Paul Offit was platformed on MedPage Today’s tiktok platform, discouraging vaccination — again.
Paul Offit said he wasn’t even sure if he’d get this year’s flu vaccine. Does this guy still work in hospital settings at all? Should he even be allowed at CHOP (Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia) with immunocompromised and cancer patient kids if he refuses to even get the flu vaccine? Someone better warn Dr. Safety for Me But Not For Thee David Rubin, because maybe Dr. Rubin wouldn’t want to be exposed to this colleague in light of this.
The CDC recommends the RSV vaccine for everyone 75+ and for people 60–74 with various chronic conditions that make RSV a bigger risk, or who live in congregate settings. RSV raises blood pressure during infection making blood clots more likely, and over 70% of people over 65 have high blood pressure as a chronic condition — and that’s just one chronic risk condition. But Paul Offit doesn’t mention anything about the chronic condition caveat and simply says he’s not getting the RSV vaccine because he’s not over 75. (Which 75 is inclusive in the CDC recommendations, but let’s move on.)
Paul Offit said he’s getting close to 75 so he is planning to get the latest covid vaccine this year. He claims that his first 3 doses, as a senior citizen, were sufficient because he claims that he has “natural immunity” from a past infection at some point in the past. Even though it’s been shown that any “benefit” in the immune response from an infection wanes far faster than the covid vaccines do. But he’s banking on his B & T cells being good when he’s 74 years old and uses technospeak that could trip up Star Trek actors, to weave a good pretzel logic to rationalize his not getting vaccinated all this time.
I can’t help but notice that there are a lot of seniors and men over 50, who by happenstance of age makes them high risk for covid, and are given a lot of space with op-eds and media attention that serves to undermine senior citizen vaccination uptake. But with Paul Offit it’s worse, because he’s telling this to a big platform, broadcast from a medical outlet social media, SPEAKING AS A DOCTOR, and people will absolutely take this all as medical advice. People including those over 70 with a plethora of chronic conditions who’ve sustained all sorts of covid minimization and both subtle and overt anti-vax misinformation for 4 years straight. (Note: covid minimization is itself undermining vaccine uptake and therefore is anti-vax.)
At least there was some pushback in the comments on tiktok. One person said his casualness seemed dangerous and wondered if he had a crystal ball. Another mentioned that people at their work seem to be catching covid once or twice a year and missing a week or more of work. (I hear this very often.) Another person said they’ve had covid twice in two years and “not all the problems are gone” yet.
And there was someone in the tiktok comments asking for more specific medical advice about vaccination timing. Because people do believe this is medical advice they’re seeing here. When in reality it’s doctor punditry, nothing more. And worse, he was using his position on the FDA VRBPAC vaccine approval committee to lend legitimacy to his assertions to manufacture doubt on getting vaccinated.
This guy should NOT be on the FDA VRBPAC committee and not be platformed by medical news outlets. It sure looks like he’s making a typical transition to being anti-vax. Even Vinay Prasad wasn’t always anti-vax, but he sure is now. If Paul Offit is already talking about “natural immunity” from an infection he had awhile ago, and platforming the message that this is better than vaccination…
And in the past Paul Offit already expressed views where he seemed to be indicating he doesn’t view covid vaccines as vaccines — which is an anti-vax right-wing hot take position actually. Paul Offit seems to think the covid vaccines are merely a social tool to control the amount of hospitalizations for the healthcare system. Paul Offit does not want to curb transmission or reduce severity among young people — he was quoted in CNN in June 2023 saying: “What’s the goal of the vaccine? If the goal of the vaccine is the stated goal, which is protection against severe disease, do you really need a yearly vaccine for otherwise healthy people less than 75?” So he’s entirely dismissing the utility of any level of reducing transmission and severity in all people — including those walking around with risk conditions that haven’t been diagnosed yet who are at risk — which is incredibly common since in 2019 8.5 million adults in the U.S. had diabetes but didn’t know it. Everyone is just one diagnosis away from finding out you’re high risk. Paul Offit also apparently seems to believe working age working class people, should not be allowed to try to avoid symptomatic illness or severity, even though they might need to avoid covid in order to pay the bills and put food on the table because they have no paid sick leave.
But hey, doctor boomer’s personal experience of two days of illness didn’t disrupt his life, so who cares about the hoi polloi amirte? Tools don’t do any good if the tool chest is all locked up. And that appears to be possibly on the Offit agenda. Jeremy Faust of MedPage Today asked Anthony Fauci who he was voting for, but maybe he should’ve asked Paul Offit since it sounds like it could be Donald Trump because Offit seems to be incrementally getting on the same page with Scott Atlas and the Great Barrington Declaration “constant reinfection” strategy.