Notes & Transcript: https://chloehumbert.substack.com/p/dont-take-vaccines-for-granted
A written post almost the same as this podcast can be found in my pandemic newsletter. There is also a transcript of this podcast below the notes.
References:
Rand Waltzman on Linkedin: Strategies for Manufacturing Doubt (6) - Appeal to Mass Media, - Appeal to journalistic balance - Develop relationships with media personnel - Prepare information for media personnel - Invoke the Fairness Doctrine, Take Advantage of Target's Lack of Money / Influence - Silence or abuse individuals by - out-spending - exploiting a power imbalance, Normalize Negative Outcomes - Normalize the presence of negative effects - Reduce importance - Make them seem inevitable
Are they really planning an anti-vax military retiree interahamwe in America? If the far right wrests power, the best case scenario is that possibly medical technology gets shelved and masks and vaccines are maybe banned. The worst case scenario is... worse. CHLOE HUMBERT MAY 28, 2024 Raiklin claims ex-military people who are resentful toward the vaccines are expecting to be deputized by local county officials…
[The Internet Archive Wayback Machine copy of] ForbiddenNews Substack - Ivan Raiklin Tells NPR Producer of the "Patriotic & Peaceful" Retribution that's Coming - MAY 17, 2024 Zoe Chace is a producer for a radio show called This American Life that airs on public radio stations, like NPR. She bumped into Ivan Raiklin at a Congressional hearing on Wednesday and wanted to do an impromptu interview with him, noting that he calls himself the "Future Secretary of Retribution" on his Twitter profile.
Tennessee Moves to Classify 'Vaccine Lettuce' as a Drug Published Apr 01, 2024 at 10:02 AM EDT A bill that would classify as a drug certain foods with vaccine materials added to them was passed by the Tennessee Senate and now awaits Governor Bill Lee's signature into law amid concerns about research on putting immunity boosters into lettuce.
Vaughn, what team is he actually on? A second opinion on the politics of the pandemic healthcare landscape. Chloe Humbert · May 8, 2024 Sharyl Attkisson interviews Pierre Kory and Jordan Vaughn together at the FLCCC conference in Phoenix Arizona in April 2024.
Alex Jones compared vaccinated people to dead cows. wat3rm370n - tumblr - Jul 1st, 2024 The podcast also highlighted how Alex Jones still advertises colloidal silver as a health product, along with toothpaste without fluoride. Silver is not recommended as a remedy for anything. And if you’re not familiar with the fluoride conspiracy fiction, Angela Collier has a really good funny explainer about fluoride on youtube.
Journalist thinks covid is no longer political — just “trusts” right-wing covid denial. When the satire is the reality, and all else falls under the laws of Poe and Brandolini. CHLOE HUMBERT APR 03, 2024 Only this time they’re trying to convince Democratic ticket voters that Trump is probably fine actually, and that anti-vax is in the right! That we can relax and trust that it’ll be fine!
Anti-mask Woke-washing. The moral distortion of social justice. CHLOE HUMBERT AUG 31, 2023 State Government Leadership Foundation openly bragged on social media about an advertising campaign that specifically targeted liberals to persuade them of the lie that masks supposedly do more harm than good.
Stop Mask Bans. Defend our human right to mask protection. - Mask Together America
Democracy Americana The Anti-Liberal Left Has a Fascism Problem Prominent leftwing intellectuals are allowing their singular, disdain-driven focus on (neo-) liberalism to completely distort their perspective on the Right THOMAS ZIMMER MAY 24, 2024 I’d be very interested to find out what happened here. Maybe I missed something, but I couldn’t find an acknowledgment anywhere in the anthology that the selected pieces might have been altered and updated. In the credits, it merely says “reprinted.” The update, clearly, has been made to reflect that something major had happened in between the original publication and the reprint, something that in many ways directly contradicted a key argument.
by: Chloe Humbert 2021-02-03 Letter to Joe Biden about mask bans in Feb 2021
Students not currently affected by UT campus ban for people arrested in pro-Palestinian protest Lily Kepner Austin American-Statesman April 26, 2024 Other university rules bar the refusal to identify oneself during a protest, attempts to camp or sleep on property later than 10 p.m., disrupting operations, using amplified sound, coercing attention or wearing masks.
NC Health News - Doctors rail against proposed ban against public masking The former surgeon general in the Trump administration criticizes N.C. bill that would do away with a pandemic-era law that allowed face masks for public health reasons. by Anne Blythe May 20, 2024 “Politicizing what is fundamentally a health issue for a cheap shot at the Israel-Gaza debate is unconscionable,” Wolfe told NC Health News.
Gothamist - Gov. Hochul considering banning people from wearing masks on NYC subways By Jon Campbell Published Jun 13, 2024 In a news conference at the state Capitol on Thursday, Hochul said she has started discussions with Mayor Eric Adams and state lawmakers about what a mask crackdown would look like and how to craft exemptions for health and religious reasons. The mayor’s office confirmed it was looking into the issue. But Hochul made clear she wants to see mask restrictions in some form, which she believes would help deter crime on public transit.
The New Republic - Los Angeles’s Mayor Was Contemplating a Mask Ban. She Just Got Covid. Karen Bass floated banning masks for protesters days before coming down with Covid-19. Edith Olmsted June 28, 2024 The incident came on the heels of other large protests across the country, which had left Governor Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Eric Adams eyeing the reinstatement of a mask ban for protesters, both saying they felt the anonymity masking provides had emboldened protesters to commit violence. Meanwhile, the city is undergoing a renewed wave of Covid-19, which neither politician deigned to consider.
WRAL - 'Scared to put on my mask': Cancer patient says she was intentionally coughed on in spat over mask The Republican-led state House passed a bill Tuesday that would adjust exceptions to the state law governing masks. The bill is awaiting a decision by Gov. Roy Cooper. June 12, 2024 Shari Stuart is undergoing treatment for stage 4 cancer and has a weak immune system due to medication she takes. On Wednesday, she said, she parked her car at a Cary oil-change service station and slipped on a mask before walking into the shop. As she walked in, she was confronted by a man who shouted expletives and called her a liberal for wearing the mask. The man identified himself as a conservative, she said, and he falsely told her that wearing a mask in public was illegal. According to Stuart, she told the man that it was dangerous for her to go into public without a mask because of her diagnosis. It’s not a political statement, she said, and she showed the man a medical card describing her condition. He then proceeded to approach her and feigned coughing on her repeatedly before telling her that he hopes the cancer kills her, she said.
Syracuse University News - Mask Bans are a Heavy Burden for People with Disabilities Wednesday, June 26, 2024, By Ellen Mbuqe Reporters looking for anyone to discuss the issues around limitations for face masks, please consider Associate Professor of Law Katherine Macfarlane, the director of the disability law and policy program at Syracuse University College of Law. To give you a sense of her perspective, Professor Macfarlane said:“The bans would pose an immediate risk to people with disabilities who need to wear masks to protect themselves—from airborne illnesses like COVID-19, for example. It is difficult to imagine how a disabled person would be able to convincingly defend their mask-wearing to a police officer,” said Macfarlane. “Even if an exception to the bans were created for people with disabilities, the bans would still force people to disclose a disability they would rather keep confidential. And if an officer doesn’t believe them (as so often happens to people with invisible disabilities), what happens—they’re arrested?”
Going Deep with Russ Baker Contrived Anti-Vaxxer “Exposé” on WhoWhatWhy Writer Reveals Movement Strategy I could see right away that it was some kind of hit piece APR 07, 2024 Two doctors promoting the counter-scenario aggressively pursued her, and a process server even gained access to her apartment building to dramatically serve her at her door. And — on advice of counsel to avoid a long, drawn-out litigation (though they were certain she would win) — she agreed to a very measured apology of sorts in return for their dropping their action. The apology relates to minor mistakes or transgressions — trivial in their impact compared to the consequences of the allegedly bad science that Neitzel was calling out.
Death Wish From...A Doctor MISINFORMATIONKILLS JUL 02, 2024 “You are all traitors and corruptocrats and deserve to rot in hell, and to get there by a most painful and prolonged death. You bastards are co-conspirators with Tony Fauci, responsible for millions of deaths because of his evil response to the COVID ‘plandemic’. Repent and live, continue with. Your evil ways and die. Most Sincerely, Roger Kimber, MD.”
Stein, Michael D., 'If Public Health Work Is Preventive, It’s Invisible and Becomes Visible Only During Crises', Me vs. Us: A Health Divided (New York, 2022; online edn, Oxford Academic, 17 Nov. 2022), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197637562.003.0003
People's CDC CDC recommends updated 2024–2025 COVID vaccines for all ages! Thanks to your advocacy, CDC decides on universal vaccination for the upcoming vaccine formulations JUL 01, 2024 Thanks to your public comments, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted 11-0 to recommend the 2024–2025 updated COVID vaccinations for all ages (6 months and up). Prior to this meeting, the eligibility criteria for the anticipated fall rollout of the 2024-2025 COVID vaccine formulations had not yet been determined. Two major options were considered: a risk-based recommendation (for example, only certain age groups or people with certain medical conditions would be eligible) or a universal recommendation (all ages would be eligible, regardless of medical history). Your comments made a difference.
MedPage Today - Who Really Needs a Yearly COVID Booster? — "We will have the biggest impact by focusing on high-risk groups," Paul Offit says by Emily Hutto, Associate Video Producer September 27, 2023 I think anybody who wants to get a vaccine certainly should be encouraged to get it, but I'm not sure why we made that recommendation. Maybe it's because we have, to some extent, a dysfunctional healthcare system and we fear that by making a targeted recommendation, private insurers won't then cover those other people who live or work in nursing homes, or who live in the home of someone who's immune compromised.
The Philadelphia Inquirer - Paul Offit, Philly’s most vocal vaccine advocate, on science, truth, and why he’s not a fan of the latest COVID boosters. Nov 8, 2022 by Jason Laughlin A proponent of the new booster shots, Bob Wachter, chair of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said the risks of additional shots are so minimal even a little more protection is worthwhile. He still respects Offit’s position.
Beyond the Noise - Do We Really Need a Yearly COVID Vaccine? On June 15th, an FDA Vaccine Advisory Committee picked the strain for “this year’s” vaccine. PAUL OFFIT JUN 20, 2023 For now, yearly booster dosing is probably best reserved for groups that are at highest risk of severe disease, such as people with multiple comorbidities, people over 75, people who are immune compromised, and people who are pregnant.
CDC ACIP meeting September 12, 2023 CDC ACIP Covid-19 Vaccines Work Group: “Shared clinical decision making could create barriers to vaccination and may not effectively target those at highest risk.”
Institute of Medicine (US) Committee for the Study of the Future of Public Health. The Future of Public Health. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 1988. 3, A History of the Public Health System. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK218224/ From the 1930s through the 1970s, local, state, and federal responsibilities in health continued to increase. The federal role in health also became more prominent. A strong federal government and a strong government role in ensuring social welfare were publicly supported social values of this era. From Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s through Johnson's Great Society of the 1960s, a federal role in services affecting the health and welfare of individual citizens became well established. The federal government and state and local health agencies took on greater roles in providing and planning health services, in health promotion and health education, and in financing health services. The agencies also continued and increased activities in environmental sanitation, epidemiology, and health statistics. Federal programs in disease control, research, and epidemiology expanded throughout the mid-twentieth century. In 1930, the National Hygienic Laboratory relocated to the Washington, D.C., area and was renamed the National Institute of Health (NIH). In 1937, the Institute greatly expanded its research functions to include the study and investigation of all diseases and related conditions and the National Cancer Institute was established as the first of the research institutes focused on particular diseases or health problems. By the 1970s NIH grew to include an Institute for Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke, an Institute for Child Health and Human Development, an Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, and an Institute of Mental Health, among others. In 1938, Congress passed a second venereal disease control act, which provided federal funds to states for investigation and control of venereal diseases. In 1939, the Federal Security Agency, housing the Public Health Service and national programs in education and welfare, was established. The Public Health Service also continued to expand. During World War II, the Center for Disease Control was established, and shortly thereafter, the National Center for Health Statistics. (Hanlon and Pickett, 1984) Federal programs supporting individual health services and state programs also continued to grow, both in number of health problems and types of citizens addressed. The Social Security Act was passed in 1935. One title of the act established a federal grant-in-aid program to the states for establishing and maintaining public health services and for training public health personnel.
NPR Can't Help Falling In Love With A Vaccine: How Polio Campaign Beat Vaccine Hesitancy. May 3, 2021 By Susan Brink An army of volunteers for the March of Dimes, largely mothers, went door to door, distributing the latest information about polio and the effort to stop it; they also asked for donations. As little as a dime would help, they said. And the dimes and dollars poured in, Oshinsky says, handed to the volunteers, or inserted into cardboard displays at store checkout counters or placed in envelopes sent directly to the White House. Cases of polio may have peaked in the U.S. in 1952 with nearly 60,000 children infected. More than 3,000 died. (By comparison, roughly a year's worth of comparable statistics for the COVID-19 pandemic reveal more than 32 million reported cases in the U.S. so far and more than 573,000 deaths.) The years-long campaign of information and donations to the polio eradication effort made anxious Americans feel they were invested in a solution, Stewart says.
Slate - The Loneliest Anti-Vaxxer. Even the popular polio shot had its haters. By Nick Keppler, Nov 26, 2021 Under the banner of his organization, Polio Prevention Inc., Miller distributed hair-raising mailers with claims like “Thousands of little white coffins will be used to bury victims of Salk’s heinous and fraudulent vaccine.” A self-made shampoo magnate, he was one of the few malcontents who publicly campaigned against the polio vaccine. His crusade shows that even during a public embrace of the polio shot that many people frustrated at COVID anti-vaxxers have held up as the ideal reaction to a new lifesaving vaccine, there was dissent, some of it as vitriolic as that you find in the corners of Twitter that swap anti-Fauci memes and Bill Gates rants—and just as weird. To Miller, “polio” was not an infectious disease. It was a state of malnutrition caused by midcentury American diets, particularly soft drinks—his mortal enemy. “Disease and malfunction do not ‘strike’ us; we build them within ourselves,” he wrote in one of his two-sided handbills.
Transcript:
I'm Chloe Humbert, and I want to say, please don't take the vaccines for granted. In fact, don't take anything for granted. It's clear that we can't. There are big money interests attacking vaccines and anyone who promotes them. And they told us at the CDC ACIP meeting that they will continuously consider restricting COVID vaccines based on cost. The tricky thing with preventing something bad from happening is that the bad thing doesn't happen, and so people take for granted that it didn't happen and can feel smug in saying it never would have happened anyway. It's actually how things typically work. Historically, change has actually come driven by a small portion of people dedicated to action who are the first to speak up and push things along. And then later, after the fact, there's more broad support. And then people take it for granted, assume there was always universal support,that it was always a given, forget about the work that went into it and the people who made it happen, and then only find out when it's gone or seriously threatened. Worse, if something happens after prevention is rejected, the default is to claim it was inevitable. In the case of COVID vaccine restrictions, I can lay out the evidence that we need to keep lobbying to prevent the withholding of the vaccine from universal access. It is absolutely not fear-mongering to be concerned about vaccine access being taken. Recall how some said abortion access was guaranteed and that Roe v. Wade was settled law? We're already facing the closure of the bridge program through defunding. There are posse comitatus militia groups made up of people described as being angry about being forced out of the military by being compelled to get vaccinated, who are revving up to be deputized to do live streamed swatting raids to people on enemy shit lists, presumably like Peter Hotez or Anthony Fauci. And who knows where this ends? This isn’t a made up concern, people involved are openly stating their plans. And how can anyone be so unaware that MAGA right-wingers are trying to take away even vaccines, eventually from everyone, for every disease. The Republicans are trying to ban lettuce in Tennessee over vaccines. And the anti-vax propaganda has made it into every nook and cranny across the political spectrum, too. I now see people with Long COVID now blaming vaccines after going to or following anti-vax doctors who push ivermectin. There was a zine that's supposedly for lefties, but it was pushing pseudoscience popular with QAnon wellness influencers. And the zine was also advertising a very expensive concierge clinic that was recommending colloidal silver like they're Alex Jones or something. A supposedly liberal journalist from Milford, Pennsylvania, had an op-ed published in Salon where he argues to not do anything to avoid COVID because he's getting along with his Trumper neighbors by not getting vaccinated and not masking anymore. He essentially was saying COVID mitigations were no longer political because he was no longer doing much to avoid COVID. I was surprised the op-ed didn't just end with, don't beat em, just join em. Salon didn't even have a fact checker correct his citation of vaccination rates based on old information. Uptake on the latest vaccine is horribly low. This journalist is a senior citizen and was either unaware that there was an updated vaccine or at least didn't want to mention it in his op-ed. To be considered fully up to date on vaccination, you need to have been vaccinated with the latest. I guess he may have just been saying everyone should become anti-vaxxers in order to get along with their QAnon neighbors. We know that a corporate conservative think tank ran ads targeting liberals to make Democrats hate masks. It feels like there have been numerous high-profile pieces in major publications to either turn people against vaccines or manufacture doubt and confusion. And there's a distinct trend in op-eds to just tell people to relax and let the Trumpism happen. But we have news that the updated vaccines will be soon available for people ages six months and older. This is great news. But how did we get here? Let's review the discussion of the COVID vaccine in the CDC ACIP meeting. This is where the recommendation came from. ACIP stands for Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. It's a committee within the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On day two of the meeting, on June 27, 2024, the matter of what recommendation to give out on the FDA-approved updated COVID vaccines for 2024. This determines what is approved and paid for by insurance and what vaccines people are allowed to get. Was universal recommendation a foregone conclusion? No, it was not. This is Dr. Jamie Loehr, MD, FAAFP. “I'm torn between the recommendation for universal versus risk-based. especially for younger people where the burden of disease is lower and the cost effectiveness is much higher, as Dr. Long just noted. I came in here thinking that I was more in favor of risk-based, and I wanna say that because of your presentations today, I'm actually more in favor of universal. I do want to make a sort of longest comment. We got about 4,000 public comments, written comments to the ACIP for this meeting. Of the over 3,000 comments that concerned COVID, The ones I reviewed, over 95% of them were in favor of a universal recommendation. I was very surprised when I saw that. And so it seems that at least the public who are commenting are very in favor of a universal recommendation and want the opportunity to get their vaccination. And I'm also very aware that there are a number of vaccine preventable diseases that we recommend now, which probably do not have great cost effectiveness data, which have lower hospitalization rates and have lower death rates than we have with COVID right now. And so on balance, I'm in favor of the universal recommendation.” Dr. Loehr was more in favor of risk-based before this meeting, was torn over it, in fact. But after seeing presentations and noting that 95% of the public comments he went through about COVID vaccines were in favor of universal recommendations, he thinks people do want to get vaccinated now and decided in favor of universal recommendation. This is Dr. Denise Jamieson, MD, MPH. “I just wanted to underscore what Dr. Loehr just said. I was really struck with the number of hospitalizations and deaths from COVID in the pediatric population compared to the annual rates of hospitalization and death for other vaccine preventable diseases prior to vaccine. And so I think it's really important that we not get too caught up in cost effectiveness currently. If we compare it to other vaccine-preventable diseases, it seems like a really good investment.” Do I really need to say that our lives, our health, and our safety shouldn't boil down to cost-effectiveness in a situation where billionaires spend billions on things that nobody even wants? Like AI chatbots creating disinformation campaigns and replacing good art with AI slop? There's plenty of money. It's just not being spent wisely or in a way anybody wants. This is Dr. Matthew Daly, M.D., “I think when we look at the cost-effectiveness ratios in pediatrics, we need to keep in mind, is there burden preventable through those vaccines? And is it an efficient use of resources? And in order to answer that question, I think we need to take not a comparison to COVID vaccination in older adults, but a comparison to cost effectiveness of other vaccines. And in order for us to make decisions about whether it's an efficient use of resources, we would need essentially a cost effectiveness threshold that we apply equally across all vaccines. Okay. That comment should not be taken as sort of support of sort of profligate use of resources. I think what we need is vaccine costs go down, cost effectiveness goes up, and we need to recognize the burden in pediatric age groups. Okay, so then taking a big step back, You know, I just want to highlight for everyone that's listening that we, in August of 2023, brought to the workgroup, are you in favor of risk-based strategy or are you in favor of universal strategy? And the workgroup at that time said, reached a consensus that they were in favor of a universal strategy. That's August of 23, voted on in September 23. And then that same question was brought to the work group in March of 2024, and the consensus of the work group was that they were in support of a universal strategy. But that is recognizing, integrating, and interpreting all the data that Dr. Panagiotakopoulos just ran through for us. And also putting into the context what Dr. Jamieson just said about burden in pediatric age groups, morbidity and mortality from COVID compared to other vaccines, which we willingly vaccinate against.” This is Dr. Helen Keipp Talbot, MD, MPH. “I think... we're at a position where we still have a lot of morbidity and mortality in kids. And we feel compelled to make sure we protect them, which is the right thing to do. However, I'm not sure that the cost is sustainable. So it really needs to be taken into account that as we continue this program, It is a yearly program and has yearly high costs. And I anticipate as more and more of society is exposed either to vaccine or disease, it will become much less cost effective than it already is. So I think in the idea of keeping this a sustainable practice from year to year, we will need to have a less expensive vaccine to make this work.” This is Dr. Jamie Loehr, MD, FAAFP. “But if I'm just facing this individual decision right now, the cost effectiveness of the younger children is concerning to me. And as I mentioned earlier, the cost of the COVID vaccines are about five times, if not more, expensive than the flu vaccine that we're recommending on a regular basis. And so I guess I would still like to make another encouragement for the manufacturers to take that into consideration, that we have a very good vaccine that protects against hospitalizations and deaths, And yet it's very expensive and a large portion of the population is going to have a hard time affording this in the future as the Bridge program goes away.” The Bridge program doesn't need to go away. That's a political decision. But I hope this makes it clear that it was not a foregone conclusion that universal recommendation would have happened now or going forward in the future either. This isn't set it and forget it. We can't trust that things will remain. Surely all of these Supreme Court decisions have made that clear. They're telling us in the Project 2025 document about their plans. They didn't stop at complaining about mask requirements. They're now banning masks. What on earth would make you think that they'll ban masks but not vaccines? Roe v. Wade was quote-unquote settled raw, right? In 2021, Corey Robin had an essay published in the New Yorker magazine arguing that fear of fascism and the overturning of Roe v. Wade was overblown and essentially alarmist. All these people said that Roe v. Wade was settled law, don't worry. Then, a year after that was published, Roe v. Wade was struck down by the Supreme Court. Historian Thomas Zimmer pointed out that after that happened, apparently the New Yorker magazine quietly changed the wording in Corey Robins' article, apparently to move the goalposts to keep chastising people as overreacting, but acknowledging that what they said wouldn't happen absolutely happened! Within weeks of Joe Biden becoming president, even before mask mandates were tossed away, I was prioritizing writing to Joe Biden pleading for proactively recognizing the right to mask for one's personal health and safety on the job. I heard about many people who were forbidden to mask early in the pandemic by their employers, and I knew this was bound to happen again. And it did. Over a year ago, news reports were coming out about In-N-Out Burger banning employees masking and others. And I've heard on forums for ages about people being pressured to unmask at work, being pushed out, or losing their jobs. But there were moderate voices who said, don't worry. The Trumpers just don't like mandates. They just want to get rid of the mandates. They just don't want people telling them what to do. You can always one-way mask if you want to. Never mind how that isn't the case of the dentist, the DMV, or at an endoscopy. In those situations, we really do need others to mask for our safety, just like in surgery or many other situations. But there are so many assurances that worrying about this, worrying about being banned from masking was alarmist because of course nobody would be barred from masking or prevented from wearing an N95 respirator. Many of us were lambasted and ridiculed for being concerned about this. It was, quote-unquote, fear-mongering by crazy people, right? But now we have mask bans that have since been coming to fruition on college campuses, by employers, by businesses, and by actual laws pushed by state GOP politicians in North Carolina, and even Democrats in New York and elsewhere. People are riled up to attack other people based on laws that don't even exist yet. Just the proposal of a mask ban in North Carolina led to a story in the news about a cancer patient in North Carolina being, quote, “confronted by a man who shouted expletives and called her a liberal for wearing the mask. The man identified himself as a conservative”, she said, and he falsely told her that wearing a mask in public was illegal. something that was not yet passed in the legislature. But it is now, and heaven only knows what someone like this could be emboldened to perpetrate on a cancer patient. This is real, and this is happening. Physician Alison Neitzel is regularly being threatened with lawsuits and even letters from other doctors wishing, quote, “prolonged death” upon her and others who promote vaccines or dare to debunk false claims funded by dark money. The live stream swatting raids by deputized anti-vaxxers aren't something I came up with. That's what they're saying they want to do. The CDC should give recommendations based on public health, not to cater to anti-vaxxers, and not based on cost to health insurance, but that was definitely on the table. Dr. Matthew Daley, MD, goes on to explain in this meeting that in an annual vaccine, it will be hard to compare cost effectiveness because the benefits of prior vaccinations from previous annual vaccinations would show less contrast because the burden would get lower. And this committee has mentioned in the meeting that there are less burdensome diseases with more expensive vaccines, and we don't deprive kids of those vaccines. “And I'm also very aware that there are a number of vaccine preventable diseases that we recommend now, which probably do not have great cost effectiveness data, which have lower hospitalization rates and have lower death rates than we have with COVID right now.” It sounds again like one of those tricky situations where prevention averts the disaster so nobody thinks the disaster would have happened, where if public health is functioning well, it is essentially invisible. The People’s CDC is celebrating the amount of public comments and the universal recommendation as a win - and it should be celebrated as a win. But the struggle continues. And here we have proof in this meeting that the public comments did get read and did get considered and that they were still hand-wringing about the cost to private health insurance for protecting kids with universal recommendation. It's very clear what works and what needs to keep happening. So let's not forget last year when there was tons of PR for restricting vaccines. Op-eds and quotes from prominent supposedly pro-vax doctors claiming that the vaccine should be restricted to only the very, very elderly. That's not our imagination. A doctor said that point blank that the yearly vaccine should be restricted to people over 75. And again, in this meeting, they admit that they were deliberating restricting the vaccine. They say it outright that they were not going to do universal recommendation, even though that's antithetical to public health and the whole point of vaccination programs throughout history. The COVID-19 vaccines workgroup in this meeting thought it was important to communicate to us with a slide highlighting it. that this will be an ongoing thing. It will be revisited every time they're telling us that. The slide used in the meeting from the workgroup clearly states, “the workgroup will continue to evaluate COVID-19 vaccine policy, including the need for universal recommendation, particularly as COVID-19 epidemiology continues to change.” Unquote. This sounds scientific, as if there would be a scientific reason to put the stops on recommending vaccination. But if the epidemiology of COVID continues to change and the virus continues to evolve with new variants and the vaccines continue to show waning, we will need new updated vaccines and the need to get updated on vaccination. That's common sense logic, right? So what they're telling us is that if we don't continue to advocate for the need for universal recommendation over and over and over again, they will continue to reconsider restricting it in the future based on cost. Or who knows? There's a new formula for flu shots every year, and they love to compare COVID to flu, so one wonders why a yearly COVID vaccine isn't a given the way flu shot being available and recommended is done. But we see that COVID has a higher level of stigma, so there are always these carve-outs. where common sense is said to not be allowed and applied to COVID. And please make no mistake about the cost issue. They said it out loud, out loud and clear right there in the meeting. Quote, “I'm not sure that the cost is sustainable.” Speaking to us like children who want another treat, as if vaccination isn't a matter of life and death, but a luxury. “I'm not sure that the cost is sustainable.” How are you going to pay for that? “The cost per quality is high.” This is Dr. Sarah Long, M.D. “And if in fact what you used as the effectiveness against hospitalization, you know, if that's not correct in the United States in 2024, it will be even higher.” I suggest taxing the billionaires to pay for it. This is not an unsolvable problem. And it is completely sustainable if wealthy tycoons pay their fair share. Dr. Jamie Lehrer. “And so on balance, I'm in favor of the universal recommendation. But if I'm just facing this individual decision right now, the cost effectiveness of the younger children... is concerning to me. And as I mentioned earlier, the cost of the COVID vaccines are about five times if not more expensive than the flu vaccine that we're recommending on a regular basis. And so I guess I would still like to make another encouragement for the manufacturers to take that into consideration, that we have a very good vaccine that protects against hospitalizations and deaths, and yet it's very expensive and a large portion of the population is gonna have a hard time affording this in the future as the Bridge program goes away.” There's always money for other things. Congress could reinstate the Bridge program if pressured to do so. Giving in to anti-vax activists or assuming people are just tired of getting vaccinated is not a valid reason to keep vaccines from those of us who want them. I don't know of any dentist who would recommend you stop getting checkups and teeth cleaning because you're sick of it. And that's far more inconvenient compared to getting a quick vaccination at a pharmacy. The injustice of depriving people who want vaccines based on some people being anti-vax is an inexcusable level of nonsense unfairness which should never be imposed on the public. But those specious arguments and narratives seem to seep into any discussion about COVID vaccines or any COVID mitigation at all. We need an actual vaccine promotion campaign. Instead, we have tepid recommendations hedged with gripes that make no sense. There's no robust, full-throated support the public is hearing. But the public hears nonstop anti-vax talking points. It's not a mystery why uptake is so low and why even health care professionals are not doing their duty in recommending vaccination to their patients. It's because of a lack of leadership and assertive, confident direction that the COVID vaccines have benefits that far outweigh the risks. The vaccines are beneficial and safe. The committee meeting included people who were surprised healthcare providers weren't recommending vaccines. This is Dr. Denise Jamieson, MD, MPH. “I was really struck with the low proportion of healthcare providers that recommended, and given what we know about influenza and other vaccines and the critical role that healthcare providers play in recommending vaccines, I wondered what we did know about healthcare provider attitudes and what some of the barriers may be. And as an aside, it worries me that if it were not a universal recommendation, that the role of the healthcare provider in identifying and appropriately counseling those with risk would that would become even more problematic.” This is Dr. Matthew Daley, M.D. “I feel like because the burden was so high in the oldest age groups, We lost sight of the absolute burden in pediatric age groups, and that was coming through early 2020, 2021, 2022, when I think the message that got heard by parents of young children is COVID doesn't cause bad disease in children. And that was problematic. It does cause disease in bad children. It does cause bad disease in children, just less frequently than it does in older groups. And I think that narrative we need to change. We just need to remind all of us that there still is burden, vaccine-preventable disease. And this is obviously my bias as a pediatrician as well, but there's significant burden in pediatric age groups that can be prevented through vaccination. Thank you.” This is Carol Hayes, CNM, MN, MPH, FACNM. “Hi, Carol Hayes with the American College of Nurse Midwives. I just want to kind of bring it all back for one second. Somebody said earlier, a couple of people said that they were a little bit surprised that healthcare professionals are not recommending the vaccine. And I will tell you that a number of people that I've spoken to, healthcare professionals, the public in general, do not understand how much this virus has mutated and that if we're not giving the current vaccine, you're not protected. And we have to just keep saying that over and over and over again. You need this year's vaccine to be protected against this year's strain of the virus. Thank you.” All of this is directly related to the lack of a vaccine campaign. If people are not given information, they of course will not recommend it. That includes doctors. We need an actual proper vaccine campaign to actually promote vaccination and work against the undermining of public health. And that was the primary focus of my public comment. This is my public comment given at the ACIP meeting. Thank you. Hi I’m Chloe Humbert. We need better vaccine promotion campaigns from our government. The recommendation for a spring covid vaccine boost for seniors was NOT well promoted. Worse, the spring boost excluded 50 to 64 year olds with underlying conditions - people clearly at higher risk of hospitalization or death. At a previous CDC meeting in September 2023, it was mentioned twice that “THERE IS NO GROUP THAT HAS NO RISK FROM SEVERE ILLNESS”. The exclusion of 50 to 64 year olds, or any adults, from twice a year OPTION is perplexing since there's NO evidence of risks that outweigh benefits, especially for people over 50, and there’s been evidence presented at previous meetings of profound waning. Many patients at times fail to heed doctor’s advice, but it’s not a reason to stop encouraging patients to quit smoking, and it’s not a reason to stop promoting vaccination. There is certainly no good reason to restrict access to the next covid vaccine update. And to be clear, catering to private insurance company lobbyists is not a good reason. Of course the recommendation for a spring booster for seniors on Medicare, was not even properly promoted. Uptake for seniors is horribly low and it’s because there are people in their 80s who have not gotten the message, which is the responsibility of the CDC, this is what the public is paying this agency to do. This lack of vaccination campaign is a persistent failure and the anti-vax has been coming from inside the house. The scandalous news about the anti-vax campaign perpetrated by the DOD contractor on behalf of the government is a grotesque pinnacle of our nation’s unacceptable public health failures. This disinformation campaign was reported to have undermined vaccination and also masking and testing. It’s reported that the military psyops campaign was forbidden by law from targeting Americans, but in our world wide web world in a global pandemic, the idea of undermining public health abroad without harming Americans is ridiculous on its face. And harming innocent civilians abroad during a global health crisis is not itself defensible. CDC officials may think this is not the fault or responsibility of the CDC, but that’s false. This is not “just some people online” and it’s not a game. Real people are counting on the CDC. Leadership cannot rest on laurels or point a finger elsewhere. Infectious disease doesn’t recognize geopolitical boundaries or federal agency silos. An amends is needed and the CDC should have a distinct and purposeful goal to actually promoting public health and leading vaccination promotion with an active campaign. Thank you. The person who spoke after me made a very good point about needing vaccines for the school-aged children before October. Every year now, it seems we have a surge in northeastern Pennsylvania in mid-September, a couple weeks after school starts. Of course we know schools are drivers of infectious disease spread. We've always noticed this. That's why people do want to get their children vaccinated. Ms. Rapp. “As a mother of two young children, my comments today are focused on timing, access, and frequency of COVID boosters for our little kids, who unfortunately do not have access to the same toolbox. On timing, those of you with small children and who live in the South may be aware that schools here start back up in August. It is August when kids are gathered together in poorly ventilated school buildings and start sharing germs. All populations, including kids, need access to the updated boosters as soon as possible so that we have enough time to get our kids into the pediatrician's office or health department before August. October is not acceptable timing. As we now know, COVID does not care about winter cold and flu season.” We've done vaccination campaigns before, and we can do it again. I'm going to share a quote from the American Journal of Public Health published in 1928, a decade after the 1918 pandemic started, and after many intervening flu surges throughout the 1920s. and other infectious diseases. And this is how we vanquished them for a long time. James A. Tobey, who was speaking about the Sanitarians, which was a word back then for public health advocates, he wrote about a bill that took years in the 1920s to get passed to improve public health. Quote, “Though the Parker Bill by the amendments lost a certain effectiveness, it is still a very important measure, especially in its provisions for allowing the detail of U.S. Public Health Service personnel to other government bureaus; in granting a commissioned status to sanitary engineers and other scientific personnel of the service; in providing for a Nurse Corps; and in setting up a national advisory health council. Sanitarians are still interested in this excellent measure and keenly desirous that it be passed now. If it is not, the bill must be reintroduced and passed all over again in the next Congress. It would be helpful if sanitarians would communicate with their United States Senators and Representatives regarding this important matter. Do it now.” And from there on out, research, epidemiology, and disease control measures expanded greatly because, quote, “from Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s through Johnson's Great Society of the 1960s, a federal role in services affecting the health and welfare of individual citizens became well-established”, unquote. This was because the sanitarians and others communicated with the representatives. The polio campaign in the U.S. was successful because of a concerted effort to do a door-to-door campaign that started before the vaccine was even available. The idea that everyone just naturally got on board without prompting is nostalgic fantasy. It took some work to make that happen. There was toxic anti-vax propaganda back then too. Some even blamed paralysis from polio on Americans who let their kids eat junk food. Sound familiar? Some people made sure we countered that nonsense and had a proper vaccine drive. The bullshit was overcome. We shouldn't wait for everybody. We can't wait for everybody. Don't wait for everybody. It would be helpful if everybody would communicate with their United States senators and representatives regarding these important matters. Do it now.
Don’t take vaccines for granted.