Statement by Dr. Aditi Bhargava: 'These Are Not Normal Vaccines'

Bhargava: “My name is Aditi Bhargava and I’m a professor at UCSF and a microbiologist with 33 years of research experience. These are my scientific views…
  
It should not have taken the Massachusetts breakthrough infections this summer to discover that fully vaccinated people are just as vulnerable to being infected and transmit SARS-CoV-2 as the unvaccinated. Had the trials been stringent, had the phase II and III [trials] stuck to the protocols of follow-up, had the regulators enforced manufacturers to study prevention of infection in their clinical trials, this fiasco could have been avoided.
 
Instead, manufacturers configured these trials to study the prevention of mild symptoms and used pre-clinical models, such as the rhesus monkeys, in whom the virus does not cause disease. If all we can do is prevent symptoms and severe disease [then] we should be talking about drugs to treat COVID, not vaccines and mandates. 
  
We lost the opportunity of discovering these major shortcomings by torpedoing the clinical trials. The placebo groups were eliminated just two months after the second dose. Instead, we are learning through trial and error on hundreds of millions of people.  And, we insist on eliminating a very important control group by these vaccine mandates. There is no scientific study or experimental design in which we can learn anything of value without a control group. Certainly not about safety and efficacy. 
 
Persistent high levels of antibodies often indicate […] to the body’s immune system. That is the basis of autoimmune disease. Hence boosters’ long-term adverse events should be taken seriously. The notion that we are in an emergency nearly two years after the pandemic [began] and that should justify cutting corners or taking short-cuts is simply wrong. Trust in scientific methods is at stake.
  
Media reports often state that [the] science is clear. But scientific publications do not think that the science is clear. And as you’ve heard from various testimonies – real people suffered adverse events and perhaps life-long disabilities due to sloppy trials. 
 
I will conclude by asking you. If the vaccines don’t prevent infection and transmission, surely mandating person A to protect person B is pointless? But if the vaccines are effective – in preventing infection and transmission [and] decreasing symptoms, hospitalisations rates and death – then what do the vaccinated fear?”