Of course, being the NY Times, the writers have soft shoed their criticism, have mitigated it, have gone easy. Now, just image if they were writing this about Donald Trump: how harsh would they be? They sure wouldn’t be writing “he gets ahead of the science”, it would be “Trump is going against the science, putting Americans in danger” or something
Biden Promised to Follow the Science. But Sometimes, He Gets Ahead of the Experts.
As he announced on Friday that booster shots would be available to some Americans, President Biden made a prediction: His administration was likely to soon provide third doses of the vaccine “across the board†to anyone who wanted one.
“In the near term, we’re probably going to open this up,†he told reporters in remarks from the State Dining Room at the White House.
But that assessment — a politically popular one in a country where most people vaccinated against the coronavirus say they are eager for a booster — was the latest example of how Mr. Biden and some of his team have been ahead of the nation’s top public health scientists, who have emphatically said in recent days that there is simply not enough evidence to suggest that boosters are necessary for the entire American population.
Yeah, they’d be ripping Trump and his people for playing scientists.
In fact, two panels of scientists — one for the Food and Drug Administration and the other for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — voted in recent days against recommending boosters for everyone after fierce public debates streamed online.
The president’s Friday remarks were the second time in two months that he had suggested boosters would be available to everyone. And they were issued on the same day that Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the C.D.C. director and one of the president’s political appointees, came under fire for allowing boosters for a broader group of people than her agency’s own immunization panel recommended.
Taken together, the announcements by Mr. Biden and Dr. Walensky did not sit well with all of the scientists who advise them, raising questions about the president’s pledge to always “follow the science†as he fought the pandemic. While some of them credited the C.D.C. director for charting a course through uncertain waters, others warned that politics had intruded on scientific decisions — something that Mr. Biden had promised to avoid after the blatant pressures seen during the Trump administration.
Oh, Biden isn’t really doing the pressure thing, he’s just ignoring the the scientists and medical professionals
White House officials insist that the president is doing just that, and they dismiss criticism that his comments about the additional doses amount to undue pressure on the government’s public health experts. They say that the discussion about boosters was initiated by the government’s top doctors and that he made it clear from the beginning that any decision by the administration would be subject to independent review and approval.
Who? They didn’t really name them.
On Thursday, the panel voted to recommend boosters for older adults and those with underlying health issues. But it advised against allowing frontline workers like teachers and nurses who have already been vaccinated to get a booster shot.
In a decision announced early Friday morning, Dr. Walensky rejected that last recommendation and said that the C.D.C. would allow the frontline workers to receive boosters. In a briefing for reporters later on Friday, she defended the move, noting that the panel was sharply divided on the issue.
That’s a political decision. Why teachers? Those in retail interact with the public way more than teachers, who are typically around the same students every day. I received the email from the NC Health Dept last night about the booster, but, I am not eligible. Now, again, imagine this happening under Trump. The NY Times would sound more like Tucker Carlson….actually, they’d be a hell of a lot more critical. And the Times might have mentioned people resigning
(Fox News) Last month, for those of you keeping track, the Biden administration announced a plan to give additional shots of COVID vaccine — so-called boosters — to millions of Americans. Didn’t see that coming. But the administration never explained why it was necessary or scientifically justifiable. They never bothered. Instead, with characteristic aggression, they simply decreed it was going to happen. The new shots would go out, they informed us, no later than this week, the week of September 20, which is right now. That was the deadline.
The weird thing is, it turned out, no one had told the scientists about this. Two leading vaccine experts at the FDA promptly resigned. Several more announced they were thinking of quitting. Then Biden’s “COVID czar,” a former Facebook board member with no medical background called Jeff Zients, assured the country “no problem, none of this is cause for alarm.” People resigning in protest, no big deal.
The decision to give extra COVID shots, Zeints said, was “made by and announced by the nation’s leading public health officials.”
Really? Which leading public health officials exactly? Well, Zients didn’t tell us. It’s clear something was going on here. Then last week, the entire lie unraveled completely. A panel of the FDA’s vaccine experts — actual “leading public health officials” — blew up the whole idea in a single afternoon. By a vote of 16 to 2 – not close at all — they emphatically rejected Biden’s plan for more shots. For a moment, this seemed like a rare win for science, and for public safety. That decision said a former FDA official, quote, “put the FDA back in the driver’s seat” and “maintained the FDA’s scientific independence” from politicians.
But just for a minute. Because in Joe Biden’s America, there is no independence from politicians. Shortly after midnight on Thursday, the college professor who Biden appointed to run the CDC, Rochelle Wolensky, simply overruled the FDA panel. She didn’t cite any scientific basis for her overruling actual scientists. She just did it. And she did it because she can do it, because she’s in power and you’re not.
Look, I’m not against a booster shot, if it’s necessary. Is it necessary? Is that what the science actually says? Or, is that what the politicians say? They’ve tried it in Israel, and, so far, it hasn’t worked too well, and they’re even thinking of a 2nd booster shot. If the science would say that it increased in the efficiency of the vaccine, I’m 100% ready to get it. There are several shots, such as for smallpox, where kids get 4-5 shots to make it almost 100% effective. Then they never need them again. We just don’t have the science. We do have politics.
Our distinguished host erred:
Contact tracing doesn’t involve people in passing, but those with whom you’ve been in contact for more than fifteen minutes. Yeah, as an auto sales guy, you’re (probably) in contact with potential customers for more than fifteen minutes at a time, but most retail personnel, while they come in contact with more people, have their contacts limited to shorter duration.
Naturally, the government wants teachers eligible for the boosters because they are in contact with students for longer periods of time, and many of those students are not vaccinated, and those students then go home to families which may of may not be vaccinated. If we assume that the vaccine reduces the probabilities of contracting the virus in the first place, and that booster shots will keep those probabilities low for an extended period of time, it makes sense to offer the boosters to teachers, especially those teaching grades too young to have any of the students vaccinated.
If the boosters are actually effective, then people ought to get them. I’m very much pro-vaccine; I am simply opposed to making vaccination mandatory.
There isn’t much evidence to suggest that the vaccines reduce the risk of contracting the virus. They claim it reduces the symptoms when you do contract it, but vaccinated people seem to have the same or greater viral loading as anyone else, and are just as able to transmit it to someone else. In fact, if it does reduce symptoms, it may mean that they are more likely to transmit it, because they will be more likely to be asympotmatic and not behave as if they are infectious. That isn’t the same as not having it and not spreading it; it just mimics that.
Add to that that since the vaccines are non-sterilizing, i.e., leaky, that the vaccinated are more likely to generate the different variants. The CDC has already said they can’t disprove that.
Add to that the known adverse reactions to the vaccine triggering strokes, blood clots, neurological disorders at much higher rates than most normal vaccines.
Bottom line, the vaccines do nothing to prevent or slow the spread of the virus. They are basically an expensive treatment for symptoms to make you feel better when you have the virus. That’s all. It’s like taking ibuprofen or decongestants when you have the flu. You still have the flu, you stioll spread the flu, and it takes just as long to get over the flu, but you just don’t feel quite as miserable while you have it.
Add to that that the vaccines may trigger immune responses that are amplified the next wave or variant of the virus, and you may actually be worse off getting the vaccine. Much worse.
These are not you normal vaccines, and people who delude themselves into believing that they are, and thus equating people sceptical of the COVID vaccines with your typical anti-vaxx nutters and their resistance to typical childhood vaccinations, are way off base.
Good comment.
I’m old enough to remember when vaccinations actually stopped people from getting and spreading the disease. Ahh, the good old days. Now that the demofascists have seized power in the “quiet coup” definitions for everything can and sometimes do change daily. Keeps us off balance for the next shitload of lies they want to propagandize. They really are a tricky bunch of liars, aren’t they?