The emergency use authorizations for the COVID-19 vaccines require that providers of the vaccines report all COVID-19 cases in vaccinated individuals who get COVID-19 and are hospitalized or die. Healthcare professionals have reported to ICAN, stating in no uncertain terms, that this is not happening.
Cases of COVID-19 in vaccinated individuals are called “breakthrough cases.” Understanding the true rate of breakthrough cases is critical in understanding the real-world effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines — especially when compared to cases in the unvaccinated. The CDC acknowledges, “no vaccines are 100% effective at preventing illness in vaccinated people. There will be a small percentage of fully vaccinated people who still get sick, are hospitalized, or die from COVID-19.” The only way to know that “small percentage” is to ensure all breakthrough cases where the vaccinated person is either hospitalized or dies are reported.
The CDC originally reported all breakthrough cases in the vaccinated, but after initial reports from January 1 to April 30, 2021 showed 10,262 breakthrough cases, the CDC abruptly stopped publicly reporting these cases. The CDC announced that: “As of May 1, 2021, CDC transitioned from monitoring all reported vaccine breakthrough cases to focus on identifying and investigating only hospitalized or fatal cases…”
Incredibly, the number of breakthrough hospitalized cases reached almost 5,000 reported cases and the number of reported breakthrough deaths reached 988 despite the fact that many hospitals are not properly reporting breakthrough cases. ICAN has been contacted by healthcare professionals from hospitals across the country who are reporting that breakthrough cases, along with adverse events, are simply not being reported by hospitals.
Conveniently, after the CDC stopped reporting all breakthrough cases, and as hospital systems fail to report such cases, Dr. Fauci and Dr. Walensky have recently been claiming that the current hospitalizations and deaths are in the unvaccinated. On July 4, 2021, Dr. Fauci stated: “if you look at the number of deaths, about 99.2% of them are unvaccinated. About 0.8% are vaccinated. No vaccine is perfect. But when you talk about the avoidability of hospitalization and death…it’s really sad and tragic that most all of these are avoidable and preventable.”
The CDC Director, Dr. Walensky, likewise stated recently that COVID-19 vaccination is so effective that “nearly every death, especially among adults, due to COVID-19, is, at this point, entirely preventable,” and called such deaths “particularly tragic,” the Associated Press reported. Dr. Walensky also said in a White House press briefing that, “preliminary data from several states over the last few months suggests that 99.5 percent of deaths from COVID-19 in the United States were in unvaccinated people. Those deaths were preventable with a simple, safe shot.”
ICAN submitted inquiries to Dr. Fauci and Dr. Walensky requesting the data supporting such statements. The individual responding on behalf of Dr. Fauci said that we “may wish to contact the CDC” or “review[] the [] White House press briefing that discusses mortality COVID-19 data among unvaccinated individuals.” Neither the CDC nor the White House press briefing — which simply quotes Dr. Walensky citing the same statistic without any references or support — have an analysis which justifies these statements.
The CDC itself, which Dr. Fauci’s spokesperson referred us to, has not estimated what percentage of hospitalizations and deaths are in fully vaccinated people, citing limitations in the data. To that end, the CDC acknowledges that “the number of COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough infections reported to CDC likely are an undercount of all SARS-CoV-2 infections among fully vaccinated persons. National surveillance relies on passive and voluntary reporting, and data might not be complete or representative.”
ICAN has not received any response from Dr. Walensky to date.
It seems incredibly misleading to tell the country that all hospitalizations and deaths are in the unvaccinated when the CDC itself does not appear to be capturing or analyzing data to support that assertion. ICAN will continue to fight to reveal the hard truths our health authorities are plainly reluctant to admit and will not stand by idle when those authorities make claims without any support.
