On this day, November 21, 1992, Oregon Senator Bob Packwood, issued an apology but refused to discuss allegations that he'd made unwelcome sexual advances toward 10 women over the years.
The party of science passing the buck around on COVID-19 breakthrough cases
At a recent virtual press conference, Lisa Balick a reporter from KOIN News asks what should be a simple question -- how many breakthrough cases do we have? A breakthrough case is one in which a vaccinated person gets the disease.
After all, this isn't something elusive, like an asymptomatic transmission or a problem with collection of data across county lines. Once a case is confirmed by a health care professional, it's not hard to find out if that person was vaccinated. Additionally, they can't be serious when they are suggesting that patient privacy is an issue. No one cares who exactly has a breakthrough case. People only care about how many breakthrough cases there are.
Balick set's up her question simply:
"State across the country, including Washington, are informing the public about the number of breakthrough cases -- in other words, getting COVID after being fully vaccinated. I was told last week that OHA won't provide that information due to privacy, but without providing identifying information, will Oregon provide the number of breakthrough cases to keep the public aware that the vaccine is not 100% effective, but also to encourage people to get tested if they have symptoms after getting the vaccine?"
The answer from those people who claim to be the party of science, is pretty much "go away." They didn't want to provide the data and tried to play the "privacy" card and when that didn't work, they took a page out of the current playbook: "We'll look into that and circle back."
Transparency builds trust and if the number of breakthrough cases is indeed very small, make the number known.
