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CDC Changed What the Word Vaccine Means On Their Site

Merriam-Webster’s followed suit

Michael B. Wharton
4 min readSep 28, 2021
A woman codes an interactive screen.
A woman codes an interactive screen. Freepik.

A spokesperson said that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention edited the meaning of vaccines to be more transparent with us.

The new definition also matches the description of the COVID vaccinations.

Before, the word immunity was part of the entry on the CDC website. It defined jabs with far longer windows of immunity like the Hepatitis A shot.

The shift made it easier to persuade the hesitant.

No vaccine is perfect

CDC representatives use this phrase often.

However, no one asked about perfection.

Everyone asked about immunity, and the answers were about how these vaccines were almost as immunity-producing as conventional ones.

Sometimes it seemed like leaders considered their audience less sophisticated. It might have achieved its goals more efficiently if it had avoided the spin.

Authority figures tend to oversell the vaccines.

Statements that were a little too good to be true were the rule for a while.

Then we would admit that vaccinated folk became infected more than we’d like. We knew that was a…

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Michael B. Wharton
Michael B. Wharton

Written by Michael B. Wharton

Editor of Bold, Abundance and Stealing Fire. Has written for xlr8r and Role Reboot. Formerly NIH, Aol and Revolution Health. michael.wharton.writer@gmail.com

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