Johns Hopkins professor tears up CDC over ‘absurdly restrictive’ guidelines for vaccinees: agency ‘paralyzed with fear’



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Dr Marty Makary is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the Bloomberg School of Public Health, so he knows a thing or two about the coronavirus.

And he’s not too impressed with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest recommendation for Americans getting vaccinated. He expressed his contempt for the agency’s latest “absurdly restrictive” guidelines in a Wednesday editorial for the Wall Street Journal, “Covid Prescription: Get the Vaccine, Wait a Month, Return to Normal,” in which he noted that although the CDC claims to “follow the science”, the truth is that “his advice suggests he is still crippled with fear.”

What did he say?

Following CDC announcement that it is now safe for fully vaccinated people to mix indoors a few other people without masks or social distancing – a move CNN describes as the agency “giving people limited freedoms” – but not traveling, Makary said was just another example of CDC delay or error regarding COVID-19. Which fits a pattern, the doctor said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lost a lot of credibility during the Covid-19 pandemic by being late or in error on tests, masks, vaccine allocation and the reopening of schools. True to that pattern, this week – three months after the vaccine rolled out – the CDC finally began telling people vaccinated that they could have normal interactions with other people vaccinated – but only under very limited circumstances. . Given the vaccine’s impressive effectiveness, this should have been immediately evident by applying scientific inference and common sense.

Parts of the new guidelines are absurdly restrictive. For example, the CDC has not withdrawn its advice to avoid air travel after vaccination. A year of prevaccine experience has shown that planes are not a source of spread. A study conducted for the Department of Defense found that commercial aircraft have HEPA filtration and airflow that exceed standards for a hospital operating room.

Makary added that instead of fearing to encourage a return to normalcy, the agency should look at available data, including that vaccination reduces transmission from 89% to 94% and almost completely prevents hospitalization and death. , according to an Israeli study.

Total immunity begins around the four week mark after first dose“He added, making the vaccinated patient” essentially bulletproof “. Combine that with wearing a mask indoors “for a few more weeks or months”, and there is “little that a vaccinated person should be discouraged from doing.”

Instead, Makary said, the CDC wasted time and testing and is “ridiculously cautious” about the virus while ignoring the dangers that come with the isolation imposed on the American people:

On a positive note, the CDC said fully vaccinated people who are asymptomatic do not need to be tested. But that obvious recommendation should have come two months ago, before wasting so much testing on people who have high levels of circulating antibodies from vaccination.

In its guidelines, the CDC says the risks of infection in those vaccinated “cannot be completely eliminated.” Certainly, we do not have conclusive data guaranteeing that vaccination reduces the risk to zero. We never will. We operate in the area of ​​medical discretion based on the best available data, as practicing physicians have always done. The CDC highlights the runaway success of vaccines, but is ridiculously cautious about its implications. Public health officials focus myopic on risk of transmission while ignoring wider health crisis stemming from isolation The CDC recognizes the “potential” risks of isolation, but does not go into details.

It is time to free the vaccinated people to restore their relationships and rebuild their lives.

Being too careful about the virus has been the hallmark of “authorities”, as hospitals have prevented family members from being with loved ones as they suffered and died, Makary said, calling the separation of the two. families of “excessive and cruel, motivated by close thinking, which focused only on reducing the risk of viral transmission, without considering the damage to the quality of human life.”

The doctor urged the CDC not to repeat its mistakes. Instead of exaggerating the threat to public health crushing the human mind, he said, it’s time to use “common sense” and tell Americans to “get back to normal” for a month. after receiving their first injection.



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