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--:-- Georgia Howe: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reportedly drafted an alert in May of 2021, warning about the link between the COVID vaccine and myocarditis, especially among young men, but never shared it publicly. The agency has not released an official statement about why the warning was never issued, but internal emails reveal staffers were concerned about inciting panic. Documents related to the internal communication were obtained by a FOIA request and published in late January.
--:-- Georgia Howe: I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Sunday, February 4th, and this is an extra edition of Morning Wire. Joining us to discuss the newly exposed memo is Johns Hopkins' Dr. Marty McCary. Dr. McCary, thanks for coming on.
--:-- Dr. Marty McCary: Good to be with you.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So tell us about this CDC memo that was drafted May 21st of 2021. When did it come to light and what did it say?
--:-- Dr. Marty McCary: It came to light in the last few weeks. People at the CDC had evidently prepared an alert that the vaccine can cause myocarditis. They had looked at data from the military and they had seen a signal in the data. This document was obtained by a FOIA or Freedom of Information Act request. And it suggests that there was internal communication concerning about a complication of the vaccine known as myocarditis or heart inflammation, particularly in young men, which is why the military was sort of the population where this signal in the data could be most vivid.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And where does this fit into the timeline in terms of what the CDC was recommending?
--:-- Dr. Marty McCary: So this internal communication at the CDC was in the spring of 2021. At that time, a lot of people were curious whether or not they should be giving their young, healthy children two doses of the vaccine separated by three or four weeks apart. There was a group of us that were concerned about the vaccine schedule having these two doses so close together. And so looking back, the CDC had an opportunity to reduce the thousands or more cases of myocarditis from the vaccine in young, healthy people by doing any one of a number of interventions, separating out the doses by several months, or recognizing natural immunity, or telling some parents that it might have been okay to forego the vaccine or just take one dose if a child was healthy and in a very low-risk demographic.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That was at a time when there were discussions of vaccine mandates that soon hit colleges and high schools around the country. At the same time, ironically, in Europe, they were restricting or banning the Moderna vaccine in people under age 30 for this very reason, for the vaccine-related myocarditis complications.
--:-- Dr. Marty McCary: And within a matter of months, the two top vaccine officials at the FDA would quit their jobs in protest over the vaccine mandate in young people because of this risk of myocarditis.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now COVID itself has been shown to cause cardiac damage. So how does that compare to the damage done by the vaccine?
--:-- Dr. Marty McCary: This is something where the CDC put out information that was not really accurate. They looked at myocarditis rates, looking at everybody in the United States and calculated the risk from the entire population. But we know that older people really don't get myocarditis from the vaccine. It's seen in young people and 10 to 1 in males.
--:-- Georgia Howe: This debate about whether or not myocarditis was more common after the vaccine or COVID itself lingered through most of the pandemic, but the data emerged to be very clear on this. For a young, healthy person, the risk was much higher from the vaccine than it was from COVID itself for getting myocarditis. As a matter of fact, that risk was quantified to be one in 2,600 young males. That's pretty high when you look at a broad population-based recommendation for an infection which had a risk the same or equivalent to that of common cold-type viruses circulating.
--:-- Dr. Marty McCary: A recent study from the University of California, San Francisco, found that in most of the research that had been done on myocarditis after the vaccine, they did not look at that group of people who are young and healthy. And when you do look at young men, that rate, of course, skyrockets in the studies. And that's where the balance really tipped in favor of avoiding the vaccine, at least the second dose in young healthy males, especially when they had COVID already.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now, in Europe, they said the rate is much higher after the Moderna vaccine than Pfizer. And so they actually recommended against the Moderna vaccine in young people, something that could have been done here. But instead, there was a full charge ahead to have a broad blanket recommendation for everybody in part because public health officials thought that was going to be the easiest message to communicate to the public.
--:-- Dr. Marty McCary: You mentioned that spreading out the vaccine schedule could have some benefits. Is the risk of myocarditis particularly acute on that second dose, and specifically if it's administered within a short period of the first dose?
--:-- Georgia Howe: It was very rare to see myocarditis after the first dose, But after the second dose, the body's immune system was sensitized and had a much stronger response to the vaccine. And that response crossed over to actually attack the heart and some of the heart cells. And that's what myocarditis is.
--:-- Dr. Marty McCary: So the CDC has been criticized for not doing a couple basic measures that they could have done to really reduce the rate of myocarditis after the vaccine. They could have recommended spacing the vaccine doses out, something they quietly did, later on in the pandemic. They could have suggested a single dose or even foregoing the vaccine for someone who's healthy or has had COVID in the past, and they could have restricted the Moderna vaccine.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And last question, has the CDC changed their recommendations in response to some of this data that's come out? What's their current recommendation now for young, healthy men?
--:-- Dr. Marty McCary: Right now, the CDC is recommending a fifth booster dose for young, healthy people, even if they've had COVID. This despite a recent study that shows that the vaccine booster does not work in people who have already had COVID in the past. Instead, it's been a blanket recommendation across the board. And that may be why overall uptake rates of the new COVID booster have been very low.
--:-- Georgia Howe: All right. Well, Dr. McCary, thank you so much for coming on.
--:-- Dr. Marty McCary: Thanks for having me.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That was Johns Hopkins, Dr. Marty McCary. And this has been an extra edition of Morning Wire.
