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 treating coronavirus.
And he’s not too impressed with the latest recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for vaccinated Americans. He made clear his disdain for the agency’s latest “absurdly restrictive” guidelines in a Wednesday published in the Wall Street Journal, “Covid Prescription: Get the Vaccine, Wait a Month, Return to Normal,” in which he noted that although CDC claims it “follows science,” the truth is that “its advice suggests it is still paralyzed by fear.”
What did he say?
Following the CDC announcement that it is now certain that fully vaccinated people will be mixed inside some other people without masks or social distancing (a move CNN described as the agency that “gave people limited freedoms”), but not for travel, Makary said this is just another case that the CDC arrives late or wrong when it comes to COVID-19. Which fits a pattern, the doctor said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has lost a lot of credibility during the Covid-19 pandemic by arriving late or making mistakes in tests, masks, vaccine assignment, and school reopening. Keeping consistent with this pattern, this week (three months after the vaccine was launched), the CDC finally began telling vaccinated people that they can have normal interactions with other vaccinated people, but only in very limited circumstances. . Given the impressive effectiveness of the vaccine, this should have been immediately apparent by applying scientific inferences 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-vaccination experience has shown that aircraft are not a source of spread. A study conducted for the defense department found that commercial aircraft have HEPA filtration and airflow that exceed the standards of a hospital operating room.
Makary added that instead of being afraid to encourage a return to normalcy, the agency should take a look at the available data, including that vaccination reduces transmission from 89% to 94% and it almost completely avoids hospitalization and death, according to an Israeli study.
Complete immunity occurs around four weeks after the first dose, he added, making the vaccinated patient “essentially bulletproof.” Combine that with wearing a mask inside “for a few more weeks or months” and “you shouldn’t be discouraged from making a vaccinated person.”
Instead, Makary said, the CDC has been wasting time and testing and is being “ridiculously cautious” about the virus ignoring the dangers of the isolation that has been forced on the American people:
On a positive note, the CDC said asymptomatic people who are fully vaccinated do not need to be tested. But this obvious recommendation should have come two months ago, before so much testing wasted on people with high levels of circulating antibodies to vaccination.
In its guidance, the CDC says the risks of infection in vaccinated people “cannot be completely eliminated.” True, we have no conclusive data to guarantee that vaccination reduces risk to zero. We will never do that. We are operating in the field of medical discretion based on the best available data, as practicing physicians have always done. The CDC highlights the impressive success of vaccines, but is ridiculously cautious about their implications. Public health officials are myopic about the risk of transmission, ignoring the biggest health crisis resulting 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 too cautious with the virus has been the hallmark of “authorities,” as hospitals prevented relatives from being with loved ones while they suffered and died, Makary said, calling the separation of families “excessive and cruel. , driven by close thinking, which focused singularly on reducing the risk of viral transmission, without taking into account the damage to the quality of human life “.
The doctor urged the CDC not to repeat its mistakes. Instead of exaggerating the public health threat that crushes the human spirit, he said, it’s time to use “common sense” and tell Americans to “get back to normal” a month after received the first shot.