Good News on Omicron Outcomes from Prison
Captive Environment Allows Real Look at Risk for Hospitalization and Death
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH
Prisoners and staff are a prototypical congregate group amenable to epidemiologic study and in the setting of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, ideal for study of the patterns of spread and risk for serious outcomes. Throughout the pandemic, review and interpretation of peer-reviewed manuscripts in widely read journals has required careful review of data in supplementary tables. The conclusions by the authors in many papers must be ignored given the heavy bias for all journals to “promote” mass vaccination. For example, thus far, there has not been a single paper in the New England Journal of Medicine that has concluded COVID-19 vaccines are unsafe, or not indicated, or do not have a favorable risk to benefit ratio. Prior to COVID-19 for any new therapy or surgery, there are always divergent views where some papers conclude an intervention is beneficial and others do not. Disagreement is normal in medicine. The pervasive heavy-handed government intelligence community and public health agency operations has biased the medical journals to publish a one-sided story on COVID-19 vaccination. The paper by Chin et al, in the New England Journal of Medicine is a perfect example.[i] They studied 59,794 residents and 16,572 staff from using data collected from December 24, 2021, through April 14, 2022. Buried in the supplemental tables are important data on the real risk of hospitalization and death with the Omicron variant in prisoners characterized by whether they had prior COVID-19 and how many doses of a vaccine they had received.
As shown, there is a negligible risk of hospitalization and death with Omicron infection. Specifically, there were zero deaths in the unvaccinated. To demonstrate how far off-base authors and editors are on interpretation, take a look at the paper’s conclusions:
“Our findings in two high-risk populations suggest that mRNA vaccination and previous infection were effective against omicron infection, with lower estimates among those infected before the period of delta predominance. Three vaccine doses offered significantly more protection than two doses, including among previously infected persons.”
My conclusions are considering natural immunity status, COVID-19 vaccination provided no meaningful protection against hospitalization and death with Omicron. Based on these data, a rational prison physician or health administrator would conclude that bivalent boosters for Omicron are not clinically indicated nor medically necessary. So next time you see headlines regarding a journal article, look for a second opinion from “Courageous Discourse” or other reliable stacks and sources of analysis.
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[i] Chin ET, Leidner D, Lamson L, Lucas K, Studdert DM, Goldhaber-Fiebert JD, Andrews JR, Salomon JA. Protection against Omicron from Vaccination and Previous Infection in a Prison System. N Engl J Med. 2022 Oct 26. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa2207082. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 36286260.
Thank you for this! It is crucial to have alternative sources of expert data, opinion and interpretation, especially given today’s environment.
Thank You to Dr. McCullough !!!