Earlier this month, the Washington Post broke the news that Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, the CDC's temporary top official, delayed and then blocked a COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness paper from appearing in the agency's flagship scientific journal, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). The manuscript was a typical one for the VISION (Virtual SARS-CoV-2, Influenza, and Other Respiratory Viruses) Network, a research collaborative between the CDC, Westat, and multiple U.S. health systems. Since 2019, the VISION Network has studied vaccine effectiveness using real-world data. Its investigations have routinely been published and widely read over the years.
The censored paper presents data on the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines during the 2025-2026 season. The results suggest that, in the first few months after vaccination (September-December 2025), this year's vaccines were 53-55% effective against hospitalizations among the study's population of adults without immune compromise.
But Bhattacharya appears to believe that the public should not see this work -- or at least that the CDC should not publish solid science carried out, in part, by its own experts.
That's why we have to read it now. The blocked document (scrubbed of metadata) was obtained by Inside Medicine from a source who wished to be described as "someone close to the study."
