THERE MIGHT BE A SIMPLER EXPLANATION.

Hot Air contributor David Strom sounds the alarm about a National Institutes of Health research project that appears to have vanished.  "NIH quashed study because it wouldn't show what they wanted."

The study announcement involves a delay in participants getting their corona shots.

The open-label randomized trial, which began on Thursday, will test whether vaccine prevents both infection and transmission of SARS-CoV-2 among college students, and will "help inform science-based decisions about mask use and about social distancing post-vaccination," [Anthony "Schnickel Fritz] Fauci added.

The NIH-funded study will include 12,000 college students ages 18 to 26 from more than 20 universities, and is expected to last 5 months, Fauci said. One group of 6,000 students will receive their first dose of the Moderna vaccine immediately. The others will serve as controls and will receive their vaccine 4 months later.

All participants will ultimately receive the usual two doses.

Participants will swab their noses daily for SARS-CoV-2 infection, provide blood samples periodically, and complete surveys through an electronic diary app. They will also be asked to follow their university's SARS-CoV-2 protocols and get tested twice each week, according to the study's website.

Anyone who tests positive will be asked to follow additional protocols.

Another 25,000 individuals whom participants name as "close contacts" -- for example, roommates or co-workers -- will also provide blood samples to the researchers, take daily nose swabs for 2 weeks, and answer weekly questionnaires (if they agree to participate, of course).

Right there in that "asked to follow their university's protocols" might be a clue to what came next, even before we get into those close contacts who are invited to participate.  The study, however, went away before the data analysts could fill out a single spreadsheet.  "We are no longer enrolling new participants in the study and are ending the study earlier than anticipated. This is because of the success of COVID-19 vaccination programs across the US! This may mean that your study participation will be shorter than expected."

Did nobody at Hot Air or any of the other Town Hall or Pajamas Media services recall how much bandwidth has gone to slagging on universities for their corona tyranny?  Does anybody recall Schnickel Fritz raising a stink about superspreading events at college football games?  A student who contemplated postponing the course of corona shots into July or August of 2021 might as well be contemplating not enrolling for the fall semester.  Yes, dear reader, Our Political Masters have told us all sorts of misleading things; and somebody disposed to not trust the Wise Experts might suspect that the study discovered the vaccines weren't effective.  I submit, though, that "success of vaccination programs" combined with university inoculation requirements quickly depleted whatever pool the investigators were hoping to set up as a control group.