Dr. Marty Makary is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the Bloomberg School of Public Health, so he knows a thing or two when it comes to dealing with the coronavirus.
And he is not very impressed with the latest recommendations from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention for Americans who get the vaccine. He made clear his disdain for the agency’s latest “absurdly restrictive” guidelines in an opinion article published on Wednesday for the Wall Street Journal, “Covid Prescription: Get the Vaccine, Wait a Month, Return to Normal”, in which he noted that although the CDC claims to be “following science”, the truth is that “its advice suggests that it is still paralyzed by fear”.
What did he say?
In the wake of the CDC announcement that it is now safe for fully vaccinated people to mix indoors with some other people without masks or social distance – a movement that CNN described as the agency “giving people limited freedoms” – but not to travel, Makary said this is just another example of the CDC being backward or wrong when it comes to COVID -19. Which fits a pattern, said the doctor.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lost a lot of credibility during the Covid-19 pandemic because they were late or wrong in testing, masks, vaccine distribution and school reopening. Staying consistent with this pattern, this week – three months after the vaccine was launched – the CDC has finally begun to tell vaccinated people that they can have normal interactions with other vaccinated people – but only in highly limited circumstances. Given the vaccine’s impressive effectiveness, this should have been made immediately obvious by the application of scientific inference and common sense.
Parts of the new guidelines are absurdly restrictive. For example, the CDC did not withdraw its advice to avoid air travel after vaccination. A year of pre-vaccine experience has shown that airplanes are not a source of spread. A study conducted for the defense department found that commercial airplanes have HEPA filtration and airflow that exceeds the standards of a hospital operating room.
Makary added that instead of running out of fear of encouraging a return to normal, the agency should take a look at the available data, including that vaccination reduces transmission from 89% to 94% and almost entirely prevents hospitalization and death, according to a study of Israel.
Total immunity kicks in at about the four-week mark after first dose, he added, making the vaccinated patient “essentially bulletproof”. Combine this with wearing a mask at home “for a few more weeks or months”, and there will be “little that a vaccinated person should be discouraged from doing”.
Instead, Makary said, the CDC has been wasting time and testing and is being “ridiculously cautious” about the virus, while ignoring the dangers that come from the isolation that has been imposed on the American people:
On a positive note, the CDC said that fully vaccinated people who are asymptomatic do not need to be tested. But that obvious recommendation should have come two months ago, before wasting so many tests on people who have high levels of circulating antibodies because of the vaccination.
In its guidance, the CDC states that the risks of infection in vaccinated persons “cannot be completely eliminated”. It is true that we do not have conclusive data to guarantee that vaccination reduces the risk to zero. We will never do it. We are operating within the scope of medical discretion based on the best available data, as doctors have always done. The CDC highlights the impressive success of vaccines, but is ridiculously cautious about their implications. Public health officials focus myopically on the risk of transmission, ignoring the broader health crisis arising from isolation. The CDC recognizes the “potential” risks of isolation, but does not go into details.
It is time to release vaccinated people to restore their relationships and rebuild their lives.
Being very cautious about the virus has been a hallmark of “authorities” as hospitals prevented family members from being with their loved ones while they suffered and died, said Makary, calling the separation of families “excessive and cruel, motivated by narrow thoughts. that focused exclusively on reducing the risk of viral transmission, regardless of the damage to human quality of life. “
The doctor urged the CDC not to repeat its mistakes. Rather than exaggerating the public health threat that overwhelms the human spirit, he said, it is time to use “common sense” and tell Americans to “go back to normal” a month after they received their first injection.