Marty Makary’s Pro-COVID Vax Stance Means He’s Fundamentally Wrong for FDA Commissioner

Marty Makary is the wrong choice for FDA commissioner. He’s very good at communicating at a popular level, but the fact that he kept pushing the mRNA COVID vaccine long after problems with it were obvious should be an insurmountable barrier to confirmation.

In social media posts and through widely circulated video and news interviews, Makary repeatedly promoted just about every Biden White House talking point about the COVID mRNA vaccines. Even as he did this, he never addressed the thousands of peer-reviewed mRNA vaccine injuries described in the literature and the thousands of unretracted Covid-era journal publications.

Increasing amounts of data indicated that hundreds of thousands of Americans have been crippled or killed by the mRNA vaccines. On top of that, even more were given the ineffective drugs Paxlovid and Remdesivir, which the FDA approved and the CDC heavily promoted.

YouTube screen grab.

Through 2023, Makary ignored dissenters regarding the enormous fight between true scientist-physicians and early drug treatment vs the experimental mRNA vaccine. Only when it was popular and MAGA-like to speak out against COVID vaccine approval and mandates did Makary change his tune, although he never explained his former scientifically and epidemiologically unjustifiable recommendations of yore.

His behavior throughout the COVID vaccine saga shows that he is a political follower, not a scientific leader. He makes important decisions based on how the political wind is blowing, not by careful and complete data analysis.

Here’s a detailed analysis of Makary’s COVID record, not just as to vaccines, but also as to masks and lockdowns.

From the beginning Makary strongly supported universal masking, claiming in his widely-viewed Twitter (now X) account that “masks can be liberating.”

Marty Makary X account.

We’ve had confirmed now that masking is ineffective according to multiple Cochrane analyses. However, it was always understood that masks were ineffective against viruses.

And in praising Japan, Makary ignored that Japan was using early drug intervention, mainly with off-label, inexpensive repurposed treatments such as Nobel Prize winning ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine, the former of which was discovered in Japan.

Elsewhere in his posts and interviews, Makary strongly supported lockdowns, including nationwide lockdowns, now also proven to be ineffective. He did so despite being both a physician-professor and a Harvard-trained epidemiologist who should have known better. Is that what the FDA needs as a leader?

Makary was also a strong backer of the COVID mRNA vaccine, repeatedly stating through social media and numerous interviews that “I’m pro-vaccine.” He still supported mRNA vaccines during the summer of 2023.

That changed abruptly when the political and scientific tide turned. That leaves us with a question: What guiding light will Makary use as the FDA Commissioner?

Makary didn’t only support vaccines for adults. He was advocating them for infants and children despite the emergence of the milder Omicron and subsequent variants even in early 2022, when COVID fatality rates had dropped to only 0.70% (and they were always de minimis in babies and children.)

Thus, Makary promoted mRNA vaccines over social media despite studies published in 2021 in the BMJ which showed that children did not benefit from any vaccination (hospitalization was essentially zero and mortality was zero), and despite evidence of adverse COVID mRNA vax events reported to the FDA soared to astronomical levels.

Still, Makary went onto Fox News and gave a careful, measured, “politically correct” critique of the CDC that wouldn’t ruffle any feathers as he backed the Biden White House mandates for mRNA vaccines for babies, children and adolescents. Note the date on the social media post:

Marty Makary X account.

Saving the worst for last, and in a final slap to making decisions based on scientific fundamentals, during the late summer of 2023 (note date in posting below), Makary was still recommending pregnant women get mRNA vaccines AND boosters over social media:

Marty Makary X account.

When Makary made this recommendation, no clinical trial or epidemiological data supported it because no testing on pregnant women was ever done with mRNA vaccines. There is also zero epidemiology evidence stating that altering the interval as Makary states makes it more or less safe in pregnant women. One must ask why Makary was supporting Biden’s narratives?

While Makary eventually testified against vaccines to Congress, he did so years after many brave scientists and doctors already had, in the process losing their jobs, medical board certifications and livelihoods. Anyone looking for any justification explanation on Makary’s about-face will not find it anywhere on social media or his books. His mind just changed one day when it suited his political aspirations to run the FDA.

In addition to promoting masks, lockdowns, and vaccines (especially for infants, children, and pregnant women), Makary had another blind spot, which was his utter failure to consider repurposed drugs or to challenge the FDA’s refusal to recommend them. There was early evidence that those drugs were effective—and we’ve always known that they’re not harmful.

Overall, Makary additionally never criticizes mRNA safety, school closures or one single Biden mandate, and big pharma corruption within media and America’s federal agencies. His silence continued in his well-received book Blind Spots: Why Medicine Gets it Wrong, and What it Means for Our Health, which was published on September 17, 2024. By then, it was known that the entire COVID narrative was wrong and that the “scientific” basis for reacting to COVID was promoted by big pharma corruption through the media and across all federal agencies.

But where does that leave the millions upon millions of patients who followed Makary’s advice, which was everywhere, whether broadcast on Fox News, his well-followed social media, and his books?

How can Makary claim he is qualified to run the FDA when he presents controversial data in such a manner and simply follows what is popular? How can he serve as FDA chief (or even a Hopkins professor for that matter) when he only presents one heavily biased side of the story and changes his mind without reasoning?

Here is one potential answer: Makary can be persuaded! The question is, by what?

Marty Makary X account.

At the end of the day, one must ask why the White House (or the RFK team, given that it’s unclear who nominated him) is supporting such a flip-flopper?

Why not choose an FDA Commissioner who has always demanded and strictly utilized and analyzed high-quality endpoint data before widely disseminating recommendations to the public?

Makary’s constant flip-flops are not only dangerous medical practice, but they also spell disaster for the FDA right when they need a scientific version of DOGE to crack FDA corruption wide open like a walnut.

Benjamin Rushe is a pseudonym.

American Thinker