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Dr. Wen, a Shanghai-born career health administrator, was a hardcore lockdowner and vaxx pusher during civilization’s recent unfortunate episode. Here she is pushing the vaxx pass:

Here she is advocating masks and shots for kids in Fall 2021, “the most dangerous time in the pandemic”:

So we were shocked last week to find her advocating on behalf of free choice for military personnel in the Washington Post:

It’s time for the Biden administration to end the vaccine mandate for service members. And businesses, universities, schools and other entities that were once justified in implementing these requirements should consider removing them, too.

Public health policy needs to adjust based on evolving science and changing circumstances. When the coronavirus vaccines were first made available, there was a compelling case for requiring them. Initial data showed that they reduced infections by more than 90 percent. In the fall of 2021, when the Pentagon announced its vaccine requirement, an unvaccinated person was five times more likely to be infected compared with someone who was vaccinated.

In other words, if you weren’t vaccinated, you were five times more likely to be infected, and therefore to transmit, the coronavirus to others. In the military, and in other settings involving close contact, such as workplaces and schools, it made sense to implement a measure that protected others.

Things changed with the arrival of omicron. For months, research has shown that while the vaccines provide excellent protection against hospitalization and death, their effectiveness in reducing infection against the omicron subvariants is low and not lasting. One recent study, in Nature Communications, found that effectiveness against infection was about 50 percent in the first three months after vaccination but declined to around 10 percent or below thereafter. Another one, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that there was no difference in infection rates between people who received two doses of the vaccine six months earlier and those who remained unvaccinated.

What about the new bivalent booster that’s designed to target omicron? Again, while protection against severe illness appears strong, effectiveness against infection is not. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 18-to-49-year-olds who received a bivalent booster on top of two or more previous vaccines had a 43 percent reduction in infection compared with those who did not get the booster. For those 50 to 65 years old, that dropped to 28 percent; for those 65 and older, the added effectiveness was just 22 percent.
Importantly, the CDC data only encompassed a two-month period following the booster. Effectiveness against infection likely wanes quickly after that. After six months, if the increase in protection were, say, 10 percent or less, is that enough to justify a mandate?

Leana Wen sounds downright reasonable here. Perhaps her inner Tiger Mom overcame her inner Regime Shill? Still, don’t forget: it took her a year longer than Alex Berenson and company to come to the right conclusions.