Why Is Walensky Refusing to Answer this Senator’s Questions?

 Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) has taken a lead throughout the Covid-19 pandemic to hold public health officials and agencies accountable if they’ve failed to provide accurate and timely information to the public for whom they work.

From masks, vaccines, and school shutdowns, to the origination of Covid-19, Johnson has been asking critical questions. However, he says he has received very few answers. 

According to Johnson, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky is one of the public health officials who has been non-compliant with his requests. 

To date, Johnson says he has made eight specific requests, directly of Walensky, that have gone unanswered. 

In his most recent attempt to get data, he writes:

“In the midst of a pandemic, it is unacceptable that CDC would withhold relevant data on Covid-19 that could inform the public and potentially save lives. Moreover, it is grossly arrogant that your agency has repeatedly ignored Congressional requests.”

Read Senator Johnson’s latest letter to Director Walensky below:

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March 1, 2022

Rochelle P. Walensky, M.D., MPH Director
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Dear Director Walensky:

Over the last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has failed to be transparent to the American people and their elected representatives. Specifically, CDC has not responded to my multiple requests for information about COVID-19. In addition, CDC has reportedly “withheld information” about COVID-19 from the public that “could help state and local health officials better target their efforts to bring the virus under control.”1 In the midst of a pandemic, it is unacceptable that CDC would withhold relevant data on COVID-19 that could inform the public and potentially save lives. Moreover, it is grossly arrogant that your agency has repeatedly ignored Congressional requests.

To date, I have sent you numerous letters requesting information about COVID-19 including records and data on the virus, school guidance, and the vaccines. For the letters listed below, you have either failed to respond or your response was significantly incomplete:

• May 19, 2021 – Requesting records relating to teachers’ unions and CDC guidance.
• June 28, 2021 – Requesting information about COVID-19 vaccine adverse events.
• July 13, 2021 – Requesting information on vaccine safety monitoring.
• July 30, 2021 – Requesting data CDC used to create a slide deck on COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness.
• August 22, 2021 – Regarding the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee meeting.
• September 15, 2021 – Requesting information on the effectiveness of natural immunity as protection from COVID-19.
• October 5, 2021 – Requesting information on early treatments for COVID-19.
• December 29, 2021 – Requesting information about vaccine lot variation data.1 Apoorva Mandavilli, The C.D.C. isn’t publishing large portions of the Covid data it collects, NY Times, Feb. 21, 2022.

CDC’s failure to respond to Congress appears to be one piece of the agency’s larger problem with public transparency. According to the New York Times, during the “[t]wo full years into the pandemic, the [CDC] has published only a tiny fraction of the data it has collected.”2 The CDC’s apparent indifference toward transparency during a pandemic is disturbing and shameful.

Throughout the pandemic, CDC and other health agencies have promoted inconsistent policies and recommendations regarding COVID-19. Many Americans who voiced concerns about these shifting policies have been subjected to ridicule, vilification, and censorship from the press. Rather than provide the public with complete access to relevant data to justify its COVID- 19 policies, the Biden Administration has apparently favored censorship over transparency.

In my continued effort to ensure that the American people have access to complete and accurate data about COVID-19, I renew my previous requests and call on you to immediately respond to all of my outstanding letters. Additionally, I would like you to brief my staff on whether CDC is withholding data from the public as reported by the New York Times and provide the names and titles of CDC officials who may have withheld the relevant information. I ask that this briefing occur no later than March 15, 2022. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

cc: The Honorable Xavier Becerra Secretary

Department of Health and Human Services

The Honorable Christi Grimm
Inspector General
Department of Health and Human Services

Sincerely,

Ron Johnson
United States Senator

https://brownstone.org/articles/why-is-walensky-refusing-to-answer-this-senators-questions/

Where’s Fauci?

 If you’re looking for the infamous Dr Anthony Fauci, you might want to check your local television stations, or some random YouTube channels, because the man has seemingly joined the primetime cable milk carton. 

Covid Mania has become deeply unpopular with the American people, and a Democratic polling firm recently convinced the Biden Administration and its allies in Congress to drop the hysteria. With midterms around the corner, and trouble raging in Eastern Europe, it was time to put the kibosh on all of it.

And with the memo came the simultaneous sidelining of Dr Fauci.

But given his love for television appearances, the NIAID chief has taken desperate measures to try to remain relevant. And by desperate, I mean DESPERATE. You’ll see what I mean in just a moment.

I had to dig pretty deep to find some of his recent media appearances, but I didn’t want to let you all down, so I persevered through the interwebs to find evidence of Fauci’s existence.

He recently appeared on an online streaming show called “Woke AF” (As F**K),  in which he expressed his disdain for the unvaccinated. In a clip featured by the show host on Twitter, Fauci rants that the unvaccinated have no respect for greater society. Fauci, who comes off as a broken man, channeled plenty of his regular pseudoscience, claiming that the unvaccinated “give the virus the opportunity to circulate among us.”

I also found a recent Fauci appearance on a D.C. local TV channel. In it, Fauci demands “money now” for his government department, seemingly trying to shake down lawmakers for his pet projects.

In another recent local TV hit, Fauci demands that people continue to adopt the Covid hysteria mindset. “I don’t think people should get the impression that we’re saying that this is all over,” a visibly distraught Fauci told the host. “We’re going to be dealing with SARS-CoV-2 for quite a while.”

In late February, Fauci appeared on a YouTube comedy show to answer questions about Covid-19. No, there was no comedy involved. 

The other day, the White House COVID Task Force did a livestream social media presentation, featuring Fauci, on the steps ahead with COVID-19. Demonstrating Americans’ clear lack of interest in Covid Mania, the stream only accumulated about 7,000 views.

And that’s pretty much it. Perhaps Fauci can now get back to doing whatever he does for his day job.

The NIAID’s “Dr Fauci In The News” website, which throughout Covid Mania, has tracked hundreds of its directors major media appearances, has not posted a new appearance since February 17.

It appears that Fauci’s time in the spotlight is over, and judging by his dejected state in recent media appearances, he knows it too.

https://brownstone.org/articles/wheres-fauci/

Florida to advise against COVID-19 vaccine for healthy kids

 Florida’s Department of Health will recommend against coronavirus vaccination for “healthy children,” the state’s surgeon general said Monday, contradicting the guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other experts.

Florida “is going to be the first state to officially recommend against the COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children,” state surgeon general Joseph Ladapo said at the end of a roundtable discussion on the virus response. 

Ladapo did not provide details such as who would qualify as a healthy child, or go into the reasoning for his decision. 

The move is an escalation in the divide of Florida’s pandemic response under Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) from that of national experts.  

The CDC recommends that everyone aged 5 and older get the coronavirus vaccine. Existing vaccines are not yet approved for those younger than 5.

While COVID-19 is generally worse in older age groups, the CDC noted that as of mid-October 2021, there were “more than 8,300 COVID-19 related hospitalizations and nearly 100 deaths from COVID-19" among children 5-11, and the coronavirus is one of the top 10 causes of death in that age group.  

Getting the vaccine helps prevent children from getting seriously ill with the virus if they do contract it and also protects people of other ages in the surrounding community, the CDC noted.  

“Before recommending COVID-19 vaccination for children, scientists conducted clinical trials with thousands of children and no serious safety concerns were identified,” the CDC adds.  

The American Academy of Pediatrics also recommends that children get vaccinated.  

“Vaccinating children will protect children’s health and allow them to fully engage in all of the activities that are so important to their health and development,” the group said last fall when the vaccines were authorized for children 5-11.  

Later Monday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked during a press briefing if the Biden administration considers Florida's move sound policy.

"Absolutely not," Psaki replied. "Let me just note that we know the science. We know the data and what works and what the most effective steps are in protecting people of a range of ages from hospitalization and even death. The FDA and CDC have already weighed in on the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines for those 5 and older," she said.

She added research shows "that unvaccinated teenagers are three times as likely to get COVID" compared to vaccinated ones.

Ladapo, a DeSantis appointee, has frequently drawn controversy for questioning the effectiveness of vaccines, and previously declined to say if he himself was vaccinated.  

DeSantis, seen as a rising GOP star, also previously declined to say if he received the vaccine booster shot.  

The CDC noted that there have been “rare” instances of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart in adolescents aged 12-17 after COVID-19 vaccination, but the rates are about 54 cases per million doses in that age group after receiving the Pfizer vaccine.  

“The benefits of COVID-19 vaccination outweigh the known and potential risks. Get a COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 years and older as soon as you can,” the CDC said.  

DeSantis was sitting next to Ladapo as he made the announcement on Monday. The governor added that there has been “a failure to weigh costs and benefits, whether that’s lockdowns, whether that’s school closures, or whether that's even something about whether a healthy seven-year-old kid should get the COVID vaccines.” 

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/597169-florida-to-recommend-against-covid-19-vaccine-for-healthy-children

Pentagon asks Supreme Court to let it curb unvaccinated Navy SEAL deployments

 The Defense Department filed an emergency request to the Supreme Court on Monday asking the justices to restore the department’s authority over the deployment of unvaccinated Navy SEALs.

The request follows a January ruling by a federal judge in Texas who temporarily blocked the department from halting the deployment of SEALs who refuse to comply with the military’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate, and after an appeals court last month declined to put the judge’s order on hold.

According to the Biden administration’s filing, the lower court rulings have tied commanders’ hands and already have eroded health and safety protocols for the armed forces, including by forcing the Navy to deploy an unvaccinated SEAL to Hawaii “for duty on a submarine against its military judgment.”

“The Navy has an extraordinarily compelling interest in ensuring that the servicemembers who perform those missions are as physically and medically prepared as possible,” read the Biden administration’s court filing. “That includes vaccinating them against COVID-19, which is the least restrictive means of achieving that interest.”

The dispute arose after roughly three dozen service members assigned to the Naval Special Warfare Command, including 26 Navy SEALs, challenged the Pentagon’s coronavirus vaccine mandate on religious grounds.

In January, Texas-based U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor, a George W. Bush appointee, temporarily blocked the military from taking any “adverse action” against the legal challengers, including making changes to training or deployment based on their unvaccinated status. 

Last month, a unanimous three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit declined to grant the Defense Department’s request to halt O'Connor’s order.

Within an hour of receiving the department’s emergency request, the Supreme Court asked the challengers to file a response within the calendar week.

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/597171-pentagon-asks-supreme-court-to-let-it-curb-unvaccinated-navy-seal-deployments

Atreca: Analyst views preceding selloff

 Atreca, Inc. (NASDAQ:BCEL - Get Rating) - Equities researchers at Jefferies Financial Group issued their Q1 2022 EPS estimates for Atreca in a research note issued on Thursday, March 3rd. Jefferies Financial Group analyst R. Song forecasts that the company will post earnings of ($0.80) per share for the quarter. Atreca (NASDAQ:BCEL - Get Rating) last released its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, March 3rd. The company reported ($0.79) earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing analysts' consensus estimates of ($0.75) by ($0.04). During the same quarter in the previous year, the business earned ($0.63) EPS.

BCEL has been the subject of several other research reports. HC Wainwright restated a "buy" rating and set a $25.00 price target on shares of Atreca in a research note on Friday. Zacks Investment Research raised Atreca from a "hold" rating to a "buy" rating and set a $2.25 price objective on the stock in a report on Tuesday, February 8th. Stifel Nicolaus dropped their price objective on Atreca from $17.00 to $14.00 and set a "buy" rating on the stock in a report on Friday. Finally, Wedbush reissued an "outperform" rating on shares of Atreca in a report on Friday. Six equities research analysts have rated the stock with a buy rating, According to MarketBeat.com, the company currently has a consensus rating of "Buy" and a consensus target price of $16.65.

Shares of Atreca stock opened at $5.20 on Monday. The stock's 50-day moving average is $2.18. The firm has a market capitalization of $193.19 million, a P/E ratio of -1.76 and a beta of 0.23. Atreca has a one year low of $1.56 and a one year high of $19.23.

Several institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. JPMorgan Chase & Co. grew its stake in shares of Atreca by 344.3% in the second quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. now owns 73,493 shares of the company's stock valued at $627,000 after buying an additional 56,951 shares in the last quarter. Stifel Financial Corp grew its holdings in shares of Atreca by 27.5% in the 2nd quarter. Stifel Financial Corp now owns 32,563 shares of the company's stock worth $278,000 after acquiring an additional 7,025 shares during the last quarter. Renaissance Technologies LLC purchased a new position in shares of Atreca during the second quarter valued at $929,000. Marshall Wace LLP purchased a new position in shares of Atreca during the second quarter valued at $294,000. Finally, Macquarie Group Ltd. grew its stake in Atreca by 730.0% in the second quarter. Macquarie Group Ltd. now owns 6,366 shares of the company's stock valued at $54,000 after purchasing an additional 5,599 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors own 60.38% of the company's stock.

https://www.marketbeat.com/instant-alerts/nasdaq-bcel-analyst-earnings-estimates-2022-03/

Ex-Goldman Sachs economist: How to think about nuclear war

 Even if you haven't heard of Peter Berezin, you may well still be aware of the research note he issued last Friday. Titled, 'Rising Risk Of A Nuclear Apocalypse', it suggests that the chances of a "civilization-ending global nuclear war over the next 12 months" have risen to 10%, but that over a 12-month horizon, there's still reason to be bullish about the performance of equities. 

Speaking to us yesterday, Berezin stressed that he's absolutely not saying that if there's a cataclysmic nuclear confrontation, stocks will rise. Some outlets have suggested this is his take, says Berenzin; it's not. "I'm not saying stocks will go up if there's a nuclear war. In that situation, then not only will stocks go down, but everything else will too. You're talking about the breakdown of society and the entire financial system and there is no way to hedge against that."

Berezin says that he was in fact positing two possibilities: in one, the system collapses in a way that cannot be hedged and you "probably won't be around to see the outcome;" in the other, there is no nuclear war, but there is still the horrific war in Ukraine and its resultant impacts on raw material prices; stocks initially crash but then recover. 

Given the impossibility of preparing for the first eventuality, Berezin says the only option is to prepare for the second, to which he ascribes a 90% probability. In this scenario, he predicts markets will crash in the short term before recovering again: "A freak-out moment is coming, which will present a good buying opportunity for investors."

We've posted Berezin's market predictions, along with one of the tweets which made him temporarily famous, at the bottom of this page. A former senior economist at Goldman Sachs in New York, he's now based in Toronto with BCA Research. The next few months will be incredibly challenging, Berezin tells us: "What we have learned so far is that the Russian army is not as capable of fighting a ground war as many had presumed. People are going to start to worry that the only card Putin has is the nuclear card."

The existential risk that this poses is so enormous that Berezin says it can't be dealt with under current conceptual frameworks for investments or anything else. In the absence of meaningful mitigations, he effectively suggests it's best ignored. - Although Berenzin says it might possibly help to buy iodine: "I picked up a couple of bottles of Potassium Iodide earlier this week. When I checked the pharmacy again yesterday, all the bottles were sold out. They are now being hawked on Amazon for ten times the regular price."

https://www.efinancialcareers.com/news/2022/03/investing-nuclear-war

CDC Director: Nobody Said COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness Might Wane

 by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

When COVID-19 vaccines were first authorized in late 2020, the public wasn’t informed that the touted effectiveness might decline, a top U.S. health official said on March 3.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, recalled watching coverage of clinical trial results that indicated the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine was 95 percent effective.

“So many of us wanted to be helpful. So many of us wanted to say, ‘Okay, this is our ticket out, right, ‘now we’re done.’ So I think we have perhaps too little caution and too much optimism for some good things that came our way. I really do. I think all of us wanted this to be done,” Walensky said.

“Nobody said ‘waning’; ‘Oh this vaccine is going to work, oh well, maybe it’ll wear off.’ Nobody said, ‘Well, what if the next variant, it’s not as [effective] against the next variant,” she added.

Walensky, who was speaking at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, was tapped to head the CDC on Dec. 8, 2020, by then-president-elect Joe Biden. Three days later, U.S. regulators authorized the Pfizer jab. That same month, they cleared Moderna’s shot.

Both those vaccines and the only other COVID-19 vaccine available in the United States, made by Johnson & Johnson, were initially promoted as highly effective in preventing infection from the virus that causes COVID-19. Pfizer’s was said to be 95 percent effective in preventing infection.

“Vaccination is a critical tool in bringing this unprecedented pandemic to an end,” Dr. Robert Redfield, Walensky’s predeceessor, said in a statement before leaving office.

“We know for sure that the vaccine is highly efficacious in preventing the clinical disease,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on CNBC around the same time.

While authorizing the shots, the Food and Drug Administration acknowledged it could not determine how long the vaccines would provide protection.

The vaccine effectiveness has dropped over time, and provides little protection against infection, according to data released after the Omicron virus variant became dominant in the country in late 2021.

“Just about everybody” will get COVID-19 because of Omicron, according to Fauci.

Still, Fauci, Walensky, and other U.S. officials continue to recommend virtually all Americans aged 5 years or older get a vaccine and get a booster, asserting the protection against severe disease, which is also waning, is reason enough.

On Thursday, Walensky also said that she was not sure if a second booster of the vaccines will be required while alleging some people have drawn the wrong conclusions about public health guidance during the pandemic.

“I have frequently said, ‘We’re going to lead with the science, the science is going to be the foundation of everything we do.’ That is entirely true,” she said. “I think the public heard that science is foolproof, science is black and white, science is immediate, and we get the answer and then we make the decision based on the answer. And the truth is science is gray, and science is not always immediate, and sometimes it takes months and years to actually find out the answer. But you have to make decisions in a pandemic before you have that answer.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/cdc-director-nobody-said-covid-19-vaccine-effectiveness-might-wane