Julie E. Ledgerwood

Julie E. Ledgerwood is an American allergist and immunologist, who is the chief medical officer and serves as chief of the Clinical Trials Program at the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. She is a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine ¹⁾.

This claims were made during an NIH panel discussion on the Ethics of Vaccine Mandates ²⁾.

• No conflict of interest to disclose.
  • Slide shows: The VRC/NIAID has a research collaboration agreement with Moderna to study COVID vaccines.
• Pfizer efficacy:

• Moderna efficacy:

• Janssen efficacy:

• “Real world” effectiveness:
  • NEJM 384:1962, 2021
  • CDC MMWR Weekly / April 2, 2021
• Studies confirmed vaccine effectiveness over 90%
• Vaccines are typically monitored for safety by VAERS
• Slide: v-safe, VSD, CISA (as additional monitoring systems)
• Unprecedented, multi-layer levels of vaccine safety surveillance.
• Adverse events:
  • Anaphylaxis: 2 to 5 people per million vaccinated. Similar to other vaccines.
  • TTS: CDC and FDA monitoring and watching, lot of research going into why this is happening.
    • It has impacted how the Janssen vaccine is used, and alerted the population to watch for these symptoms.
    • 54 reports confirmed after 16.4 million doses of Janssen.
    • 2 reports confirmed after 437 million doses of Moderna.
    • Slide: Based on available data, there is not an increased risk for TTS after mRNA Covid-19 vaccination.
  • Myo/pericarditis:
    • About half of VAERS reports seem to be valid reports that might be vaccine related, which have to be further evaluated for severity and outcome.
    • Most seen in younger males, and generally self limited.
    • This has been considered thoroughly by the FDA and CDC advisory panels in their Risk Benefit Analysis.
      • (this analysis?) https://web.archive.org/web/20211026200013/https://www.fda.gov/media/153507/download
    • They looked at the risks mentioned above, and the risks of covid to applicable populations, and determined that the benefits of the vaccine far outweigh the risks.
    • This also allowed us to understand how Covid causes myo/pericarditis.
  • Sources: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/adverse-events.html
• The CDC also looked at all cause of death among vaccinated vs. unvaccinated.
  • https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7043e2.htm
  • Vaccinated people have lower rate of deaths (study of 11 million people)
• 1000 people dying of Covid every day in the USA. Largely the unvaccinated.
• Unvaccinated have a tenfold greater risk of death than vaccinated
  • Multiple assessments in multiple states and countries.
• Death rate increased by 15.9% during the pandemic. Life expectancy has been decreased.
• Covid is the 3rd leading cause of death in the USA, after heart disease and cancer.
• More deaths by Covid in 2021 than in 2020.
• Consistent data: case, hospitalization and death rates are far higher in unvaccinated.
  • Risk of death among unvaccinated 14X than vaccinated.
  • This data has been replicated and shown consistently.
  • Vaccinated people are not occupying health care facilities.
  • In Texas, unvaccinated were 20X more likely to die than fully vaccinated.
• Booster study: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2021-11-19/02-COVID-Perez-508.pdf
• Vaccinations that occur in one month intervals are priming series.
• In a 2-month interim analysis, efficacy against symptomatic Covid-19 in boosted group was 95.6%
• Also corroborated by Israel data.
• In Summary: Covid vaccines are safe and effective.