Pulling back the curtain at the FDA and CDC
The recent VRBPAC and ACIP meetings revealed that the vaccine approval process is all smoke and mirrors
In 2015, I read a vaccine safety study for the first time. I was in a Ph.D. program and I was trying to learn more about autism (my then-girlfriend’s son had recently been diagnosed). When one is in a Ph.D. program the rule is that one must read original source documents (not secondary accounts of the data). So I started downloading and printing various studies on possible risk factors in connection with a wide range of toxicants including vaccines.
I was not sure if I would be able to read them. I had just been through a rigorous master of public policy program with a heavy focus on econometrics. Econometrics, if done correctly, is an art form. One preferably starts with a large data set that includes a wide range of variables. This dataset is then run through statistical software (such as Stata or SPSS) that produces an output table that shows the strength of the association between the variables, a 95% confidence interval, an estimate of variance and standard deviation, as well as a calculation as to the likelihood that the association might be false. The math behind the calculations (if one had to do it all by hand) is arduous. Strong command of calculus helps enormously in understanding the process.
I assumed epidemiological (and other) studies of toxicants including vaccines would be at least that sophisticated and possibly even more complex. But that’s not the case at all. If you have even 1 semester of college-level statistics, you can understand vaccine safety studies. If you have even the slightest bit of curiosity or capacity for critical thinking, you can likely spot some of the flaws in these studies as well.
The risk-benefit analyses from the FDA and CDC in connection with the vaccine approval process are even worse. Their work is so bad it’s cartoonish — as evidenced by the fact that they put a cartoon picture of the SARS-CoV-2 virus on the first and last slide of every presentation at the recent CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) meeting. These people are not doing calculus, nor econometrics, nor science. Instead they are making up numbers whole cloth and then using a bit of multiplication and division to make them sound more impressive than they are.
I watched the ACIP meeting in stunned silence (I put my name in the lottery to testify but I was not one of the 10 people chosen). I thought to myself, “There is no wizard behind the curtain, just these basic, pathetic, bureaucrats.” And then it got worse, of course, because the “esteemed” (read: captured) members of the ACIP one by one offered hosannas to the CDC presenters for their slap-dash paint-by-numbers conclusions.
In the Wizard of Oz, the little dog Toto pulls back the curtain and reveals that the Wizard is just a sad pathetic man projecting images upon a screen. The man yells out, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” Today the pharmaceutical industry has a veritable army of shock troops and Stasi censors to force people to look away from the sad pathetic bureaucrats who are spinning lies about the safety of coronavirus vaccines.
But it’s too late. The recent VRBPAC and ACIP meetings pulled back and the curtain and revealed that holy sh*t, these people are *not* smart.
So my question is, “what would a proper multivariate analysis of vaccine safety look like?” But even that is the wrong question because the applications for Emergency Use Authorization for coronavirus vaccines would be dead on arrival because they show no clinically significant health benefits. And the larger vaccine “safety” trials would also be dead on arrival because they do not have a proper unvaccinated control group. The reason that they do not do proper multivariate analysis is because the results would show little to no benefit and significant harms and the entire U.S. vaccine program would collapse. Fauci, Collins, and others would soon be marched off to jail.
The regulatory process for vaccines in the U.S. involves ideology, a belief system, and a cosplay performance of things that kinda sorta sound like science. But this is simulacrum, a toxic mimic of actual scientific methods. The fact that the Biden administration, the Democratic Party, large employers, state and local health officials, school districts, the mainstream media, pharmaceutical companies, the FDA, NIH, and CDC are trying to force the entire society to march off a cliff when there is no proper data behind their recommendations is insanity. The fact that they have the audacity to beat their chests and yell, “Because Science!” every chance they get, even though their version of science is cartoon characters and 3rd grade math, is sickening and appalling.
With a BS in engineering, I could see thru the BS. - I am used to reading Covid scientific papers now, and what was used for approval in that committee was utter trash.
Thank you. Clear, concise, informative, beautifully presented. Thank you!