CDC is a Vaccine Sales & Marketing Team
It's clear their priority is vaccine promotion instead of science
OOPS! I posted the wrong link on Twitter. If you’re looking for my October 2023 article on this topic, see the link below:
CDC Shares Updated Marketing Plans
I originally wrote a Twitter thread about this last night, but I expanded it into a Substack article that’s got a little more detail (and is a little less ragey). I was pretty floored when I found out about their plans yesterday, and vented my frustration quickly on Twitter, and now have had a chance to fully organize my thoughts as a warning about what…
An unfortunate truth that I’ve come to accept during Covid is that while I previously thought of the CDC as group of scientists who investigate and respond to disease outbreaks, much of what they do seems to be in the business of marketing and public relations efforts to facilitate vaccine sales. They may have convinced themselves and some others that their intentions are purely benevolent, to help prevent disease, but their actions are that of an organization who repeatedly puts spin above science.
Pediatric Death Investigations
The earliest data we had about Covid indicated that children were at low risk from severe disease. It was the biggest blessing to me and kept me from ever worrying about my pre-teen daughter getting sick with Covid. When the first few pediatric deaths started being reported in the US, I thought the CDC would investigate child deaths in detail to determine what unusual circumstances lead to the child’s death. I compiled all the data I could on pediatric deaths in Georgia as they were reported. In 2020, pediatric Covid deaths in Georgia included a drowning, a severe car crash, an infant with “serious medical conditions,” and a child with a number of complex medical issues. I expected the CDC to look into these and other pediatric deaths in the US to understand what, if any, role Covid played in their death.
While older adults faced the highest risks, we owed it to children to do everything possible to understand how Covid affected children and how to keep them healthy and safe. For that reason, it seemed obvious to me that investigating rare pediatric deaths would be an important role for the CDC, to inform parents and pediatricians about any known risk factors and provide guidance for caring for sick children. To my surprise (at the time), those investigations never happened. The CDC was never interested in detailed investigations of pediatric deaths to determine the actual underlying cause of death versus contributing factors or incidental findings.
Lack of Data on Infants & Covid
In the Omicron era, we’ve seen higher Covid hospitalizations among infants, and it would be nice if CDC would provide some details about infants who were being hospitalized with Covid, helping us to understand what infants were at higher risk and why. Internal CDC emails obtained by the Epoch Times via a FOIA request revealed some interesting discussion about this issue. In June 2022, a researcher with the National Institute of Health (NIH) reached out to the CDC to ask if they had any data on Covid infections in infants <6 months of age. She asked some excellent questions about who was most at risk, comorbidities, source of infections, etc.
Dr. Fleming-Dutra of the CDC replied back the next day, letting the NIH researcher know that she had collected some data for this age group, but “not yet systematically” because their current vaccine push was for children 6 months and older. She added that “the next pediatric considerations will be around infants <6 months.”
And look what Moderna is working on now — vaccines for infants 3-5 months of age! I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the CDC specifically called out the high rate of hospitalizations for babies under 6 months at a recent VRBPAC. They are positioning themselves to promote a vaccine for younger infants next.
Misleading Data on Children & Covid
For more examples of CDC data coming out just in time to support the latest round of vaccination approvals. An MMWR was released June 4, 2021, along with an emotional plea about “troubling data” from Dr. Walensky, just after the vaccine was approved for 12-15 year olds. I wrote a thread on it at the time, because it was a very coordinated and manipulative messaging.
They tried a similar campaign in the Fall 2021, two weeks before they authorized the vaccine for children ages 5-11, saying that hospitalization rates for children ages 5-11 were the highest ever. But hospitalizations had actually peaked a month prior for this age group (and other age groups), as a result of the Delta wave in August-September 2021. And hospitalization rates for children ages 0-4 were actually higher than ages 5-11, but they didn’t have a vaccine for that age group yet, so the younger kids weren’t part of their messaging at the time.
Covid as a Leading Cause of Death in Children
When it was time to authorize vaccines for ages 6 months to 5 years, the CDC put marketing above science once again, by relying on a (flawed) pre-print from the UK about Covid being a leading cause of death in children in the US. This incorrect data was repeatedly presented in slides by the CDC during both the VRBPAC and ACIP meetings. This age group is at generally low risk for severe Covid. But like magic, CDC found a study (by a team they’ve partnered with before) that they could use to show Covid was a top 5 leading cause of death in that age group (it was not). More on the final version of that study here.
The CDC is of course capable of querying their own database to determine this ranking, and in fact did that when requesting approval for the vaccine for ages 5-11 (it showed Covid tied for 9th, even when comparing Covid multiple cause deaths to other underlying causes of death).
But initial efficacy data on the vaccine in the youngest ages (under 5) wasn’t great, and I think CDC knew the this age group would require more effort to get full buy-in with the vaccine advisory boards and the public. So they found a study that would help them sell the idea that Covid was a big risk for this age group. It didn’t matter to them that the data was exaggerated. They knew (as you can see in the footnote) that this ranking was based on cumulative deaths (from over 2 years) with Covid, but it compared to other underlying causes of death from a single year.
When I exposed the flaws in this study and the CDC’s use of it, the CDC never replied to me, or made any kind of statement acknowledging the errors. CDC Director Walensky even cited the flawed “top 5” claim in a White House Covid Briefing after the flaws were identified. When the study authors contacted the CDC with their revised pre-print, the CDC apologized to the study authors for the negative attention. The negative publicity mattered more to them than the fact that the data was incorrect. The pre-print had served its purpose, and the updated data wasn’t of any interest to them anymore. I emailed the CDC repeatedly to get them to update the ACIP web site where the “top 5” claim remained. After almost three full months, they finally made a change to the web site and noted the revised data.
Covid Hospitalizations & Flu
As I discussed in a previous article, the CDC also promoted a misleading study comparing flu and Covid hospitalizations and further misrepresented the findings to make flu seem worse than Covid. And now in the most recent flu season, they found themselves disappointed that people aren’t taking flu more seriously and getting kids vaccinated for influenza. According to the latest death certificate data from the CDC, more children died this winter with influenza listed on their death certificate (129) than Covid (82).
One of the major issues with CDC hospitalization data in this study, and in most other reporting from CDC, is that the numbers include all hospitalizations with a positive Covid test, which does not allow experts or the public to see how many hospitalizations are actually the result of Covid versus incidental. They’ve been pressed on this repeatedly by members of the vaccine advisory committees and others, but continue to report misleading and exaggerated hospitalization rates.
Myocarditis Signals
The CDC also put fears about vaccine hesitancy above concerning data about vaccine safety. By April 2021, Israel noticed a myocarditis signal in young men. They contacted other public health leaders around the world with this data, and several articles were written about it at the time. Those who were paying attention to vaccine safety concerns were aware of it. Meanwhile, CDC Director Walensky stated on April 27, 2021 that the CDC saw no myocarditis signal in the US data, even while admitting that the Department of Defense was investigating 14 cases of myocarditis among soldiers. And a review of VAERS data in April by a Military.com journalist found data consistent with what we now know from multiple studies to be true about myocarditis after vaccination — most common in young men, usually after the second dose, and more common with Moderna. Yet the CDC was claiming they saw no signal at all?
“We have not seen a signal and we've actually looked intentionally for the signal in the over 200 million doses we've given.”
— Rochelle Walensky, April 27, 2021
Three weeks later, a CDC press release acknowledged there had been some reports of myocarditis in teen boys and young men, within 4 days after the 2nd dose of mRNA vaccination. But the same announcement still claimed these reports were within background rates. Of course this made no sense, considering it was higher than after J&J vaccination and higher after dose 2 than dose 1. These statements sound like they came from a PR firm instead of a science agency.
As we now know, further studies from many different sources confirmed the myocarditis risk was much higher than the CDC initially indicated. However, CDC still continues to recommend boosters for young men. It wasn’t until February 2022 that CDC quietly adjusted their recommendations to suggest “potentially” spacing out doses for young men. But despite knowing there are higher rates of myocarditis after Moderna vaccination, they never recommended Pfizer over Moderna for young men as many other countries have done. And the CDC continues to spend money on programs designed to increase vaccination rates among college students instead of discouraging mandates in this age group.
In order to hide myocarditis risks, the CDC also routinely obscures the risk-benefit for vaccination in this age group by ignoring age stratification of both Covid and the vaccine. When they do stratify rates by age, they often group 18-49 year olds in the same bucket, when the risks from Covid are much higher for 40-somethings than 18-24 year olds, who are at higher risk of vaccine myocarditis, and yet are often subject to college vaccination mandates.
Natural Infection
Finally, the most recent news out this week is that The Lancet came out with a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies about natural immunity, which showed that the protection against severe disease was high for all variants after infection, and in fact was stronger and more long-lasting than the protection afforded by vaccination. Previously, the CDC and others in public health did their best to downplay the role of natural immunity, and question its effectiveness, touting that the vaccine offered better protection. When the CDC released an MMWR showing natural infection provided better immunity than vaccination during the Delta wave, their conclusion was that vaccines are still better and that we just needed more boosters.
In October 2021, Fauci, Walenksy, and others met with four outside advisors with expertise in vaccines and immunology, to discuss whether the US should recognize natural infection in lieu of one or two vaccine doses. Their advisors were divided on this issue, and the government sided with Peter Hotez and Akiko Iwasaki, who said we should not trust immunity from infection. This was the basis for many vaccine mandates in previously infected people, which had a host of downstream consequences - workers lost their jobs, young people blocked from attending many colleges, kids barred from extracurricular activities, visitors banned from entering the United States…
Summary
Time and time again, the CDC has shown that their efforts are focused around generating data and publishing claims that will support vaccine sales. Their work is done in pursuit of marketing graphics instead of factual information. Their primary goal has just been to produce data and reports that help sell vaccines.
This is most easily seen in their approach to children and young people throughout the pandemic. They have not been curious about determining who is most at risk or why. The CDC has only researched and promoted pediatric Covid data that will help them sell the vaccine advisory committees and the general public on vaccine recommendations. They have downplayed myocarditis risks over and over again, and taken almost no action to reduce the risk to young men. In the absence of a vaccine campaign they need to promote, the CDC seemingly has little interest in researching Covid in children and young people.
And now, we have additional evidence that they’ve been lying about natural immunity so that it wouldn’t disrupt their vaccine campaign or interfere with vaccine mandates imposed by both government and private institutions. This is not an organization who is trying to relay factual information to experts and the public. They are a marketing organization desperate to sell Covid vaccines.
Outstanding review of events. I really hope this receives national attention. Clearly there has been an effort to target children with Covid vaccines, likely because therein you have a secure, permanent market (imho). Grateful for your work, Kelley. It seems now that we will get our most trustworthy health guidelines from Europe,
Scandinavia in particular.