The Trump administration’s science advisers are lobbying for “herd immunity” to quickly infect people with COVID-19! The us politician’s website today revealed the contents of a jaw-dropping internal email.
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On July 3, Paul Alexander, scientific adviser to Assistant Secretary of health Michael Caputo, wrote to senior health officials in an email: “The bottom line is, if the virus is now more contagious, who cares? If the virus infects more young people, who cares? More tests will find more infected people. Who really cares? We need to make informed decisions to protect the elderly and homes for the elderly, and our lives must go on.”
On July 4, Michael Caputo’s scientific adviser, Paul Alexander, wrote to his boss and six senior health officials: “There really is no other way. We need to build herd immunity and expose non-high-risk people to the virus. Infants, children, adolescents, young adults, middle-aged people with no other conditions, their risk is minimal, and we use them to build herd immunity, and we want to infect them with COVID-19.”
On July 24, Alexander wrote mail to the United States food and drug administration FDA commissioner Hahn (Stephen Hahn), and their boss caputo and eight other senior government officials: “the best solution may be we are completely open, to flood in, let children and young people infected with the virus, in order to obtain natural immunity.” “The current rise in COVID-19 cases is due to increased testing, but also to the relaxation of restrictions in many areas that do not strictly follow social distancing. We’ve always known that if you relax the restrictions you increase the number of cases. The question is which one?”
Caputo’s response: How do you prove this is true? Alexander wrote back, adding some data, including an article in Quanta magazine on herd immunity. ‘I don’t want to look crazy,’ he says. ‘If herd immunity is possible, why not consider it?’
On July 27th Alexander wrote to Robert Redfield, the head of America’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, arguing that American universities should remain open to allow the virus to spread. “We actually have the most powerful weapon,” he wrote in an email. “Healthy young people, children, young people, we should quickly infect them, spread them around, build immunity, and help stop the spread of the virus.”
You must be thinking: Who is This Alexander?
Alexander earned a BACHELOR’s degree in Epidemiology from McMaster University in Canada, a master’s degree from Oxford, and a doctorate and assistant professor from McMaster University in 2015. From 2017 to 2019, Alexander was hired by the Infectious Diseases Society of America to specialize in systematic evaluation and to develop clinical practice guidelines.
The only picture of Alexander on the Internet
Does that qualify you as a senior consultant to the United States Department of Health? Of course not. Alexander had known Caputo for years and was a regular on caputo’s talk show. So it made sense that In March, after Caputo was appointed assistant secretary of Health, Alexander became caputo’s first deputy. Caputo is primarily responsible for the ministry of Health’s advocacy work. Mr. Caputo has said that Mr. Trump called to tell him to bring his expertise to his new job, and that he called Mr. Alexander on his first call after his call with Mr. Trump.
Assistant Secretary of Health Caputo
The Politico website quotes administration officials as saying they believe Alexander’s proposals have the support of the White House. Kyle McGowan, a former C.D.C. chief of staff, said Alexander represented Caputo and that his comments were caputo’s idea.
But Mr. Alexander left office in September, and health ministry officials say he was often isolated by other health ministry officials during his tenure. His remarks have zero impact on policy! McGowan, a former CDC chief of staff, also revealed that Alexander’s obstruction of weekly U.S. government reports of COVID-19 deaths, and even his desire to change the report, was outrageous.
A spokesman for the Department of Health also had to clarify in a statement today that Alexander’s email was in no way an influence on the department’s strategy, that he was only an interim senior adviser to the Department of Health and was no longer employed by the Department. And U.S. Health Secretary Azar made it clear to Congress that herd immunity is not a U.S. government policy against COVID-19.
Why is “herd immunity” neither ethical nor feasible
Since the COVID-19 outbreak, the concept of “herd immunity” has been mentioned repeatedly, as explained on the United Nations website: It refers to a high percentage of people in a community who have an immune response to a disease (through vaccination or illness), making it less likely that the disease will spread from person to person. In “herd immunity”, even people who have not been vaccinated can get some protection, as there is little chance that the disease will spread within the community.
Favor by the White House on October 4, three scientists jointly drafted a Declaration of bus Arlington (Great Barrington Declaration) ? petition
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The central claim is that the authorities should allow novel Coronavirus to spread among healthy young people while protecting the elderly and vulnerable. After the declaration was published, there was a great uproar. Most scientists believed that “herd immunity” was to be achieved based on the production of antibodies in the population after vaccination. Promoting this practice now, before a vaccine is available, would lead to a dramatic increase in the number of people infected with the coronavirus, putting even more people at risk.
Who Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebrev has said the organization does not endorse the “herd immunity” approach. “Never in the history of public health has herd immunity been used as a strategy for responding to a general infectious disease outbreak, let alone a global pandemic,” Tedros said. This is both scientifically and ethically problematic. ”
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The emails, published on the politician’s website, came from an investigation by the House of Representatives Coronavirus Panel into the Department of Health. The trump administration did not release the emails until after the election, said Jim Clyburn, chairman of the subcommittee, and C.D.C. Director Mr. Roderfeld had told employees to delete them. In response, Claiborne said Congress would require Roderfeld to testify before Congress.
Alexander’s emails show a bad pattern of political officials intervening in the COVID-19 outbreak, Jim Clyburn, chief executive of COVID-19, said in a statement today. As the epidemic spread across the country, these officials actually said, “Who cares?” We want to infect them. Privately, they acknowledge that they have always known that Trump’s current COVID-19 policy would lead to an increase in COVID-19 cases, and they have sought to blame scientists for the spread of the virus.
“Herd immunity” is really coming?
As mentioned earlier, there are two forms of herd immunity, natural immunity and vaccines. In the United States, 2.9 million doses of the vaccine have been delivered this week and tens of millions will be delivered this year. ‘By the end of spring or summer next year, we may have reached the early stages of herd immunity,’ predicts Dr. Fauci. ‘If that happens, we really are starting to turn things around.’
Fauci said at least half of Americans would need to be vaccinated to see an effect, while 75 to 85 percent would need to be vaccinated to actually achieve herd immunity. Examples are polio and measles.
Under the current plan to distribute the vaccine in the United States, the vaccine will be largely available to the public by March or April of next year. The U.S. Department of Health’s goal is to have the vaccine available to all who want it by June. At this rate, the United States could achieve true herd immunity by the end of 2021.
But Fauci’s prediction is the most optimistic. Just yesterday, the New York Times reported that a medical worker in Alaska who had been vaccinated with the COVID-19 vaccine developed a severe allergic reaction: a rash, shortness of breath, and an increased heart rate 10 minutes later. After steroid and epinephrine injections, her symptoms subsided, but when doctors stopped taking the drugs, her allergic reactions reappeared. The patient was later admitted to the intensive care unit.
Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine was 95 per cent effective in clinical trials involving 44,000 volunteers, but the Alaska incident has heightened concerns about side effects. If such cases continue, the nation’s goal of achieving herd immunity by the end of 2021 May not even be met.
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