Government public health censorship
In yet another dangerous and counterproductive anti-vaccine maneuver by Trump’s health team, it has been reported that the CDC’s Acting Director Jay Bhattacharya has prevented the release of a report that shows that the COVID-19 vaccine “reduced the emergency room visits and hospitalizations for healthy adults by about half.” The reason given for stopping the release of this study was Bhattacharya’s concern about the methodology, although the methodology for this study was exactly the same used by the CDC to measure the effectiveness for other respiratory viruses.
Considering that this report might encourage more adults to receive the COVID-19 vaccine and prevent unnecessary emergency room visits and hospitalizations it is both contrary to good public health and economics. You would think that our federal government would do everything possible to prevent unnecessary severe illness and at the same time save health care dollars. Why would our government want fewer people to prevent serious illness? Why would our government not want to reduce excess emergency room visits and hospitalizations when most of these cases are in adults who are Medicare beneficiaries whose care is paid for by the federal government?
Unfortunately, the answer to these questions is that the current public health leadership including RFK, Jr. and Jay Bhattacharya are not people trained in public health or medicine. They are experts in anti-vaccine ideology.