from wastewater monitoring, which could possibly be used to detect disease outbreaks and new variants at an early stage, this is particularly the case Numbers of hospital admissions and deaths by age, race, and immunization status. The authority has been collecting comprehensive data for more than a year – but has refrained from publishing it in many cases, although valuable conclusions could be drawn from it for the fight against Covid-19. For example, the refusal to make the collected data on booster vaccinations of 18- to 49-year-olds available to the public, making it difficult to assess whether healthy people need booster vaccinations at all. The reason: the data obviously could not prove the effectiveness of the boosters.
Government officials decide what gets published
Samuel Scarpino, executive director of pathogen surveillance at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Pandemic Prevention Institute, explained, “The CDC is as much a political organization as it is a public health organization.” The release of data is often beyond the control of the scientists who work at the CDC: Not only that the disease control agency has several bureaucratic departments that have to approve the publication of data – officials from the Department of Health and the White House, for example, also have to approve publications.
Data cannot prove vaccine effectiveness
Last year, the CDC was criticized for not tracking vaccine breakthroughs. Referring to a federal official, The New York Times discloses: The CDC did collect all information on breakthrough infections in vaccinees – however, they did not publish the data because they could be interpreted as evidence of the lack of effectiveness of the vaccines. A CDC spokeswoman confirmed this. When, as a result of the massive delta outbreak in Massachusetts in the summer of 2021, it became public that three quarters of those infected were vaccinated, exactly what the agency had feared happened – namely that people regarded the vaccines as powerless against the virus.
At this point, the New York Times article avoids addressing the question of the extent to which the vaccine’s effectiveness should be proven if unpleasant data are simply ignored and one only picks out the numbers that support one’s own narrative. The accusation that people are questioning the effectiveness of the vaccination is a matter of “misinterpretation” is therefore highly dubious.
Scientists are appalled
There is also sharp criticism of the approach of the disease control authority from scientists. Understanding of information policy is limited: Epidemiologist Jessica Malaty Rivera, for example, warned that a detailed analysis promotes public trust and paints a much clearer picture of what is actually going on. “We are at much greater risk of misinterpreting the data with data vacuum than sharing the data with proper science, communication and caveats.”
The CDC is not the only authority using dubious means to preserve the Covid vaccination narrative: Public Health Scotland has also announced that it will no longer publish reports. The previously very detailed breakdowns of data on the number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths by vaccination status had repeatedly raised serious doubts about the point of mass vaccinations.
