CDC Is Still Putting Out Garbage 'Research'

It's no surprise that the national news media is having a collective meltdown over significant job cuts at the CDC and other top domestic public health institutions. The CDC, as has been obvious to most objective outside observers over the past decade, has, like so many other institutions, revamped itself as an organization dedicated to promoting a specific agenda.

This manifested itself before, during, and after the pandemic with how the CDC operated, its recommendations, its word choices, and the research it chose to publish. By now, the well-documented list of failures and misinformation at the CDC could fill a book. Several books. 

The CDC flip-flopped on masks, with no new supporting research. Then funded low quality research, including a phone survey, to justify masking. Even worse, it then highlighted non-statistically significant results because it supported that agenda. Essentially scientific malpractice, churned out by what's supposed to be an objective institution. 

Of course, the former head of the CDC, Rochelle Walensky infamously claimed on television that CDC data showed vaccinated individuals did not get sick from COVID and did not spread it to others. A completely inaccurate fabrication for which she faced no criticism or calls for accountability.

READ: CDC Director Rochelle Walensky Resigns, So Here’s A List Of Her Worst Mistakes

There's a laundry list of problems with the CDC, from using "birthing person" and "chestfeeding" in communications, to ignoring high-quality evidence that contradicts its preferred viewpoints. And just because the pandemic is over, doesn't mean the CDC's poor work is over. Far from it.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, answers questions at a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on January 11, 2022 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Greg Nash-Pool/Getty Images)

CDC Promotes Inaccurate Study On Vaccinated Children

One of the latest examples of how little has changed with the CDC comes via a new study on rates of "long COVID" in children depending on vaccination status.

Here's how CIDRAP, a health organization based at the University of Minnesota, characterized the results.

"mRNA vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 was tied to a 57% and 73% lower risk of having at least one or two long-COVID symptoms, respectively, in US children ages 5 to 17 years, according to a case-control study led by researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)."

Immediately, the problems with this result are obvious. And it only gets worse when digging deeper. 

"Long COVID" is a poorly understood and defined problem, with some symptoms that are indistinguishable from normal daily life, or from longer-term complications from virtually all respiratory illnesses.

Still, this study is, as is so often the case with CDC-funded research, incredibly shoddy work. As CIDRAP explains, the study was conducted not with specific scientific measurements based on objective observation, but…a survey. 

"The four-site study involved 622 children who were eligible for COVID-19 vaccination when they were infected with the Omicron variant and who completed a post-COVID condition (PCC) survey at least 60 days later. They were enrolled from the Pediatric Research Observing Trends and Exposures in COVID-19 Timelines (PROTECT) study, a longitudinal SARS-CoV-2 surveillance cohort convened in July 2021."

Surveys are generally less reliable than other forms of evidence because respondents are unreliable. People will give answers they think they should, not necessarily accurate ones. Which is one of the many reasons the CDC's effort to use phone survey data to support masking was so quickly and thoroughly discredited. Asking these participants to fill out a survey on their symptoms already makes the conclusions highly questionable. We're not done there.

As if there were any doubts about the perspective and agenda of the researchers involved, the study quickly ends those. 

"Although children typically experience mild symptoms from SARS-CoV-2 infection, PCC can develop following mild or severe COVID-19 illness, and PCC symptoms can be prolonged, debilitating, and contribute to school absenteeism," they write. 

Gee, wonder what their conclusions are going to be, with that level of fearmongering about the impact of COVID on children. 

Even more importantly, the study design itself is inconsistent with the actual definition of a "post-COVID condition," otherwise known as "long COVID." As the researchers themselves noted in their discussion, the definition published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine says that PCC is a "chronic condition that… is present for at least 3 months as a continuous, relapsing and remitting, or progressive disease state that affects one or more organ systems."

But as this study was conducted before that definition was published, they used their own definition. Instead of a "chronic condition" lasting for at least three months, they used "the PCC definition of signs, symptoms and conditions that continue or develop after initial COVID-19 disease or SARS-CoV-2 infection that are present 4 or more weeks after the initial phase of infection."

So the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine says three months of continuous, relapsing and remitting chronic conditions, they used four weeks of signs, symptoms and conditions. And conducted their observations with phone surveys. And still thought that their "results" were worth releasing.

We're not done there either. 

This study only examined the symptoms after children were infected for the first time. What does that mean? It means natural immunity was purposefully excluded. So their comparison focused on comparing children who'd never had an infection or a vaccination with vaccinated children. As COVID infects everyone, it effectively renders this comparison meaningless. 

So to sum up, they compared two wildly different groups, used survey data, all based on a definition of long COVID that was completely inaccurate and disconnected from the "official" definition. And then the CDC released it anyway, getting coverage from friendly public health media outlets like CIDRAP. If that doesn't show why the organization needs a complete overhaul, it's hard to imagine what does.

The CDC is just one of many government agencies to embarrass itself during the pandemic, putting out shoddy research that should never have seen the light of day, all to support an agenda and viewpoint it wanted to sell. It engaged in intellectual dishonesty, disinformation and purposeful misdirection to avoid admitting it had misled the country. 

Instead of basing conclusions on high-quality studies and evidence reviews, the CDC flip-flopped on masks based on a New York Times column by a sociologist. Even after its work during the pandemic caused a tremendous decline in trust among the American public, this study demonstrates the CDC has not learned a single lesson as a result. The CDC will never learn. That's what happens when you put selling an agenda ahead of scientific rigor and accuracy.