Halfway through a $475 million Biden administration campaign promoting the new bivalent COVID booster, only about 1 of 9 Americans have chosen to get the jab.
The federal government has spend more taxpayer funds purchasing 171 million doses of the booster, which was granted emergency use authorization after a brief Pfizer trial involving eight mice and no humans.
About 68% of American adults received the initial round of the COVID vaccines, but less than 13% have taken the booster, which targets omicron subvariants. A little more than 120 million does of the shot remain unused.
A recent Rasmussen poll found that of the American adults who took a COVID-19 vaccine, 41% said they had suffered at least a minor side effect. A total of 7% said they experienced a major side effect, which would amount to 12 million adults.
Personal pitches by President Biden, Jill Biden Dr. Anthony Fauci and others have been upstaged by CDC Director Rochelle Walensky contracting COVID-19 about one month after getting the booster, which presumably was the shot’s most effective period. After testing negative, she tested positive again, which is a common effect of the Pfizer COVID drug Paxlovid that was experiences also by Biden and Fauci.
HotAir reporter David Strom summed up the approach of many Americans to the booster: “If I believed that the vaccine was truly safe and effective I would get it; I am unconvinced that it is safe, and it is only modestly effective. I suspect that the risks per individual are low but non-zero, but so are COVID’s. And I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that after the vaccine I can still get COVID and the risks associated with it. Why double up two small risks?”
Virus ‘has mutated ahead of our efforts’
At the launch of the booster promotion campaign on Nov. 22, Fauci urged Americans to get the shot “as soon as possible,” and White House COVID Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha insisted “the science” on the safety and effectiveness of the shots is “crystal clear.”
However, a CDC released that day on the new bivalent vaccine was anything but crystal clear, warning that the findings “are subject to at least six limitations.”
The findings that adults 18 to 49 were 43% less likely to be infected than the unvaccinated and those ages 65 and older 22% less likely, the authors said, should be “interpreted with caution because unvaccinated persons might have different behaviors or a fundamentally different risk for acquiring COVID-19 compared with vaccinated persons.”
A new study by the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston published by Nature Medicine found the bivalent booster to be ineffective, concluding it is a poor inducer of neutralizing antibodies against current COVID strains.
UTMB’s Sealy Institute for Vaccine Sciences carried out the study, which is significant, noted epidemiologist Meryl Nass. The institute says in its mission statement it one of its chief aims to improve human health by developing “public policy and education programs to foster vaccine acceptance.”
The institute is a major U.S. government biodefense contractor.
The study found omicron subvariants “have accumulated additional spike mutations that may affect vaccine effectiveness.”
At a roundtable last Wednesday in the nation’s capital led by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Dr. Ryan Cole, a Mayo Clinic-trained pathologist, explained that the SARS-CoV-2 virus “has mutated ahead of our efforts” to bring a targeted vaccine to the market “and it always will.”
“We don’t have a vaccine for HIV 40 years later because it has a spike protein that is always mutating,” he explained.
The Wuhan strain, on which the original COVID mRNA vaccine was based, was long ago “extinct” he said, and the BA.5 and BA.4 omicron variants, on which the new bivalent booster is based, are “almost extinct.”
“We are taking an approach with an infectious agent that is always moving ahead of us,” Cole said.
Acclaimed cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough was among the health scientists calling for the COVID-19 vaccines to be immediately withdrawn.
McCullough said there is no scientific support for the vaccines reducing transmission, explaining they provide no immunity in the nose, where the viral load begins. The only hope for any efficacy is that they would reduce severity of disease, but there is no clinical trial data to support that, he said.
“I think it has to be said, the pathway to preventing any more harm is all the vaccines need to be pulled off the market and withdrawn,” said McCullough. “That needs to happen immediately. All the vaccine mandates should be dropped immediately.”
David Gortler, a former senior adviser on drug safety to the FDA commissioner said the COVID-19 vaccine product labeling needs to be updated to reflect the lack of safety and efficacy.
See Gortler’s remarks:
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