CDC's ACIP meeting went offline as soon as a hard question got asked. Then did it again.

So I will post some of the slides. Scary stuff.

UPDATE: As anticipated, the RSV shots were voted in for 60 years and up, using shared decision-making.

More polio shots were approved.

Egg allergies were wiped off the slate.

This year’s flu shots were approved.

Another mind-numbing day. We heard lots of reasons why the elderly should not get a new RSV shot. Of about 40,000 subjects (and maybe half got the experimental vaccines, not sure about this) 6 got a Guillain Barre type illness, with none in the control group.

And GSK and Pfizer refuse to say what those shots will cost, only that the price has gone up considerably. The members grumbled, but they will probably vote to go along—that vote should happen at end of day.

Then, with one US paralytic polio case (the NY case 1-2 years ago) they want to recommend a single polio shot for everyone who isn’t sure whether they were fully vaccinated as children…or maybe are traveling, or work in a lab, or might be high risk (work in a sewer exposed to wastewater perhaps?). Actually, I got that wrong. If you were not sure about your childhood shots, they recommended the full series for you. If you are designated as at high risk of polio (and with one identified case caught in the US in 20 years, no one is at high risk) but were fully vaxxed once, you just get a booster.

What crashed the show was a member of the ACIP asking what it was that induced CDC to look for acute disseminated encephalomyelitis when it was not supposed to occur after inactivated vaccines? See 2nd footnote.

After the crash ends, Dr.Shimabukuro comes on, denies there has been a statistical signal for it but they have historically monitored it “for the past several flu seasons.” Dr. Long doesn’t let him off and demands he tell her if it occurs with any non-live vaccine, because she was certain it didn’t. He says yellow fever vaccine. Except the yellow fever (Sanofi, YF) vaccine is not inactivated; it is live. He never answered the question.

And yes, there were no NEW safety concerns, okay, but what about the OLD ones? If people were given the Pfizer mRNA plus either the MF-59 adjuvanted vaccine or the high test (4x as much antigen) flu shot for elders, they were more likely to wind up with a stroke. But the signal has dissipated over time, because flu season ended and almost no one gets a flu shot after December.

Now they want to get rid of egg allergy as a contraindication to vaccines made in eggs. Basically CDC has been trying to get rid of vaccine contraindications for the past 5 years, despite lack of supportive evidence.

The question of whether doing so would reduce trust in the medical profession and healthcare system came up, but was ignored. Not to mention wholesale tossing out of the precautionary principle. Furthermore, treating allergic reactions costs money! And they can’t seriously say that forcing people to ignore their allergies enhances equity.

But egg allergies as a contraindication or precaution for flu shots is about to disappear.

And these terrible people want to vaccinate women in their first trimester with flu shots, but they want them to wait, along with everyone else, until September (because the effect would likely wear off before flu appeared if they got the shot too early). CDC did not worry about that before, but now it does, for some reason that was of course not explained…

It is 4:20 and the CDC circus show has crashed again. Dead silence. I can hardly bear the thought that they will extend it, having been here since 8 am. Back for more fun tomorrow.