Besides leading to increased COVID deaths due to fewer vaccinations, Kulldorff said, the vaccine pause also was likely to decrease people’s trust in vaccines. Public trust in COVID vaccines has been shaky, with the percentages of poll respondents saying they wouldn’t get such a vaccine fluctuating between 21 and 50 percent since last July. Hesitancy about vaccines in general has also increased in the past decade.

Both pausing the J&J vaccine and refusing to acknowledge its low blood clot risk can increase vaccine hesitancy that can damage lives, Kulldorff said: “It reduces the confidence in vaccines that is unnecessary and damaging. All of us who work with vaccines know about this vaccine hesitancy and we work hard to maintain confidence in vaccines.”

Two methods for reducing hesitancy are public transparency and early detection of negative outcomes, he said. That’s why he recommended keeping the Johnson and Johnson vaccine on the market while also encouraging women at risk of blood clots from it to take one of the other two COVID vaccines.

Instead, the CDC communicated unwarranted certainty about the vaccine to the public, potentially costing lives. //

Kulldorff has repeatedly publicly stated that he does not support “let it rip,” but “focused protection” of well-known high-risk populations, such as the elderly and those in nursing homes. In a March panel with DeSantis, for example, Kulldorff said, “Lockdown is just a form of ‘let it rip,’ but at a little bit of dragging it out more, and by dragging it out more it actually makes it more difficult people for older people to protect themselves, because they have to do it for a longer time. So ‘let it rip’ is not a good strategy.” He also publicly countered the John Snow claim that natural COVID infection does not confer immunity.

Given this, the CDC pushing Kulldorff out of helping oversee vaccine safety systems he helped invent smacks of retaliation against a scientist who has dissented against scientifically indefensible positions repeatedly communicated to the public by top CDC officials.