Massachusetts Congressman Stephen-Lynch (R) speaks to Congress on December 2, 2020.
Massachusetts U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch (D) tested positive for the Chinese Communist virus (COVID-19) after receiving two doses of the Pfizer vaccine (Pfizer-BioNTech). On Friday (Jan. 29), his spokesman said Lynch was still testing negative when he attended Biden‘s inauguration.
Molly Rose Tarpey, a spokeswoman for Rep. Lynch, said Lynch also received a positive test earlier in the week after a staffer in the congressman’s Boston office tested positive, the Boston Herald reported.
Lynch also tested negative for COVID-19 prior to attending President Biden’s inauguration,” Tarpey said Friday. And Congressman Lynch has received a second dose of the Pfizer vaccine.” Lynch is not showing symptoms and “feels fine,” she said, but will be quarantined as a precaution. Lynch was tested positive nine days after the inauguration.
Lynch is not the first U.S. lawmaker to be diagnosed after receiving the vaccine. Kevin Brady, 65, the senior Republican member of the U.S. House Committee on Tax Planning Ways and Means, also announced the diagnosis weeks after receiving his first dose of the Pfizer vaccine.
On Thursday (Jan. 28), Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.), another federal Democrat, also tested positive for the virus. She is currently in quarantine.
Dozens of members of Congress in the U.S. have now been diagnosed with the Chinese Communist virus (COVID-19), including newly elected Congressman Luke Letlow, a Republican from Louisiana, who died from complications after contracting the virus.
In issuing an emergency use authorization last December 2020, the U.S. drug regulator said there was no data to show how long the vaccine would provide protection. “There is no evidence that the vaccine can stop human-to-human transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19).” According to the results of its clinical trials, the Pfizer vaccine was about 95 percent effective against symptomatic infections seven days or more after the second dose.
The Boston Herald reported that Boston University infectious disease expert Davidson Hamer noted, “Based on the studies done, neither the Pfizer vaccine nor the Moderna vaccine is 100% protective. They are both about 95 percent effective against symptomatic infections.”
Hamer said the outcome of whether Lynch’s diagnosis was due to vaccine failure or the vaccine’s inability to prevent asymptomatic infections is not yet known. Perhaps Lynch went from a potentially symptomatic infection to an asymptomatic one as a result of the vaccine, he said, is not known.
And there is no medical certainty about how the Pfizer and Modena vaccines prevent asymptomatic infections and how they prevent transmission.
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