Why are the experts who say you can’t extrapolate aducanumab to all’s Alzheimer’s patients not saying you can’t extrapolate Paxlovid to all vaccinated people? Why are those who say accelerated approval is abused not saying that EUA authority is abused when you move to children, who face thousandfold less times the risk?
Trust in public health is gone not despite the actions of public health, but because of them. When a star dies, it may shower pieces across the galaxy, and if public health implodes, Americans will seek out snake-oil salesman and charlatans, and we will have only ourselves to blame.
There are downsides to more doses of the old, ancestral mRNA, such as original antigenic sin, which may hurt people when the Omicron on novel mRNA sequence booster comes out. Such people may keep mounting strong immune response to original spike, and not the modification.
In short, the White House is not your doctor, yet they have decided they will act as such. This is a dangerous precedent. The American people will soon be participating in an uncontrolled clinical trial of 4th and 5th doses, possibly with coercive mandates. Not having an advisory committee is a threat to public health. This decision does not bode well.
Someone may argue that society at large— not necessarily the people taking the 4th dose— is still facing an emergency, but that argument is specious. There is no evidence that giving a young healthy person a 4th dose benefits larger pandemic dynamics, and saves an older person. Doctors need to stop making up just-so-stories in their minds to justify coercive mandates on the young, healthy, and those with natural immunity.
Covid-19 cases will eventually rise. I don’t know when, but we are extremely vulnerable to an ill-formed and schizophrenic response. As we near midterm elections, politicians will be more volatile, and seek to control news that is seen as a threat to political fortunes. That’s the territory for bad decision making.
Yet, throughout this pandemic, notice how many global health scholars were totally silent on lockdowns. How many global health researchers said nothing as India sacrificed the future of a generation with school closures? How many US based disparity researchers or early childhood advocates were silent on school closure? I believe most were quiet!
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