EDITORIAL: CDC: The vaccinated don’t catch, spread COVID

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made news yesterday. Not surprisingly, her gloomy speculation drowned out her positive revelations.

Appearing on MSNBC, Rochelle Walensky raised alarm bells about governors loosening COVID restrictions as case numbers, hospitalizations and deaths decline throughout most of the country. “I’m going to reflect on the recurring feeling of impending doom,” she said. “We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are and so much reason for hope, so right now I’m scared.”

Dr. Walensky cited potential “hypervariants” of the virus as reason for her concern, in addition to slight upticks nationally in case counts.

But it’s hard not to conclude that Dr. Walensky’s “feeling of impending doom” is intended to generate alarm by using the worst-case scenario to jolt the public into accepting continued virus restrictions even when the numbers don’t justify them.

Just 10 weeks ago, Nevada’s COVID test positivity rate was higher than 20 percent. Today it’s about 4 percent and dropping, an indication that the virus is far less prevalent. Other metrics continue their rapid slide as vaccinations immunize the elderly. At this point, there is no evidence that new strains are more deadly or that inoculations would be ineffective against them.

Lost among Dr. Walensky’s alarmism was her news that the two primary vaccines being used in the United States — Moderna and Pfizer — have performed as advertised. A CDC study shows that, two weeks after the second inoculation, both shots are 90 percent effective at preventing the virus, with or without symptoms. Even one dose provides 80 percent protection. In addition, CDC data “suggests that vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don’t get sick,” Dr. Walensky said, “and that it’s not just in the clinical trials, but it’s also in real-world data.”

This is hugely significant. One justification for the CDC’s hypercaution has been uncertainty over whether those who have received both shots could still spread COVID. The “science” finds this to be unlikely. So why tell vaccinated seniors who have been holed up for a year that they mustn’t travel to see their grandchildren or should continue to wear masks?

The agency’s findings on vaccine effectiveness, coupled with the fact that many people remain shielded thanks to previous infection or innate immunity, confirm what Dr. Marty Makary of Johns Hopkins wrote for The Wall Street Journal in February: That the end of the pandemic may be near and that public health professionals have downplayed positive developments “because people might become complacent and fail to take precautions or might decline the vaccine.”

In that context, Dr. Walenksy’s fear-mongering can be viewed in an entirely different light.