Study Destroys Justification for Vaccine Mandates

CDC and State Health Department scientists find similar or higher viral load of Covid-19 virus among the vaccinated as compared to the unvaccinated

Civil and individual rights are only meaningful if they continue to protect individuals during difficult situations.  It is why the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of neo-Nazis to march through Jewish neighborhoods.  It is why it upheld the right to burn the American flag.  Protecting these rights when it is difficult protects us all.  It assures that government will not erode these civil and individual rights, including during a pandemic. 

The CDC and State Health Department scientists just released a study that again reflects the dangers of making civil and individual rights contingent on a medical procedure.  This study, titled Shedding of Infectious SARS-CoV-2 Despite Vaccination, reviewed swab specimens from 36 counties in Wisconsin from the end of June to the end of July 2021.   They then checked the viral load of SARS-CoV-2 in each swab. 

What did they find?  High viral load in “158 of 232 unvaccinated (68%...) and 156 of 225 fully vaccinated (69%...) symptomatic individuals.”  Meaning there was effectively no difference between the symptomatic vaccinated and unvaccinated in terms of who was carrying, and therefore spreading, the virus. 

But the study does not end there.  It also found high viral loads in “7 of 24 unvaccinated (29%...) and 9 of 11 fully vaccinated asymptomatic individuals (82%...).” Meaning, among asymptomatic individuals, the vaccinated had a higher percentage with a high viral load.  As I explained in an interview with Shannon Bream, this reflects that the unvaccinated that catch the virus are more likely to be at home in bed with symptoms, while the vaccinated that catch the virus are more likely to have no symptoms and hence continue their daily routine unknowingly spreading the virus. 

These findings are depicted in the following chart.  Note that the lower the “N1 Ct value” the higher the viral load (and that a team at Oxford concluded that an N1 Ct value over 24 should not be taken to indicate the presence of any actual virus):

Reflecting that the vaccine does not prevent spread is a paper out of the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies titled Increase in COVID-19 are unrelated to level of vaccination across 68 countries and 2,497 counties in the United States.  It found that, “the trend line suggests a marginally positive association such that countries with higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have higher COVID-19 cases per 1 million people.  Notably, Israel with over 60% of their population fully vaccinated had the highest COVID-19 cases per 1 million people in the last 7 days.”  The paper had a similar finding for U.S. counties, wherein higher vaccination did not equate to less cases. 

What these papers really found is that the CDC’s justification for crushing civil and individual rights has disappeared.  Federal health authorities crushed those rights based on the argument that the Covid-19 vaccine will prevent the spread of the virus.  The viral load study, with nothing more, yet again shows this to be false.  It is one in a line of studies with similar findings, including:

• A CDC study of an outbreak in Barnstable County, Massachusetts which found that 74% of those infected were fully vaccinated for Covid-19 and that the vaccinated had on average more virus in their nose than the unvaccinated who were infected. 

• An Tel-Aviv University study of a SARS-CoV-2 outbreak among 42 patients in a hospital setting, “39 were fully vaccinated,” the “index case was … fully vaccinated,” “all transmission between patients and staff occurred between masked and vaccinated individuals, as experienced in an outbreak from Finland,” and that this “outbreak exemplifies the high transmissibility of the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant among twice vaccinated and masked individuals.”

Will our public health authorities admit their mistake?  Will they admit that their justification for why students had to be expelled and employees fired does not exist because these products do not prevent the spread?  Dictators and tyrants are often born through a genuine desire to do good – but when their approach fails, and relinquishing power would cause a self-inflicted wound, illiberalism often follows.  The CDC appears incapable of admitting it was wrong lest it too cause a self-inflicted wound on its reputation. 

The lesson here is not that health authorities should never make mistakes.  They will.  It happens.  The lesson is that civil and individual rights should never be contingent upon a medical procedure.  Everyone that wants to get vaccinated and boosted is free to do so.  But nobody should be coerced to partake in any medical procedure.