Even the New York Times can’t hide reality about the mRNA jabs forever.
Last week, the Times published an article headlined, “Should You Get Another Covid Booster?”
The article’s subheadline noted “Britain and Canada have authorized another round of booster shots,” implying the United States has somehow been negligent in not doing so.
And the piece was written by Apoorva Mandavilli, among the worst Covid reporters. So I assumed the article would be filled with the usual nonsense, especially since the first person Mandavilli quoted was Dr. Celine Gounder, who has loudly pushed mRNA jabs.
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After Gounder’s husband died of an aortic aneurysm, she lashed out in January at mRNA skeptics (including me) who questioned if the shots might be linked to his death - even though doctors have repeatedly reported cases of post-jab aneurysms.
In her January piece, Gounder even complained Congress’s repeal of the armed forces Covid vaccine mandate “threatens military readiness.” (Nonsense, of course. Frontline soldiers and Marines are young, fit, and healthy, putting them at far higher risk from mRNA-related myocarditis than Covid itself.)
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So I was stunned that Gounder offered the most tepid possible recommendation for further mRNA doses to Mandavilli.
Most people should not have boosters, even once a year, she said. She endorsed regular shots only for “immunocompromised people and people in nursing homes.”
The real tell there is “nursing homes.”
In mentioning them, Gounder was not suggesting that everyone over 65 - or even 85 - should get more shots. Nursing homes are effectively hospices for most residents. About one-third of their residents die each year, a 2018 study found; a 2010 study had even grimmer findings, reporting a median survival of five months after admission.
What Gounder was saying that only the very frail - who likely have little risk or benefit from the shots (or, in reality, any medical intervention) - should still receive them regularly.
In contrast, in October, Gounder offered very different advice, recommending boosters for everyone over age 50 “as soon as possible.”
(Celine Gounder sees the light.)
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Gounder’s rejection of annual boosters is particularly stunning because she and other public health specialists happily promote annual flu jabs despite their demonstrated uselessness. The theory seems to be that flu shots get old folks out of the house, or boost Walgreen’s profits, or something. Anyway they probably don’t do any harm even if they don’t do any good, so why not?
Yet Gounder is no longer applying the same logic to the mRNAs. I do not think that annual boosters for everyone makes sense.
Which implies either Covid is now even less dangerous than the flu (possible but unlikely), or the shots are even more useless (which would imply negative efficacy), or else… they’re actually more dangerous than inactivated virus flu jabs.
Which they are.
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But Gounder was not the only vaccine advocate quoted in the Times piece. Mandavilli also talked to Dr. Paul Offit. No one will ever confuse Offit with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - he is director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
In April 2021, Offit had this to say about the mRNA jabs:
Certainly, no one would have predicted that these mRNA vaccines would have worked as well or been as safe as they are… I don’t think you could have devised a vaccine that appears to be more perfect.
Less than two years later, Offit rejected more doses of those “perfect” vaccines.
For everyone. Even the immunocompromised.
But even more stunning than Offit’s rejection were the words he used:
“Given the lack of data, I don’t think it’s fair to say to people, ‘Inject yourself with a biological agent,’” said Dr. Paul Offit.
(Perfection no more…)
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Vaccine advocates strenuously avoid this kind of language, for obvious reasons.
Inject yourself with a biological agent? Yeah, I’ll pass.
But the failure of the mRNAs is now so obvious that Offit and his fellow vaccine advocates have no choice but to try to ring-fence it if they want to save other jabs.
