OPINION:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has just adjusted its recommended dosage schedule for the coronavirus vaccines — in much the same way the agency just adjusted its definitions of “vaccine” and “vaccinations” — in much the same way its bureaucrats have adjusted COVID-19 advisements from this to that, and that to this, for pretty much the entire time of the pandemic.
In other words: The CDC is a mess. A big ball of confusing, conflicting, politicized bureaucracy.
Once upon a time, conservatives called for the dismantling of the federal Education Department. Perhaps it’s time to consider the same fate for the federal health agency.
Here’s the latest: The CDC, which — not to understate — has kinda downplayed adverse health impacts from the vaccines, is now saying that hey, maybe, potentially, perhaps there should be an increased time between initial shot and booster, or boosters, as the case may be, so as to lower the risk of heart inflammation. You know, that lil’l ol’ myocarditis thang that struck some vaccine takers, particularly, the youthful male vaccine takers?
The pro-vaccine, pro-government, pro-do-as-you’re-told-and-don’t-question-authority movement came out strong to defend against accusations the shots brought about the condition.
“Fact Check,” Reuters wrote in November 2021. “There is no evidence currently that COVID-19 vaccines are linked to an increase in sportspeople collapsing or dying due to heart issues such as myocarditis.”
Interestingly enough, that same day, U.S. News & Report wrote a piece with this headline: “COVID May Trigger Heart Condition in Young Athletes.”
Whom to believe?
It’s a puzzler, all right-ee.
The Democrats would say to follow the science. So a check of the CDC’s website in November 2021, about myocarditis, reveals this: We’re monitoring. “CDC and its partners are actively monitoring,” the website reported. And said monitoring led to the CDC to find that yes, indeed, “cases of myocarditis reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) have occurred,” “especially in male adolescents and young adults.”
But most patients recover.
Most patients resume “normal activities after their symptoms improve,” the CDC wrote.
And therefore, most everybody ages 5 and older should still “get vaccinated,” the CDC found.
Okey-doke. Following the science apparently means doing whatever the select scientific bureaucrats say, regardless of what others might say, regardless of what individual preference might suggest.
Follow the science until the new science comes along to tell you otherwise.
Well, that’s the problem with the CDC. Every day is a new science day.
“CDC weighs increasing time between vaccine doses to lower risk of heart inflammation,” Fox News wrote just this week.
Today’s science is revealing that if vaccines are given eight weeks apart, instead of whatever the previous time frame was — it’s tough to keep track — then there are lowered risks for myocarditis. At least, for immunocompromised people. At least, for the Pfizer shot, administered to those age 12 and up. Oh, and at least for those who receive the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, who are ages 18 and up.
Isn’t that like admitting the citizens have indeed played the role of guinea pig for this experiment called mRNA vaccines?
But then again, remember: The vaccines aren’t really vaccines any longer, either. Not in the traditional sense of the word, that is.
In mid-2021, the agency quietly changed the definition for “vaccination” from “the act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease,” to one that switches out “immunity” for “protection.” At the same time, the agency changed the definition of “vaccine” from “a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease” to “a preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.”
Why?
Why the watering of wordage?
“Slight changes in wording over time,” a CDC wonk told McClatchy News, “haven’t impacted the overall definition.”
Umm, actually — they do. Words matter. They have meaning. So when the CDC goes all Ministry of Truth, as Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky termed it, in the dead of night on the definitions of vaccine, vaccinations and the like at a time when the efficacy of coronavirus shots have fallen far short of the original promise, and at a time when the politics of COVID-19 are still raging and pitting personal choice against government mandates, it’s cause for curiosity, at the least.
But such is the entire CDC and its running of coronavirus policy.
Enough double-speak. Enough triple talk. Enough duck and dodge and deception on simple truths. If the CDC can’t serve as a sound, scientific adviser for health, then the CDC, at least at the federal level, has no role to play and therefore, no reason for being. Abolishing the CDC may seem gasp-worthy to some. But there are plenty others who could offer medical advice that isn’t quite so spastic — or wrong. Who? Private doctors counseling individual patients, leading to citizens determining their own course of medical actions — that’s who.
America is a country of individualism and individual rights for a reason.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
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