In a CNN appearance the other night, Dr. Jonathan Reiner said that Florida’s Surgeon General was anti-vax because he made a sweeping statewide recommendation against vaccinating most young healthy children. Such ad hominem rhetoric is only used when individuals are incapable of addressing the data and appropriately defending their beliefs. Sadly, like many other physicians holding tribal ideologies on vaccination, Dr. Reiner failed to the see error and bias of his statements made on CNN the other night. Let’s go over the problem with the news doc’s 2 minute long statement.
First, Reiner claimed that according to new data, vaccine effectiveness for kids 5-11 plummeted to 12% but remained protective against hospitalization. The first part is correct (12%), the second part is not (hospitalization). You see, the aforementioned data expressing protection for kids against hospitalization (which can equate to severe disease) has a confidence interval so wide you could park a Boeing airplane in it. Simply put, the vast spanning CI means that data doesn’t support the news doc’s statement on vaccines reducing hospitalization and essentially severe disease for kids. Conversely, it means the opposite. Specifically, that no conclusion can be drawn from the figures. Be that as it may, it’s clear Reiner was only virtue signaling his CNN audience, not providing accurate data.
Next, is an easier statement to debunk. Dr. Reiner claimed that we’ve lost nearly 1,400 children to SARS-CoV-2. Succinctly put, that couldn’t be further from the truth. The accurate figure is halved (865). It’s true any death is sad, but sensationalizing figures is manipulative and only serves as a detriment to trust in public health officials. After all, most people are fed up with politically weaponized science spewed from CDC’s Epidemiological digest MMWR, and FDA’s questionable EUA vaccine approvals. The point is, medical professionals in public health need to start being precise or else all trust will be lost.
Finally, Reiner’s sentiment that vaccines are safe & effective for most healthy children is inaccurate and contradicts his previous statement on 12% effectiveness vs risks of being jabbed. To explain, the data suggests that risk of myocarditis in young males aged 12/16-24 can be as high as 1/3000. Importantly, even when the acute phase of myocarditis resolves, late gadolinium enhancement can occur which could increase the risk of morality to nearly 30% within a 10 year window after diagnosis. That said, such a frequent safety signal coupled with 12% efficacy would make vaccinating all healthy kids less safe compared to risks thus supporting the Florida Surgeon General’s guidance that an individualized approach to vaccination is a necessity.
As you can see, even the medical professionals are politically biased. That historically evidenced by expression of similar ideologies on both sides of legacy media. I don’t think anyone could disagree with the following statement- if those same professionals expressed alternative perspectives on new-stations they frequent, they would no longer be employable. Nonetheless, what you should have learned from this publication is this- there’s an ethics crisis, and a data crisis in medicine, and if you don’t learn to critically appraise the data yourself, you’ll become prey to both right and left manipulation. Maybe it’s better to be a pariah?
LETS CONNECT:
CNN Doctor Says On Live TV That 12% Covid Vaccine Effectiveness Is "Highly Protective" | I Fact Check Dr. Reiner