Rep Jim Jordan asks questions of Dr. Marty Makary during the House Hearing On Global COVID-19 Vaccinations Efforts about studies on natural immunity.
Rep Jim Jordan Questions Dr Martin Makary About Natural Immunity Studies During the House Hearing On Global COVID-19 Vaccinations Efforts
The Chair now recognizes Mr. Jordan for five minutes.
Rep. Jim Jordan: Thank you Mr. Chairman. Dr. Makary, how many, well let me start with this. What’s the budget at CDC. Do you happen to know that?
Dr. Marty Makary: CDC, it’s about $9 billion, sir.
Rep. Jim Jordan: How about at the NIAID? What’s the budget there?
Dr. Marty Makary: $6 billion.
Rep. Jim Jordan: $6 billion. $9 billion CDC, $6 billion NIAID. What’s what? What about NIH? What’s the budget there?
Dr. Marty Makary: Between 42 and 43 billion.
Rep. Jim Jordan: 42 and 43? If I do the quick math, that’s like 57, 58 billion dollars. That’s annual, right?
Dr. Marty Makary: Annual.
Rep. Jim Jordan: Okay, and you know, how many people work at the CDC?
Dr. Marty Makary: CDC and NIH together about 30,000 people.
Rep. Jim Jordan: 30,000, what about if you add in NIAID, do you know how many that is. Their part of NIH as well, right? So 30, what is that number?
That’s right, 31,000 people between CDC and NIH.
Rep. Jim Jordan: 31000 people spending 58 billion dollars a year. Why hasn’t our government done a study on natural immunity?
Dr. Marty Makary: Okay, if I can be honest. if I can be honest, Representative Jordan, I don’t think they want to know the answer. It would undermine the indiscriminate vaccine vaccination policy for every single human being including extremely low risk people.
Rep. Jim Jordan: So, how many, how many Americans have, have, have got COVID since, since we’ve had this virus? Do you know?
Dr. Marty Makary: North of half of Americans, it’s based on a Columbia University study that showed 1 and 3 had COVID at the end of last year, a year ago.
Rep. Jim Jordan: So, there’s certainly a sufficient sample size to do a study and there’s a 57 to 58 billion dollars, I mean you can use some of that money to do a study. And then, of course, you know you got 30 some thousand people who could conceivably do a study on a pretty fundamental question. Now I think I saw in your opening statement that you’re actually doing a study on natural immunity. Is that right?
Dr. Marty Makary: That’s right with private funding, Johns Hopkins, my research team is doing a study.
Rep. Jim Jordan: Okay, so there’s no grant money coming from the CDC, NIH, something like that?
Dr. Marty Makary: No Sir.
Rep. Jim Jordan: And are any of these 30 some thousand employees helping you with your study.
Dr. Marty Makary: No, sir.
Rep. Jim Jordan: Now, other countries if, if I understand, I think this was in your opening statement as well, other countries have done this study, is that, is that correct?
Dr. Marty Makary: Most of our learnings come from Israel and other countries, yes, sir.
Rep. Jim Jordan: And what have they found? Let’s start with the Israel study. If you could just refresh my memory, what did Israel find.
Dr. Marty Makary: The Israel study is the largest study done worldwide, and it found that natural immunity adjusted for age and comorbidity is 27 times more effective than vaccinated immunity. And they just put out, on December 5th, another study follow, a follow-up study, again affirming similar results, the facts that the natural immunity.
Rep. Jim Jordan: But, but our, but our, the scientists in our government at CDC and NIH, they don’t account for that, they don’t talk about that. What do they say about that study.
Dr. Marty Makary: They never talk, they never talk about it unless asked. Bu,t I would say that they are doing worse than being absent on the topic. They are undermining natural immunity through two studies that the CDC did that are so flawed, that are so poorly put together. Honestly, they would not qualify for a 7th grade science fair. The results cannot be derived from the data, and it’s a disgrace that those two studies were put out because it undermines the larger body of science.
Rep. Jim Jordan: So, they won’t talk about international studies that conclude that natural immunity is 27 times better than the vaccine, but they will do some bogus, two, two, in your word some seventh grade science experiment studies using some of those 33,000 employee and using some of that 58 billion dollars of the American taxpayer money, they will do.
Dr. Marty Makary: That’s right there. That’s fair. I will say that their intention is noble, but just very paternalistic. That is, they believe in from private conversations that if they acknowledge natural immunity, some people may avoid vaccinations and think I’ll just get the infection. We don’t want people to do that, but we can be honest with the data and acreage vaccination at the same time.
Rep. Jim Jordan: I think the American people, particularly ones paying, paying this is their money. They expect honesty and transparency from our government. They don’t expect to be deceived. So I mean, this is what gets me. We can spend money. Some of that 58 billion and some of the resources at NIH and CDC can be used to fund gain-of-function research and give a grant to EcoHealth who then sends some of that money to a lab in Wuhan, China. That’s just fine, but we can’t find any resources to deal with a fundamental question about natural immunity, and so much so, that you have to go out and get private funding to do it yourself.
Dr. Marty Makary: That’ right, the NIH spent twice as much money on aging research last year, the year of COVID, more than they spent on COVID research.
Rep. Jim Jordan: This would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious, and the implications, when you think about these mandates and everything else that’s happening, what it’s doing to our economy, not to mention just being honest with the American people who, after all, it’s their money. But, but yet we have, we have the head guy, Mr. Fauci, Dr. Fauci saying I represent science, but he’s afraid to actually do the science, and do the studies that need to be done to answer this question. And we have to rely on international studies and your private study to get the truth to the American people.
Dr. Marty Makary: We subjected 72 million children too intense restrictions for 2 years, yet we don’t have the most basic research. We’ve never had an NIH funded study on masks and kids, and we’ve never had any information revealed by the CDC on whether or not any healthy child has died of COVID.
Rep. Jim Jordan: Well, Doctor, it’s either, it’s either they know the answer and don’t want the American people. They know the answer and don’t want the American people to know, or they do know the answer and are trying to hide it. I mean, it’s like, they know the answer or they’re not, they’re not sure they should say, or they know the answer and are trying to hide it from the American people. It’s one of those two!
Dr. Martin Makary’s Opening Statement at the House Hearing On Global COVID-19 Vaccinations Efforts
Dr. Marty Makary: My name is Dr. Makary. I’m a public health researcher at Johns Hopkins. By way of background, I studied epidemiology at Harvard school of public health where I received a Masters in Public Health, and served on the faculty of Johns Hopkins School of Public Health for the past sixteen years. I also take care of surgical patients including the immunocompromised patients.
I would like to personally ask you to consider new scientific data that tells us that some COVID policies have become too extreme, too rigid, and are no longer driven by clinical data. Take, for example, boosters in children who already had COVID. When pharma announced on Wednesday that they did a lab experiment which shows that boosters raise antibody levels against Omicron without releasing the underlying scientific data, the CDC immediately urged everyone 16 and 17 years old to get a booster. Is this what we’ve come to? Pharma tells people what to do in a press release and the CDC just falls in line?
Meanwhile, Germany just reported no healthy child 5 through 17 has ever died of COVID in the first 15 months of their pandemic, with nearly all of those children unvaccinated. The CDC has never told us if any U.S. COVID deaths in the U.S. For children have been in healthy children and Germany, France and other countries now restrict the Moderna vaccine from people under age 30 because of concerns of heart heart complications.
Now, I’m very pro vaccine. I’ve been vaccinated, but we have a modern day McCarthyism if somebody asks a question about boosters in young people. Remember, just 12 weeks ago the FDA external experts voted against boosters for everybody by a 16 to 2 vote, and for good reasons. But weeks after that vote the FDA made another internal push to reign through boosters for all, but this time they inexplicitly did not convene their experts, their external experts. The CDC did the same. As a result, they got their broad booster recommendation by circumventing their external experts who opposed it. Public Health official experts justify it by claiming to declining antibody titers, but they ignore and continue to ignore the powerful T-cell immunity which a study just last week, done by NIH itself, found to be highly effective against Omicron.
Vaccine doses are now being used to boost young people without any supporting clinical data. Those vaccine doses to boost young people should be going to the 93% of the population of the world in low income countries who have received no vaccine. Let me be clear. There is nothing that represents American waste, excess, and global arrogance more than requiring a young, healthy, low-risk student, who had the infection in the past and already has natural immunity, to get a booster, yet dozens of colleges and universities have already announced this as a requirement. I believe in mammograms and believe they save lives, but I don’t recommend them universally for men or children. We need precise medical guidance, not blanket medical guidance that’s good for marketing departments. If the U.S. wants to help struggling countries ration their limited vaccine supply in the midst of epidemic, tell them to recognize natural immunity and have those who’ve had COVID step aside in the vaccine line to protect those who are vulnerable faster with the life-saving vaccine. That’s what we should have done.
Over 20 scientifically sound studies have demonstrated that natural immunity is as good or better than vaccinated immunity, yet public health care officials continue to ignore it, they in fact, never talk about it. Why don’t they do their own study of people who had the COVID infection 20 months ago in New York, test their bloods and interview them? Why have they never done that study with their gigantic budgets, instead they say it’s unknown. Well, my research team is doing that study because the government has failed to do it. Teachers, nurses, soldiers, they have circulating antibodies from prior infection. They have antibodies that neutralize the COVID virus, but they are antibodies the government does not recognize. As a result, careers have been destroyed and medical privacy is essentially dead.
The U.S. can also show leadership with medications, Fluvoxamine, and inhaled budesonide, a steroid inhaler, both have been around for years. Both are inexpensive. Both have impressive randomized control trial data that show they dramatically reduce COVID deaths. Why do we never hear our public health leaders talk about them? These are not medications with the controversies of Hydroxy and Ivermectin. These are solid, randomized, controlled, trial supported interventions. Paxlovid cut COVID hospitalizations by 91%. The application has been sitting at the FDA for four weeks as Americans die every day. Molnupiravir had its up vote by the external experts two weeks ago. What is the FDA doing, two weeks after the experts vote to authorize the medication?
Finally, anyone in the world getting vaccinated today with an mRNA vaccine should space it out to at least three months. That data is in. Many of us begged U.S. policy makers to do this. The UK actually did it as a broad policy, makes sense. Why would you give two life preservers to people in an ocean when some are drowning with none? The data are now in, the experiments over, the UK did it right, we did it wrong, yet Uganda had approximately 1% of its population vaccinated when the president announced they’ll use a new shipment of almost 700,000 vaccines for second doses following U.S. guidance. As the world rations a scarce vaccine supply, they should learn from our mistakes, not repeat them. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
