Why “Offit’s Dissent” And Its Sidelining by the Biden Administration Is A Critical Warning About The President’s Dangerous Conduct.
Recently Dr. Paul Offit, one of America’s most prominent experts in vaccine immunology and a member of the FDA’s vaccine panel, dissented against the agency’s decision to approve booster COVID-19 vaccinations for young Americans. Despite this very prominent dissent, the Biden administration is allowing booster mandates to go in effect in many American organizations.
Something incredibly important happened recently, but got very little if any real airtime in the media.
One of America’s most zealous, influential and outspoken defenders of mass vaccination, including the COVID-19 vaccine, is Dr. Paul Offit of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Throughout the pandemic, Dr. Offit has been a powerful advocate for rapid development and deployment of the COVID-19 vaccines. But recently, when the FDA panel convened to approve booster shots in young Americans, who were fully vaccinated over 6–8 month prior, Dr. Offit vocally dissented.
His dissent, along with two colleagues at FDA, was expressed in the Washington Post Perspective article, below.
Professor Offit went on to elaborate on the reasons for his dissent at FDA in a recent interview with New York Magazine, below.
Below, you can watch Dr. Offit describe his position on boosters in an interview with C-SPAN’s Washington Journal:
To paraphrase Dr. Offit, he pointed to two rational epidemiological and scientific facts: 1) America would gain far more benefit, epidemiologically, from working to reasonably convince or mandate non-immune persons to get vaccinated, instead of forcing boosters in already vaccinated young people and 2) mandating already vaccinated and otherwise healthy young Americans to get boosters, because of fear of Omicron, will be marginally beneficial to them and potentially prevent acquisition of powerful “hybrid immunity”, from what will only be a mild infection in the vast majority.
The latter point is actually a powerful scientific one — “hybrid immunity” is far more likely to protect against infection by future Variants, which are sure to arise as Omicron itself did, than is the protection from vaccine immunity. And the truth is that if/when another variant arises, which can more fully bypass vaccine immunity, there won’t be enough time for us to create and scale a well adapted vaccine. So, for the vaccinated to acquire “hybrid immunity” from Omicron may not be such a bad thing, after all — especially in lower risk younger persons.
So it is that Professor Offit dissented against mandated boosters in the young and otherwise healthy.
Now, I have not always agreed with Dr. Offit’s perspectives on vaccine “harm” and “one-size-fits-all” mandates. Fundamentally, I don’t think Dr. Offit shares my perspective that we ought to only be vaccinating people who are not already immune. I think he judges my proposal that we shift our national vaccine approach to one involving #ScreenB4Vaccine to be cumbersome and too costly — compared to the streamlined timed vaccine schedule currently in routine use. But in my calculus, in our current way we are vaccinating many who are already well immune unnecessarily — AND establishment of medical necessity is at the root of delivering safe and ethical medical care, vaccinations ought not be an exception to this rule.
Additionally, I do not believe that Dr. Offit sufficiently articulated the case for the “potential harm” of booster mandates in already immune or previously infected young Americans. He stopped short of deviating too far “off the reservation” — and I don’t blame him. “No man’s land”, where dissenters and disruptors of faulty American utilitarian practices are banished, is not a place for a prominent Penn Professor.
Still, I know that Offit’s dissent on booster shots at FDA was an act of professional integrity, ethical scientific thinking and courage — for that, all Americans should thank the professor, Offit.
On the other hand, the fact that Dr. Fauci and the Biden FDA floridly side-lined this prominent dissent on booster mandates by one of our nation’s staunchest vaccine advocates and infectious disease experts, is an ominous sign that the Biden administration’s approach to mass vaccination in the US is dangerous and cannot be trusted. Nor can authoritarian booster mandates imposed on young and otherwise healthy Americans, by glib non-medical administrators — many at our nation’s elite academic institutions where presumably liberal and critical thinking ought to be prevailing.
What Dr. Fauci and Mr. Biden are failing to appreciate is that when American federal leaders, agencies and institutions are incapable of incorporating rational expert dissent, like Dr. Offit’s, into majority consensus actions and policies, they erode the fabric of trust in our representative government. And that, dear reader, is a direct threat to American national security, created by the executive branch itself.
Remember, Offit’s dissent comes from an American expert, whose professional life has been dedicated to the development and implementation of mass scale vaccinations. for Dr. Offit to express doubt and concern about indiscriminate mandated booster vaccination of young Americans should give every rational clinician, regulator, administrator and citizen deep pause. Yet it has not. Why?
Most either ignore this critical dissent or dismiss it in favor of conformity with the liability approach of following majority consensus.
It’s much easier to follow the herd. It’s much harder to be a real leader in America these days!
Thank you Professor Offit.
Hooman Noorchashm MD, PhD
New Year’s Eve 2021
