The problem is that isn't what they said. It says right here in the link on the article you posted - "As of May 1, 2021, CDC transitioned from monitoring all reported vaccine breakthrough cases to focus on identifying and investigating only hospitalized or fatal cases due to any cause. This shift will help maximize the quality of the data collected on cases of greatest clinical and public health importance."

Reading that, it looks like they were doing gene sequencing of every breakthrough case. The website also says local departments can continue to continue to report all cases. In fact it says that they are encouraging local departments to continue get specimens for breakthrough testing and reporting all cases to the state and up to the national system.

I suspect this was a question of resources.

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So knowing the rate of vaccine breakthrough spread is not something the public should know, and knowing rate of reinfection in unvaccinated is something the public should know...They just don't want the public to know that vaccines aren't as effective at preventing spread as they claimed. They don't want the public to lose confidence, and not get vaccinated.

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This doesn't match with what the article you provided says. This is your interpretation. And frankly that Bloomberg article doesn't really jive with the information on the CDC website. It kinda reads like rabble-rousing. It seems like it worked.

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I thought you might be someone who objectively cares about data and therefore would care about suppression of data. I guess I was wrong. Another CDC goal tender.

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Haha. No, I just don't pretend to have omniscience about why the CDC does what it does. I very sincerely doubt they said "hm, looks like cases are picking up, we better stop counting them." That's the definition of a conspiracy theory, and it suggests that they went beyond negligence to maliciousness. I don't buy it.

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We both know the CDC is refraining from tracking mild breakthrough cases because it will be leveraged politically to undermine the effort to get vaccinated. And getting the non-immunized vaccinated is a good thing.

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I don't know that. You don't know that either. You think that.

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I suspect this was a question of resources.

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It's possible that there is now a shortage of CDC funding and resources to consolidate and report breakthrough data reported to CDC, something they say is "rare". Despite the trillions we are pandemic pumping. But common sense would suggest they would simply say that, instead of saying it's about focusing on what is of "public health importance". P

Perhaps they are indeed punting to others at local level to report that data. So we go from easily accessible centralized national data to decentralized fragmented data, and CDC says "hey we didn't stop tracking".

We know for certain Fauci was congratulated in private emails for dispelling "myths" about Wahun lab origin and how important that was to public messaging. Is that "nefarious"? We may find out.

The point is the CDC had a transparent report on breakthrough and doesn't anymore. Unless you can point me to where we can see national breakthrough, then it's likely being suppressed.

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I don't know that. You don't know that either. You think that.

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We actually do know there is mainstream concern around vaccine breakthrough infection data undermining public health. Both in the CDC response in needing to prioritize data for "public health importance" when discontinuing the periodic reporting on their website, and in the various media outlets like politifact claiming that the Israel breakthrough data "ignores the dangers of contracting COVID-19 and the protections against severe illness that vaccines provide".

We will have to disagree on this one I guess. I'm sure the MDs on this board are loving the benefit of doubt you are giving the CDC despite over a year of disasterous public messaging.

Yeah there are uncontrolled variables on both sides that need to be adjusted for to provide a relaible avg rate.

Generally speaking, a record of multiple active virus tests after recovery in unvacinated would provide a rate of natural reinfection. (Adjusted for accuracy of antigen test used)

Likewise, recorded vaccination and subsequent antigen pos test for breakthrough.

Surology testing is the best, imo. A blood test that shows only spike antibody then Spike and Nucleocapsid on a subsequent blood test is conclusive evidence of vaccine breakthrough reinfection. They could potentially see declining or flattening levels of N antibody, then an increase could indicate natural reinfection. I'm in a study now with 2 more blood tests to see how the latter might play out.

One of the problems I mentioned PCR studdies like the Qatar airport, was that not everyone knows whether or not they had a prior infection, unlike getting jabbed. That presents a bias in the PCR studies as many naturally immune make it into "vaccinated, no prior infection" groups.

Almost every pre-Delta covid study has become much less relevant post Delta. That's why it's so important to continue to monitor the virus spread rates on CDC website, not discontinue it. The CDC made no mention of data reliability nor resourcing constraints. Their excuse was prioritizing dissemination of info they deemed of most public health importance (ie severe hospitalization/death).

I can understand why. We see all over F16 people saying vaccines are useless based on breakthrough spread rates. Vaccines are very useful in softening the blow of gaining improved natural immunity. That's an honest way of selling the vaccine. But we don't have honest people in charge.

To find the continuing information you either need to ask your local state department, if they're still tracking them (Texas and Florida aren't - is that a conspiracy to hide breakthrough infections too?) or you need to send an email to someone to find out how you can get information from the REDCap database or NNDSS, whatever that is. If you're really interested in this, I think you should try to call or send an email to someone who works at the CDC on NNDSS. It turns out that they publish all kinds of infectious disease information weekly. The other thing you might could do is try to find a researcher who has done a similar kind of paper and send them an email. Maybe one of the people who wrote the recent Provincetown case study would be a good place to start. I've found that if you're polite and ask questions, a lot of researchers are very happy to spend a few minutes talking to you. You might even be able to convince someone to look at the very thing you're asking about.

The interpretation of the events is what I don't agree with. I do agree that it may be useful to have a separate group of current case counts that would differentiate between previously infected, vaccinated, and no history. I suspect that would be really hard to do with the way testing is so diffuse now.

When I read what they wrote here, my thought is that the whole purpose of the vaccine breakthrough surveillance program is not to answer the question you want - vaccine vs recovered. It also doesn't look like it is there to answer the question of - how good are the vaccines, how reliable, how long, whatever. It looks to me like their goal is to monitor and find risks to the public health. As you and everyone on here keep repeating, a breakthrough infection on a vaccine is a low risk. So, they're only now focusing on high risk breakthroughs (those that result in hospitalization). Why? Again, I don't know, but given the fact that they're doing genetic sequencing on these cases I'd guess they're looking for new variant strains that get around the vaccine enough to cause severe disease. You might say that this would "help maximize the quality of data collected on cases of greatest clinical and public health importance."

They might also be utterly incompetent.

I think your explanation is the lowest probability of the three. I won't comment on which of the other two I think is the most likely.

I think you would make a hell of a CDC PR rep.

Fair point on state and fed resources not gathering data with intent to help big pharma with vaccine performance metrics. The purpose of comparing reinfection rates to breakthrough rates is for the millions of people like me who want to know when they should get boosted and what vaccine is best. I consider that "public health importance". Even moreso than the sliver of vaccinated people dying of covid.

I think both sides of political isle have an interest in underreporting breakthrough- the right doesn't want anymore "fear pron" and left doesn't want to create vaccine reluctance. That's not a nefarious conspiracy theory. It's actually quite reasonable and much more evidence/rhetoric exists to back it up than your theory that there is a secret CDC resource constraint they don't want to mention, forcing them to remove the report from their site..precisely when Delta hit.

How hard is it to just continue consolidating all the 46 or so states sending them data? Drop the genome sequencing or any vetting and just put an astrix saying it's the sum of "locally reported reference only data based on xyz etc". I shouldn't have to send out a bunch of emails and create a spreadsheet of state links to know how controlled or uncontrolled the disease is periodically. If that's the case, let's decommission the taxpayers' Center for Disease Control.

The CDC is being "strategic" not "nefarious". A gov admin purposly underreporting nursing home deaths would be something that is a "nefarious conspiracy theory"...and that would NEVER happen. If it did, there would certainly be harsh consequences

The facts don't line up with what you're saying.

They didn't remove any reporting form their site. They stopped doing surveillance of breakthrough cases at the CDC level. They limited their focus to only serious cases.

They didn't do this "precisely when Delta hit". Delta was first detected in the US in March of 2021. The changed their focus on May 1. This is what the US case load looked like on May 1.

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How hard is it to just continue consolidating all the 46 or so states sending them data? Drop the genome sequencing or any vetting and just put an astrix saying it's the sum of "locally reported reference only data based on xyz etc". I shouldn't have to send out a bunch of emails and create a spreadsheet of state links to know how controlled or uncontrolled the disease is periodically. If that's the case, let's decommission the taxpayers' Center for Disease Control.

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I have no idea how hard it is to do. But you're one of 330 million people in the US, and the CDC is consolidating a metric crapton of data for COVID19, doing testing, as well as all the other disease surveillance they do on a normal year. Are they doing a good job? I don't know, I think their messaging sucks and their director has said some really terrible things -- but it's hard to sort the rest of it from people like her or Dr Fauci and all of the other politicians.


The specific information you're asking about in no way has an identity relationship to "how controlled or uncontrolled the disease is." You just have an opinion and you want information to confirm it.

I opened up the surveillance report that ended on April 30. Here is the corresponding author:
Marc Fischer
mfischer@cdc.gov

I am 100% serious that I think you should send him a polite email asking him why they chose the surveillance period, and if he knows why the decision was made to stop monitoring breakthrough cases after April 30. You might also ask him for a time series trend of detected breakthroughs, or a breakdown of the breakthroughs by variant, or even just the raw table of data. It would be really interesting to hear what he says.

There's an unfortunate history in medicine of using drugs that do more harm than good. There's a reason we as a society err on the side of caution when prescribing drugs. The idea of first do no harm along with the ethics of informed consent lead to this same place - drugs begin with the assumption that they do not work. (I think the FDA is probably way too conservative, but that's another topic...)

Just from a pre-test probability perspective very, very, very few drug concepts ever prove out. So even if we forget the above, if someone says hey this in vitro research or this computer model or this theoretical method of action looks promising, good money is on it not working (~95% of the time).

Third - all drugs have side effects. Every single one.

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To me, the decision to use both drugs at that time was pretty easy - they might help and they wouldn't do any harm.

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So given the above, this statement should be corrected to - they probably won't help, and because they're drugs with a long history we know that they will do some harm (but it's a very low amount because they have known safety profiles and they're not very risky as drugs go).

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But those same docs apply a completely different standard to Covid. Many of them seem to have preferred no treatment over treatments that might work.

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Knowing what we know about human coronaviruses and other viral respiratory illnesses, why would we expect any of these things to work?

About the best we can do for any similar illness is tamiflu, which probably decreases symptoms by a couple of days, and might prevent serious disease (but that's contentious) and even then only if you start taking it right away.

So again, pre-test probability. When you see reports that oh these are miracle cures, they cure covid, you take it and boom the disease is gone, it reduces mortality by 50% - these claims don't sound realistic.

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I've seen very few, if any, studies that have examined that combination

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Two things. The in vitro mechanism that talked about zinc required very high amounts of HCQ, and we know now that it was probably unintentionally measuring a separate mechanism versus actual antiviral activity. The other thing is that unless you have some kind of deficiency, you have enough zinc in your body to do what's needed.

The goal posts did shift. The original paper that started the whole thing said HCQ cured people faster, it saved people who had serious disease, so on and so on. It was zinc, then azithromycin, then both, then chloroquine too, then only HCQ, then it is prophylactic, then only early, then it doesn't help severe disease, etc etc etc

HCQ doesn't work as a prophylactic. Given that, it's probably unlikely to work on early disease progression, don't you think? It failed in hospital trials like RECOVERY and the WHO SOLIDARITY trial, and it also failed in mild/moderate trials.

And even further. In trials, HCQ caused adverse events including cardiac problems which is a known side effect of both azithromycin and HCQ.

It doesn't work. There's no conspiracy. And the fact that it doesn't work should be expected. Seriously, we should be pleasantly surprised when drugs work, especially for therapeutics, especially for something like a respiratory virus.

Looks like people are jumping off the fence now: "The seven-day average of newly vaccinated people rose 44 percent in the past two weeks, suggesting more unvaccinated people are getting their shots." PROGRESS

74OA said:

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Looks like people are jumping off the fence now: "The seven-day average of newly vaccinated people rose 44 percent in the past two weeks, suggesting more unvaccinated people are getting their shots." PROGRESS

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In many cases this will be too little too late. It takes a good 4 weeks for decent immunity. I mean it isn't going to hurt but would have been much more helpful 2 months ago.

KidDoc said:

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74OA said:

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Looks like people are jumping off the fence now: "The seven-day average of newly vaccinated people rose 44 percent in the past two weeks, suggesting more unvaccinated people are getting their shots." PROGRESS

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In many cases this will be too little too late. It takes a good 4 weeks for decent immunity. I mean it isn't going to hurt but would have been much more helpful 2 months ago.

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Agree. Better late than never, though...........

GAC06 said:

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74OA said:

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Capitol Ag said:

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Zobel said:

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It's hard to accept, but I think most of the confusion is because we simply don't know. There's a huge amount in medicine that we just don't know, and we're barreling through what would normally be decades of research in months right now. You've got scientists who are used to speaking in limited terms and qualifying things that they don't know, and you've got politicians (some of whom used to be scientists) who have specific outcomes they're trying to achieve.

If you are convinced that the best way forward is for everyone to be vaccinated, it weakens your position a lot to say "I don't know if it will help". For every person who actually had covid, there's some number of people who didn't or thought they did and won't get the vaccine because you say that. And that's just one example. This isn't to defend the messaging of our policy makers - it's been crap. But it does explain some of their behavior.

I'd love to live in a world where people could present scientific evidence to the general public and say - here's what we know, here's what we don't, here's our conclusion, you make a decision - and have the general public make good decisions accordingly. Unfortunately I don't think that matches the world we live in. I've seen a shocking amount of both scientific illiteracy resulting in really bad misunderstandings as well as what can only be described as intentional misinformation / disinformation / propaganda being consumed and repeated by people who should honestly know better.

I mean there are people who genuinely believe the vaccines are 99% graphene because of twitter. Or that the CDC's PCR test can't tell the difference between flu and sars cov 2. That is not hypothetical, both of those and other similar things including overt CCP propaganda have been not only posted but repeated on this site... by people with college degrees, who presumably represent above-average intelligence and education. It's not an encouraging picture.

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Agree. My biggest issue with all of this is I just DO NOT want another mask mandate. At this point, if masking is to protect the unvaccinated, than that's on them, not me. I am fine with those deciding not to vaccinate. But at the same time, I refuse to go back to draconian mandates to "protect others". That's not my problem, especially when there is a freaking vaccine.

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I'm in your camp, but am still willing to endure masks a little longer to protect those with underlying vulnerabilities who only need a trivial exposure to Delta to be in trouble, and to keep the virus from going home to young kids who are not yet eligible for vaccine, but who are increasingly being hurt by Delta.

But, quite soon, I'd go so far as to allow insurance companies not to cover covid-related hospitalization costs for those who have chosen not to protect themselves. Those extremely high ICU costs are passed on to all the rest of us via increasing insurance rates, and with a free, safe, effective vaccine available, that's unacceptable. Your body, your choice--now fully own the consequences.

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Do you have any data showing that "young kids are increasingly being hurt by delta"?

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Evidence of the growing pediatric trend is all over the news.

ttha_aggie_09 said:

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I'd love to see another source besides the same exact article hosted by a different site.

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Then Google for it. I'm not doing it for you.

ttha_aggie_09 said:

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Still, there is no evidence that children are more susceptible to the delta variant of the virus than others who are unvaccinated or that it causes more severe illness.

Dr. Sean O'Leary, vice chair of the committee on infectious diseases for the American Academy of Pediatrics, said "it is more contagious in kids just like it's more contagious in other unvaccinated individuals, but it's not more contagious in kids than other unvaccinated individuals."

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https://news.yahoo.com/delta-variant-spreads-medical-experts-153539577.html

Here you go hot rod

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Back at ya. KIDS

New data from Israel showing natural immunity is much better than vaccine immunity.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/309762

74OA said:

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ttha_aggie_09 said:

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Still, there is no evidence that children are more susceptible to the delta variant of the virus than others who are unvaccinated or that it causes more severe illness.

Dr. Sean O'Leary, vice chair of the committee on infectious diseases for the American Academy of Pediatrics, said "it is more contagious in kids just like it's more contagious in other unvaccinated individuals, but it's not more contagious in kids than other unvaccinated individuals."

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https://news.yahoo.com/delta-variant-spreads-medical-experts-153539577.html

Here you go hot rod

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Back at ya. KIDS

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So basically COVID is still a non factor for kids.

From your link....
3. Children made up between 1.3 percent and 3.5 percent of total cumulative COVID-19 hospitalizations as of July 29. This figure is based on states that were reporting hospitalizations and mortality by age (23 states and New York City).

4. Between 0.1 percent and 1.9 percent of all pediatric COVID-19 cases led to hospitalization, based on data from 23 states and New York City.

5. Among 43 states and New York City, which were reporting mortality data by age, less than 1 percent of all COVID-19 deaths were reported in children.

6. Less than 1 percent of all COVID-19 cases in children resulted in death, based on an analysis of states that were reporting such data.

Zobel said:

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Curious to see his response.

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My email

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Hi Marc,

Thanks for the reports you put out. I find them very useful in understanding the stats.

I'm a bit confused on the rationale for the CDC no longer reporting the state and local breakthrough infection figures periodically. Are you able to help me understand why the CDC stopped posting that data?

I understand per the official statement that the CDC focus is shifting to more serious infection cases. But if the mild breakthrough data is still available from local sources, why not still include the sum in the CDC's national report?

A response at your convenience would be much appreciated!

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His response

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Thank you for your email and interest. For national surveillance and reporting of vaccine breakthrough infections, CDC is focusing on monitoring cases among patients who are hospitalized or die. This will allow us to collect more complete information on the cases of highest clinical and public health significance. However, CDC continues to lead studies in multiple U.S. sites to evaluate vaccine effectiveness and collect information on all COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough infections regardless of symptoms or illness severity.

All COVID-19 vaccines currently authorized for use in the United States helped protect people against COVID-19, including severe illness, in clinical trial settings. So far, studies that have looked at how COVID-19 vaccines work in real-world conditions (vaccine effectiveness studies) have shown that these vaccines are working well. While COVID-19 vaccines are working well, some people who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 will still get sick, because no vaccines are 100% effective.

More information about how CDC monitors how vaccines are working are at How CDC Measures COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness | CDC.

Some results from studies of specific vaccines are at COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness Research | CDC.

I have forwarded your inquiry to CDC-INFO for a more complete response to your questions. If you have additional questions, you can contact CDC-INFO by calling 1-800-CDC-INFO (800-232-4636) or submitting a webform inquiry at www.cdc.gov/info.

Sincerely,
Marc Fischer
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

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So just as I predicted, a canned response that aligns with the CDC director.

"We are no longer posting the national sum of breakthrough cases, even though we are still collecting info on all breakthrough cases to evaluate vaccine effectiveness"

"Oh, and by the way, vaccines work really well, some get sick because no vaccine is 100% effective."

Not a single mention of resource constraints. It aligns perfectly with what I have been saying this whole time. They purposely removed the stat from their website reporting because they deemed it not of "clinical or public health importance". They don't want it to undermine the WH messaging and create vaccine reluctance. The WH went all in on "stop the spread" and "this is a pandemic of the UNvaccinated". If vaccinated are getting infected and spreading Delta at a high rate, that creates a major problem for them.

Ultimately this is still rather benign, and not a conspiracy but simply strategic. They aren't manipulating the data like Cuomo in nursing home deaths. Which of course would have been a "wild conspiracy theory" allegation before it was proven true.

Yeah, disappointing to get a canned response. But, what do you mean no mention of resource constraints?

"This will allow us to collect more complete information on the cases of highest clinical and public health significance" is a resource constraint. By necessity if focusing on certain cases allows them to collect more complete information, not focuses prevents the collection of more complete information.

Thats you projecting what you want to be true.

The data is still coming in on total breakthru cases. They have it. It's not resource intensive to pivot table and report that sum figure.

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CDC continues to collect information on all COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough infections regardless of symptoms or illness severity.

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Also, when was the last time a resource constrained gov agency didn't come out and say it, or ask for more funding?

It's a loop with you. You asked, the statement he gave you implies a resource constraint, and you dismiss it and say well its not that resource intensive.

If you can't bring yourself to imagine that the CDC may be a bit overtaxed right now, I don't know what to tell you. Best let the conversation end here.

Before we end it, are you able to acknowledge that they continue to collect info on ALL breakthrough cases, but just aren't reporting the total on their website anymore?

It's also interesting that Marc decided to pitch the vaccine to me when I didn't even inquire about its effectiveness. Small, but still a hint that the CDC is concerned about vaccine reluctance related to huge spike breakthrough infection data.....that they are now too "taxed" to continue posting publicly.