CDC Still Pushing Myth That COVID Shots Work, Eroding Public Trust Further
- by Marco Cáceres
- Published January 1, 2024
- Opinion
Ever since taking the helm as director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on July 10, 2023, Mandy Cohen, MD, MPH has regularly emphasized that her first and foremost order of business is to re-establish public trust in the CDC. “We have to first make sure that we are building trust with the American people, and I know some of that trust was lost in the last few years. But I’m here to refocus the organization on building that trust,” Dr. Cohen stressed shortly after she arrived at the public health agency.1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 She noted:
Trust is a critical foundation for a healthy society. Trust in institutions, such as government, or media, or business, has been eroding in recent years. This lack of trust has led to polarization, to division.7
Judith Monroe, MD, president and chief executive of the CDC Foundation, agreed with Dr. Cohen on the priority of gaining back the public’s trust. She stated:
Restoring trust probably is the No. 1 challenge right now. Because where’s your platform if folks don’t trust what you say?8
Amazingly, when it comes to the most glaring example of failed messaging by the CDC, which was the federal agency perhaps most responsible for government’s loss of credibility during the pandemic, CDC officials do not appear capable of learning from their mistakes. The CDC continues to peddle misinformation about the effectiveness of the COVID shots in preventing infection with and spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Irrationally, CDC officials continue to insist that COVID shots work and you need to get one to protect other people from getting sick.
CDC Holiday Season Message: Vaccinate to Prevent Spread of COVID (and Influenza and RSV)
In a recent Forbes article titled “Three Years After Covid-19 Vaccine Rollout, CDC Still Gets Messaging Wrong,” Joshua Cohen cites the CDC’s latest campaign to encourage people to get vaccinated for COVID, saying the CDC “asserts the vaccine’s ability to prevent the spread of COVID-19, which is largely inaccurate.”10 He points out:
It’s erroneous to suggest that vaccines are an effective tool to prevent transmission of the coronavirus.10
This was the message the CDC posted on its Facebook page on Dec. 10, 2023:
The only thing we want you to spread this holiday season is love and cheer. Prevent the spread of flu, COVID, and RSV by getting vaccinated.10 11
It is one of more than a dozen “talking points” listed in the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ (HHS) Social Media Toolkit for the “2023 Fall-Winter Updated COVID-19/PanResp Vaccines Push,” aimed at encouraging people to get vaccinated for COVID-19, influenza and RSV (respiratory syncytial virus).12
Putting aside the quirky “love and cheer” part, the message is extremely deceptive at best and plainly false at worst. And, for the most part, Americans know this—which is partly why, as of Dec. 22, 2023, only 18.5 percent of adults in the U.S. had received the latest round of mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid) COVID shots, which some describe as “gene therapies.”13 14
American Public Knows COVID Shots Do Not Prevent Spread of Coronavirus
Most of the public has known since at least the summer of 2021 that the COVID shots do not prevent infection from and transmission of SARS-CoV-2. This scientific fact was confirmed by none other than Dr. Cohen’s predecessor, Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH, and supported by an evergrowing number of “breakthrough cases” of people fully vaccinated for COVID but still being infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus and even being hospitalized and dying. Dr. Walensky’s confirmation simply made it official.15 16 17 18
“At this point, it’s clear from all the infections that the vaccine isn’t living up to early hopes,” writes Faye Flam in an article published by Bloomberg last month. Flam notes there is “little evidence that [the shots] prevent transmission” and that “some experts also argue there’s no evidence that giving young people multiple boosters does anything to lower their odds of infecting grandma or grandpa.”13 She quotes Dan Barouch, MD, PhD, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School:
The initial impression that these vaccines were 95% effective against symptomatic infection and 100% effective against severe disease are no longer accurate.13
So why does Dr. Cohen irrationally insist on continuing with this deception, even after it has long been exposed? Either she is unaware of how well-informed the vast majority of the U.S. public has become about COVID vaccine failures, or she is in denial and remains unaware of the truth herself.
Of course, there is a third possibility, and that is that Dr. Cohen knows the COVID shots do not prevent infection and transmission and understands that the public knows it as well, but she is stubbornly intent on trying to disingenuously sell an outdated myth to jack up COVID vaccination rates. As a Washington Post article published on Nov. 12, 2023 put it…
If she repeats herself enough times, using clear, concise language, she hopes more Americans will embrace her message.9
Regardless, Dr. Cohen is doing a huge disservice to the agency she heads. Instead of making good on her promise to improve the public’s trust in the CDC, it appears she is doing the exact opposite.
“Such problematic messaging may exacerbate the public’s decline in trust in the CDC,” Joshua Cohen writes.10
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