The misinformation from the CDC keep on coming

I could spend all day, every day, dissecting the garbage that gets published by the CDC. This paper was a doozy. Fortunately, I get by with a little help from my friends.

Sometimes, the crap coming out of the CDC is too egregious to ignore and litigation is required to fix it.

This is one such case. And credit goes to Del Bigtree, ICAN, and Aaron Siri for both doing the analysis and threatening legal action if they don’t withdraw the paper. This is what I meant in the headline about getting by “with a little help from my friends.”

The paper in question can be found on the CDC website: Laboratory-Confirmed COVID-19 Among Adults Hospitalized with COVID-19–Like Illness with Infection-Induced or mRNA Vaccine-Induced SARS-CoV-2 Immunity — Nine States, January–September 2021

The claim: you are 5.49X more likely to be infected if you are unvaccinated but had a previous COVID infection compared to a vaccinated person.

This claim is preposterous.

It is well established in many papers that previous infection is way way better than vaccination. Also, the previously infected don’t spread the virus, unlike the vaccinated. So natural infection is also preferred to vaccination.

This paper is contrived to mislead the public into believing vaccination provides better protection than natural infection. It doesn’t.

You always have to be suspicious when there are only 9 states. Were they cherry picked to give the results that they want? Nah, only a conspiracy theorist would make that kind of assertion!

Have you ever seen the CDC publish a paper that was counter-narrative? It does happen (rarely).

You may be surprised that this does in fact happen! However, it is rare and the press never seems to notice it. Here’s a rare example that you can read before they notice their mistake and remove it (excerpted from my earlier article “Do masks work?”).

Clinical trials consistently find that masks don't protect people from respiratory viruses. Here is what a multi-year study on masks versus viruses said (it is published on the CDC website):

"We did not find evidence that surgical-type face masks are effective in reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza transmission, either when worn by infected persons (source control) or by persons in the general community to reduce their susceptibility."

I bet you weren’t aware of that paper. It is well concealed.

The full analysis of the CDC paper comparing recovered immunity vs. vaccine immunity

Here’s the full analysis for your reading pleasure.

It makes you wonder if there is a book available at the CDC employee bookstore, only for CDC employees, entitled “50 ways to skew a study to achieve the results management wants.”