My prediction on Denmark's vaccination campaign proved mostly correct
Denmark just halted Covid shots for those under 50 who aren't at "increased risk."
This spring I wrote that health authorities in Denmark had suspended their Covid-19 vaccination campaign:
They plan to conduct a “thorough professional assessment of who and when to vaccinate and with which vaccines,” MedicalXpress reports. Vaccinations are intended to be resumed in the fall, according to director of the Danish Health Authority’s department of infectious diseases Bolette Soborg.
I argued the U.S should do the same, since it appears from nation-level data that the shots had done little if anything to curb SARS-COV-2 infections or even Covid hospitalizations. At the time, I wrote, “My instinct as a cynical political writer tells me they will not return to mass-administer mRNA shots in the fall.”
This turned out to be pretty close to what’s happened. After initially announcing that those under age 18 would not be allowed to be vaccinated barring assessment by a doctor that they are at increased risk, the Danes have apparently concluded their “thorough professional assessment” and determined the risks of Covid shots (all mRNA since last March) compared to their efficacy contra-indicate the product for most people under the age of 50.
The first announcement banning the shots for children, followed by this massive rollback just weeks later, leads me to suspect that Danish authorities may push the shots back even further. Perhaps they are waiting to see what happens over the fall/winter season, if the impact of the virus is lesser, greater, or roughly the same. Perhaps they are watching their excess deaths to see if restricting the shots to the over-50s has any effect.
Incremental announcements are how politicians ease constituents into a new norm. (Residents of lockdown states or countries will recall this is how we were eased into “Stay home, save lives.” First they banned gatherings of 100, then 50, then 10, then they shut down “non-essential” businesses, etc.) Could Danish authorities be using a similar tactic to effectively end the Covid vaccination campaign? Perhaps they’ll leave room for extremely high risk people to get annual shots before “Covid season.” I wouldn’t take that possibility off the table.
Meanwhile, the CDC is pushing anyone over 12 to get the “updated” bivalent vaccine (which they don’t want to call a booster, even though it’s not authorized as a primary shot) as soon as 8 weeks after their primary series. No data on the safety of that; just a rushed recommendation. A “simplified message,” as CDC Director Walensky has put it. The FDA received data from 8 mice before authorizing the new product—an attempt to use the “flu shot” model to skirt thorough testing of an update to a product that’s sent VAERS reports of serious adverse events off the charts.
In the U.S., vaccine advisors and decision-makers care about increasing Pfizer’s market share, as Vinay Prasad points out in a recent ‘stack. In Denmark, they seem to actually give a damn about making sure people aren’t unnecessarily harmed. This is one reason why America is a low-trust society and Denmark is not.
Even if they do not roll back the vaccine program any further, critics of mass administration of the experimental gene therapy shots should feel vindicated. This is a formal admission via a concrete policy choice that the shots are not “one-size-fits-all,” that getting the jab is, as el gato malo has frequently put it, a “risk-benefit calculation” just like every other healthcare decision. For the Covid shots, that calculation doesn’t come up positive for many, probably most, people.
If only our own government could admit the same.