In Valley Fever the constant barrage of misinformation is astounding. You can’t be reinfected…until you are. It will probably be flu-like symptoms…unless it disseminates. It probably won’t affect you unless you’re in a risk group…until it does. Science proves there is enduring, lifelong immunity to Valley Fever…unless a reactivation takes place, sometimes even decades after the initial infection.
Unfortunately, sometimes the people who act on behalf of our public health are seen as shining examples of human perfection. Science is the absolute truth, these people speak on behalf of science, and therefore these people can never be wrong.
The problem with this logic is that science is a method of finding the truth that is interpreted and communicated by people. It is only as trustworthy as the people describing it.
Recent CDC guidelines now give COVID-19 recipients the opportunity to take their vaccine doses up to six weeks apart. The U.K. is going a step further, extending that to up to 12 weeks between doses.
These delays go against the recommended 21-28 day window for the second dose, depending on the specific manufacturers, but it could certainly help distribute more doses of the vaccine to more people overall. What could go wrong?
Ask the vaccine manufacturers. Pfizer and Biontech said:
“Pfizer and BioNTech’s Phase 3 study for the COVID-19 vaccine was designed to evaluate the vaccine’s safety and efficacy following a 2-dose schedule, separated by 21 days. The safety and efficacy of the vaccine has not been evaluated on different dosing schedules as the majority of trial participants received the second dose within the window specified in the study design,”
In other words, there no data to suggest the CDC’s changes are backed by any science whatsoever for that vaccine. They have chosen to trade proven effectiveness against a pandemic for completely unknown results.
The AstraZeneca Oxford vaccine, available in the UK but not in the USA at the time of this policy change, might have “preliminary evidence” that this dosing schedule might work.
If something might be useful (or not) in one vaccine, why use the same dosing schedule in all other vaccines? It’s like saying jets and cars both have engines, so they can use the same gasoline. Would that be a safe decision?
When you read the CDC decision, the public declaration gives the decision an illusion of safety. If you ask the people who actually made the vaccines, they show public policy ignores the testing that proved the vaccines to work. Known protection is being discarded in favor of an experiment to get the doses to more people.
The goal should be to use science and report it truthfully. If government agencies want to stop using vaccines in the way they were proven to work, why bother with vaccine testing at all? They could simply admit they want to conduct massive public health experiments.
One could only speculate on why this is being done. Perhaps delayed dose administration is a bureaucrat’s pet project, and he wanted public policy to put his idea to the test? Perhaps the political goal of claiming more vaccine doses were administered is seen as more important than actually using the vaccine in a way that was proven to fight the pandemic? Perhaps a public health bureaucrat has a financial interest in a particular vaccine candidate and used a schedule that would make his favored vaccine look like it was the most effective?
Add as much speculation as you want. The only thing that remains clear is that the science of vaccine testing and efficacy is being thrown out the window.
Is any other science being ignored? The next time your friends read a web site that minimizes the importance of Valley Fever and then say you are exaggerating the seriousness of your Valley Fever case, send them the URL to the page you are reading now: https://www.valleyfeversurvivor.com/valley-fever-misinformation-matches-covid-19-vaccine-public-health-info
Our public health authorities have a long way to go before they can regain our trust.
Source links:
For more on Valley Fever misconceptions see our page of Valley Fever misconceptions and the medical citations and more information written in Valley Fever Epidemic
For more on the COVID-19 policy links cited in this article:
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/info-by-product/clinical-considerations.html
Britain takes a gamble with Covid-19 vaccines, upping the stakes for the rest of us