HomeMy WebLinkAbout2021_11_19 KGould_COVIDFrom:Kincaid Gould
To:Board of Health; jeffbocc; Berry, Allison; aberry@co.clallam.wa.us
Subject:Comment
Date:Friday, November 19, 2021 2:07:26 PM
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Hello Commissioners, Dr. Berry, Board of Health,
Regrettably, I was unable to make it to the latest BOH and BOCC meetings due to familyobligations (and no, that’s not a euphemism for vaccine-induced Bell’s Palsy). In a recentemail to the BOCC, I noted that I was unable to access a video recording of a previousmeeting—that problem has been resolved. However, I am concerned about the recording ofyesterday’s BOH meeting. The recording is of worse quality than usual and seems to bemissing large portions of video—is there anyway that this could be remedied? I understandthat technical difficulties happen, but I would appreciate being able to watch a better recordingof the meeting if at all possible.
At any rate, I’d like to send another email to you all. First up are those data tables from before(updated through today). Here they are:
Date # OfCases
(Total)
% CasesAmong
Not FullyVaccinated
# Of CasesAmong
Not FullyVaccinated
Change in #of Cases
(Not FullyVaccinated)
% CasesAmong
FullyVaccinated
# Of CasesAmong
FullyVaccinated
Change in #of Cases
(FullyVaccinated)
08/04/2021 525 92.1%484 -7.9%41 -
08/09/2021 554 89.3%495 11 10.7%59 18
08/16/2021 597 86.1%514 19 13.9%83 24
08/23/2021 640 83.4%534 20 16.6%106 23
08/30/2021 685 81.9%561 27 18.1%124 18
09/07/2021 805 77.5%624 63 22.5%181 57
09/13/2021 871 77.76%677 53 22.24%194 13
09/20/2021 932 76.67%715 38 23.33%217 23
09/27/2021 977 75.9%742 27 24.1%235 18
10/01/2021 1005 74.21%746 4 25.79%259 24
10/08/2021 1041 74.05%771 25 25.95%270 11
10/15/2021 1064 73.90%786 15 26.10%278 8
10/22/2021 1122 73.82%828 42 26.18%294 16
10/29/2021 1148 73.60%845 17 26.40%303 9
11/05/2021 1185 73.14%867 22 26.86%318 15
11/12/2021 1217 73.07%889 22 26.93%328 10
11/19/2021 1254 71.43%896 7 28.57%358 30
Date # Of
NewCases
# Of New Cases
Among NotFully Vaccinated
% Of New Cases
Among NotFully Vaccinated
# Of New Cases
Among FullyVaccinated
% Of New Cases
Among FullyVaccinated
08/04/2021 -----
08/09/2021 29 11 37.9%18 62.1%
08/16/2021 43 19 44.2%24 55.8%
08/23/2021 43 20 46.5%23 53.5%
08/30/2021 45 27 60.0%18 40.0%
09/07/2021 120 63 52.5%57 47.5%
09/13/2021 66 53 80.3%13 19.7%
09/20/2021 61 38 62.3%23 37.7%
09/27/2021 45 27 60.0%18 40.0%
10/01/2021 28 4 14.3%24 85.7%
10/08/2021 36 25 69.4%11 30.6%
10/15/2021 23 15 65.2%8 34.8%
10/22/2021 58 42 72.4%16 27.6%
10/29/2021 26 17 65.4%9 34.6%
11/05/2021 37 22 59.5%15 40.5%
11/12/2021 32 22 68.75%10 31.25%
11/19/2021 37 7 18.9%30 81.1%
TOTAL 729 412 56.5%317 43.5%
The Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 5-11 was only given EUAauthorization by the FDA on October 29, 2021. This means that no child aged 5-11 could befully vaccinated as of 11/19/2021 (assuming that they were not vaccinated before becomingeligible for vaccination), as the pediatric vaccine, like the adult version, is a two-dose vaccineand children are not considered “fully vaccinated” until two weeks after the second dose. If achild was given the first dose on October 29, 2021 (which is unlikely), and was able to get thesecond dose two weeks later (November 12, 2021), they would still not be “fully vaccinated”until next Friday, November 26, 2021.
It is therefore pertinent to account for the fact that children still cannot yet be fullyvaccinated against COVID-19 by removing all children aged 0-11 from the above datatables.
There are 176 cases in children aged 0-11 since March of 2020. As of August 19, 2021, therewere 63 positive tests of COVID-19 found in children aged 0-11. 176-63=113. Therefore, itmakes sense to remove 113 cases from the TOTAL row in the above data table, and 113 casesamong the unvaccinated (as none of these children could be vaccinated). The bottom row ofthe data table, adjusted to reflect this, would therefore be:
TOTAL 616 299 48.5%51.5%43.5%
Let’s also note that the most recent week’s data includes 37 cases, 7 in the “not fullyvaccinated” and 30 in the fully vaccinated. There were 6 cases in children aged 0-11 this lastweek. That means that the data could more accurately show that there were in fact 31 cases inpeople eligible for vaccination and who could possibly be fully vaccinated, and that 30 ofthem (or 97%) were in the fully vaccinated. Interesting!
It is possible that some children aged 0-11 are fully vaccinated or were fully vaccinated whenthey tested positive, as people may have lied about their age to get vaccinated sooner.However, I doubt that this is the case for many of these cases because I would expect thepeople administering vaccinations to verify that the people being given vaccines were indeedold enough and because I hope that parents wouldn’t try to rush their kids into getting vaccinesthat were not even given EUA (much less full approval from the FDA).
However, even if you disagree with removing children aged 0-11 from these data tables (and Idon’t see why anybody would object to that, especially because at least some percentage ofthese numbers include children aged 0-4, who still aren’t eligible for vaccination), thenumbers that Dr. Berry keeps reporting are not reflected by the data.
And as I mentioned in a previous email, these numbers aren’t even important. Without furtherinformation on what percentage of people being tested are fully vaccinated and whatpercentage is unvaccinated, these numbers don’t tell us anything about whether or not thevaccine works at preventing transmission.
But then again, that number isn’t all that important either because we know that the vaccinesdo not stop transmission or infection, nor do they prevent hospitalization or death. If thevaccines reduce hospitalization and death, we should see those numbers reflected in thedata. And because JCPH refuses to publish that data, the claim is unsubstantiated and itis not fair—and dangerous—to say that the vaccines reduce hospitalization or death.
I cannot understand why you refuse to press JCPH to release this information, especially whenwe see that deaths exactly mirror the county’s breakdown of fully vaccinated and not fullyvaccinated individuals, with 70% of deaths in the vaccinated and 30% in the unvaccinated.
The fact that older people who are vaccinated are dying is not an excuse; after all, this is theage group that is most likely to die from the virus in the first place. Vaccine trial data showthat no effort was made to optimize the vaccine for the elderly, even though it was clear fromthe start that the elderly are the people who are dying from this virus.
The fact that it’s always a “not fully vaccinated” person who gives a fully vaccinated personCOVID-19 is also unimportant, especially in the case of a large outbreak. First of all, it soundslike this is a way to blame an unvaccinated individual for infecting dozens of people, even ifthey were only in contact with maybe one of them. If an unvaccinated individual infects onefully vaccinated caregiver and that fully vaccinated person goes on to infect a dozen fullyvaccinated people, that is not the fault of the unvaccinated individual, and saying it is makesno sense. And furthermore, where did the unvaccinated individual get COVID from? Anunvaccinated person? A vaccinated person? Why is this never addressed? You obviously haveto get COVID from somewhere, so saying that an unvaccinated person caused an outbreak byinfecting a vaccinated individual(s) is really appears to be nothing more than a tactic forshaming the unvaccinated.
And the whole notion that public health is blaming the people who haven’t taken the vaccinefor vaccinated people getting sick is pathetic. “My vaccine didn’t work because you didn’t getvaccinated,” is, perhaps, the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.
Maybe what Dr. Berry and JCPH are saying is true, and the vaccines really are effective;maybe it’s not. Frankly, I hope that they are and that I’m wrong and misguided. But more andmore problems are showing up everyday and they continue to be swept under the rug. Thereshould be no problem with me (or anybody) asking for public officials to be heldaccountable and provide proof of what they’re saying.
I was prepared to ask Dr. Berry about COVID cases worldwide (because for some reason localdata isn’t relevant when making local decisions) at the last meeting, hoping that she couldexplain something. Here’s what I had written up:
China and India are the two most populated countries in the world, with about 36% ofthe world population living in those two countries alone. The World HealthOrganization divides the world into several different regions. China is a part of theWestern Pacific Region and India is part of the South-East Asia Region. Many morecountries, including Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines, Australia and more, arealso part of these two regions.
According to the WHO’s Weekly Epidemiological Update on COVID-19 published on16 November 2021, the regions of South-East Asia and the Western Pacific accountedfor just 10% of global cases in the last 7 days.
The African and Eastern Mediterranean Regions, which are made up of the Africancontinent and parts of the Middle East, and are home to over 20% of the worldpopulation, account for only 3% of global cases in the last 7 days.
Africa is the least-vaccinated continent in the world.
On the other hand, Europe and the Americas are much more vaccinated. Interestingly,64% of new global cases in the last 7 days were in Europe and 23% were in theAmericas.
Basically what we’re seeing is a disproportionate split where 80% of the worldpopulation living in Africa, Asia and Australasia (which includes the countries with thelowest vaccination rates in the world) accounting for only 10% of global COVID cases,whereas the 20% of the world that lives in Europe and the Americas, which are hometo many of the most vaccinated countries in the world, are churning out 90% of theglobal COVID cases.
Because Dr. Berry almost certainly doesn’t have time to respond, would anybody else bewilling to let me know why this might be the case? Or if not, would somebody be willing toraise this issue at the next BOH/BOCC Meeting?
I’d like to include a third piece here as well. I spoke at the November 8th BOCC Meeting buthad audio problems. I was asked to send an email to the BOCC with what I had said.
Unsurprisingly, my comment was not addressed on November 8th. Unfortunately, it wasn’taddressed at either of this week’s meetings either (unless it was discussed at the BOH meetingand the audio from this is simply missing from the recording on the website). So, I think itwould be a good idea to include it one more time, this time not just to BOCC (the onlyrecipient thus far), but also to BOH and Dr. Berry. Here it is:
In a recent email to me, Dr. Berry dismissed any evidence from scientific studies thatmight refute her COVID-19 policies by saying that these studies are, “not peerreviewed, not reproducible, poorly designed with significant confounding, underpowered, had results that didn’t support the conclusions of the authors, had falsifieddata, were not published or [were] published in fake journals, were retracted or somecombination of all of the above.”
Late last week, The Leader published an article titled “County Health Officer: COVID-card mandate prevented local outbreak,” which drew on data from an event that Dr.Berry relayed to this board last Monday—I’m using this article as a source because Icouldn’t make it to last week’s meeting and was unsuccessful in loading a recording ofthe meeting.
In an email I recently received from Commissioner Dean, I was also informed that“The research that local policy is based on is performed at a national and internationallevel and is not up for debate at the local level.”
Alarmingly, Dr. Berry seems to refute this last claim by using questionable local datato support her vaccine passports, even when national data show lower case rates instates with fewer COVID restrictions, such as Florida and Texas.
Dr. Berry’s report is not a scientific study; nevertheless, she should still be accountablefor ensuring the quality of the data and her conclusions. Unfortunately, it seems asthough she forgot to check the considerations she mentioned to me (and which Imentioned earlier) when she gave her report.
For example:
The data she cites are not reproducible.
The data have been significantly confounded by a variety of factors, most egregiouslythat the “evidence” isn’t measured against a control group; if all of the people presentwere fully vaccinated, there should not and can not be any comment on whether or notthe mandate actually prevented anything—after all, it’s possible that if 100% of peoplein attendance were unvaccinated, none of them would have caught the virus from theinfected employee either. Further, it is unclear how it was determined that people were“not infected”—was every individual tested, or just symptomatic individuals? Did anyor all of them have natural immunity? Is it certain that the infected worker didn’t have afalse positive?
The data come from an under-powered sample, with numbers well under 500 people—anumber Dr. Berry has argued is too small when she dismissed the data tables I had beensending you.
The data, because they lack a control group to be measured against, do not show resultsthat support Dr. Berry’s conclusion.
Despite all of these problems, we are expected to believe that these vaccine passportshave prevented at least 60 cases and possibly several hospitalizations or even deaths.And to me, for whom the public health system has lost much credibility in the pastseveral months and done little to earn back any trust, this significantly flawed reportseems like nothing more than poor quality propaganda masquerading as science.
Dr. Berry’s data fails to fulfill at least 4 out of the 5 applicable criteria she listed, andso my question for the Board is why isn’t Dr. Berry held to the same standards as
members of the public.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. I look forward to hearing your responses.
Sincerely,
Kincaid Gould
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