Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) discussed ways to downplay concerns about COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and avoid making “too precise” comparisons between vaccination benefits and natural immunity, according to emails obtained by The Post.
The emails show that CDC leaders held frequent meetings focused on public relations strategies, rather than fully communicating information about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2.
One email dated September 22, 2023, from the agency’s COVID Coordination Unit, described efforts to help Americans “more easily visualize their relative risk of getting very sick” depending on whether they were vaccinated or had used other protective measures. The message stated: “Don’t want it to be too precise of a visualization such that people can infer an exact risk or protection score,” according to the address “covidtransition@cdc.gov.”
The Public Health Reform Alliance uncovered nearly 600 pages of these internal documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
