CDC, tell me why we should not conclude that you are hiding data to protect your agency.
At the time, the agency had identified only 10,262 cases across the U.S. where a fully vaccinated person had tested positive for Covid. Most people who got infected after vaccination showed few symptoms, and appeared to be at low risk of infecting others.
But in the months since, the number of vaccine breakthrough cases has grown, as has the risk that they present. And while the CDC has stopped tracking such cases, many states have not. Bloomberg gathered data from 35 states and identified 111,748 vaccine breakthrough cases through the end of July, more than 10 times the CDC’s end-of-April tally.
With more than 164 million Americans vaccinated, breakthrough cases are expected. The number of them should rise as more people are vaccinated, simply because there are more vaccinated people who could get infected. While a similarly small proportion of vaccine breakthroughs was seen in clinical trials of the shots, state health officials said it was important to know how many are happening, how severe they are, and if they’re getting more common.
The CDC said when it announced the change in May that it would continue to collect data on breakthrough cases if the infections resulted in hospitalization or death — a rare occurrence, since vaccines provide significant protection. The decision to stop tracking non-severe cases was made to “help maximize the quality of the data collected on cases of greatest clinical and public health importance,” the agency says on its website.
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Not only is the delta variant more contagious, health officials now believe it more readily causes symptomatic — and contagious — illness in vaccinated people. That meant that unlike with previous variants, vaccinated people are more likely to spread the disease more easily to unvaccinated individuals or those who are vaccinated but vulnerable because of their age or health. It’s a new dynamic that punches a hole in the wall of immunity the U.S. had been building to cordon off and stamp out the virus.
In a statement Friday, the CDC said it continued to follow trends in breakthrough cases using studies it has set up.
“CDC is actively tracking breakthrough cases as part of what are called cohort studies, which often involve tens of thousands of people across the country,” agency spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund said in an email. “We will continue to publish additional results from these cohort studies as they are available.”
I think I know what a cohort study is; I don't think the Mesa County report was a cohort study but regardless, you didn't publish the data. It's not there. I'm stupid, but not that stupid. IT'S. NOT. FUCKING. THERE. And you know what the data shows. YOU DELIBERATELY HID THE NUMBERS for unquantifiable verbiage like "significantly higher."
Severe cases of disease in vaccinated people remain rare. Only 6,587 people in the U.S. have been hospitalized or died with Covid-19 after being fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.
The CDC is not without other tools to track breakthroughs and variants. It gets reports on severe breakthrough cases that result in hospitalization and death. Many states have not followed the CDC’s lead, and still tally breakthrough cases themselves. And the Atlanta-based agency is running several studies in vaccinated people to see how vaccines perform. But it has given up the ability to have near real-time numbers about what is happening on the ground, which time and time again has proven crucial in the fast-moving regional and national waves of infection.
“The more data you have, the better decisions you can make. So why would they knowingly turn away data which historically has been really important to have?” said Michael Kinch, director of the Center for Research Innovation in Business at Washington University in St. Louis. “For an administration that said they’ll be driven by the science, it makes no scientific sense.”
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“Pre-delta, it probably made less sense for the CDC to track breakthrough infections,” said [Louisiana] State Health Officer Joseph Kanter. “Now that it’s clear that a lot of these breakthroughs are delta, it’s more important to track that.”
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“It allows us to see if the vaccine is less effective over time, or if effectiveness is impacted by changes in virus variant,” said [New Jersey] Edward Lifshitz, medical director of the state health department’s Communicable Disease Service.
Other states, however, have followed CDC’s lead and stopped.
South Carolina, Texas and Illinois all no longer track breakthrough infections unless they result in disease severe enough to hospitalize a patient or result in death. The states, on their websites or in response to questions from Bloomberg, said they were following the CDC’s lead.
Nevada has also stopped tracking all but severe breakthrough infections...
“If there was something like delta raging through the communities at the time, if we would’ve seen evidence that Godzilla was coming, I think we would’ve had a different conversation. We would’ve made a strong argument and pushed back on the CDC to require reports of everything.”--Cassius Lockett, director of disease surveillance and control in the Southern Nevada Health Districts
Southern Nevada didn't see Delta--Godzilla--coming in May and neither did CDC. The decision to stop tracking non-severe cases was made to “help maximize the quality of the data collected on cases of greatest clinical and public health importance,” the agency says on its website. This is...I don't know what to say, let me gather my thoughts...I could have believed that that's what Southern Nevada and CDC actually thought—until the secret slide presentation on Provincetown. Now with the Mesa County report today, they again deliberately hid the data behind obfuscatory language like “significally higher.” I cannot fathom why CDC would have had that thought at all, but especially in May. They had the example of India preeminently, of England, Scotland, Israel. They had their own data on Delta, Delta cases were rising from 1.3% of all new cases "in early May” to 9.5% in “early June". Not quite halfway through that period Walensky announced the vaxed no mask policy By June 22 Delta was 82.2%. Walensky did not reverse course until July 27. The judgment is so horrid it rises to at least the level of reasonable suspicion that the breakthrough data collection was stopped to cover up vaccine inefficacy.
Lockett said that identifying all breakthrough cases is harder work, since many people with mild or asymptomatic illness may not get tested.
Oh please. It's harder work for the Southern Nevada district, it's harder for CDC to track breakthroughs in all regions of every state, I'm sure. BUT ONE MEDIA OUTLET DID IT ON ITS OWN.
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Following news of [the Provincetown] breakthrough cases, Senator Edward Markey, a Democrat who represents the state, said the CDC should resume collecting data on all such cases. In a July 22 letter to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, he asked her why the agency had stopped doing so and said that health officials and workers need “robust data and information to guide their decisions.”
...“maybe what we could have understood is that it’s not an all-clear. I think we gave the perception that there was an all-clear, and there wasn’t.”--Rachael Piltch-Loeb, Harvard Chan School of Public Health.
Yeah, you could have, you should have, you're incompetent for not understanding that, and yes, you "gave the perception" that the coast was clear in the sense that WALENSKY SAID THE VAXED DIDN'T HAVE TO MASK! It's not that we're so 'perceptive," THE FUCKING HEAD OF THE CDC SAID THAT!
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“We’re in a war on the front lines and we need to know how delta is moving through populations and what's about to happen. Doing an academic study is valuable, but it’s going to take time to get that intelligence. We cannot wait for certainty to act right now.”-Charity Dean, California state health department assistant director.
Bloomberg, that is an incredible public service you performed. Okay, I'm ready to rule.
Walensky Out!
