Pretty interesting to see #CDC post pre-buttals on thimerosal in vaccines & the MMRV vaccine in advance of this week's #ACIP meeting, where the new committee appears intent on reopening debate on settled science. www.cdc.gov/acip/meeting…
— Helen Branswell 🇨🇦 (@helenbranswell.bsky.social) June 24, 2025 at 1:59 PM
This is good and important
www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/…— Molly Jong-Fast (@mollyjongfast.bsky.social) June 24, 2025 at 7:18 AM
Per the Washington Post, “The plan to vaccinate all Americans, despite RFK Jr.” [gift link]:
Professional medical societies, pharmacists, state health officials and vaccine manufacturers, as well as a new advocacy group, are mobilizing behind the scenes to preserve access for vaccines as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. works to upend the nation’s decades-old vaccine system, according to public health experts.
The groups are discussing ordering vaccines directly from manufacturers and giving greater weight to vaccine recommendations from medical associations. And they are asking insurance companies to continue covering shots based on professional societies’ guidance instead of the federal government’s, according to more than a dozen people familiar with the conversations, including some who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private discussions.
The moves come as Kennedy has replaced members of the key federal vaccine advisory panel to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that decides which vaccines are recommended for whom and whether they’ll be covered by insurance. Kennedy fired the 17-member committee earlier this month and handpicked eight new members, several of whom are vaccine critics.
But the extraordinary effort to create parallel systems of recommending, and perhaps even providing, vaccines faces major challenges, and some of the more ambitious goals have yet to be ironed out…
The impact of ACIP is wide-ranging. In addition to insurance coverage, its decisions — which must receive final approval from the CDC director — affect the ability of pharmacists to administer vaccines, as well as a government program ensuring roughly half of children in the United States can get vaccines free.
Public health and medical experts have for months raised alarms over Kennedy’s ascent to the nation’s top health post, expressing concern over his lengthy history of disparaging vaccines. Kennedy, the founder of a prominent anti-vaccine group, secured enough Republican support for the position by pledging to protect the public health benefit of vaccination. But medical and public health experts argue the nation’s vaccine system is beginning to fracture under Kennedy’s leadership.
Their efforts to create a nongovernmental vaccine system mark a significant escalation in strategy, reflecting the high degree of alarm within the mainstream medical and public health community about continued access to immunizations that have long been recommended by federal health officials…
Roughly 30 states’ regulations tie the ACIP schedule to whether Americans can get a certain vaccine at the pharmacy counter. Major pharmacy associations are planning to send a letter in the coming days to health plans urging them to maintain coverage, according to Brigid Groves, the vice president of professional affairs at the American Pharmacists Association. They are also crafting draft emergency orders that governors could issue allowing pharmacists to continue administering certain vaccines if the federal guidance were to change.
Insurers generally cover vaccines that are on the CDC’s immunization schedule, even if they are considered “shared clinical decision-making,” meaning children can get vaccinated if their parents and doctors agree.
“Health plans continue to follow federal requirements related to coverage of ACIP-recommended vaccines and will continue to support broad access to critical preventive services, including immunizations,” Tina Stow, a spokeswoman for AHIP, the major insurer lobby, said in a statement to The Washington Post.
Recommendations of medical societies and scientific evidence will weigh on insurance coverage decisions, according to two people involved in the insurance industry who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail sensitive discussions.
“Insurers are absolutely trying to find ways to cover services that are so widely understood as beneficial and proven,” said a former insurance industry executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid. “I wouldn’t want to be the first insurer to start to decline coverage for what are clearly incredibly important and valuable public health interventions.”
Yes, it’s complicated — I can only urge you to read the whole thing.
Meanwhile, portraits in Repub courage…
Cassidy has massive leverage *right now.* Dems can't do much more than yelp, but Cassidy could threaten to vote against the megabill unless RFK Jr. relents. Might even round up a few GOP friends to make the point clearer.
(On top of the normal stuff he could do without a megabill approaching).— Jonathan Bernstein (@jonathanbernstein.bsky.social) June 24, 2025 at 3:19 PM
Very rocky start today's #ACIP meeting. Significant technical difficulties.
— Helen Branswell 🇨🇦 (@helenbranswell.bsky.social) June 25, 2025 at 10:35 AM
===
New #ACIP co-chair signals the new committee will reopen issues core to anti-vax concerns, including the notion that kids are getting too many vaccines. www.statnews.com/2025/06/25/c…
— Helen Branswell 🇨🇦 (@helenbranswell.bsky.social) June 25, 2025 at 11:42 AM
===
Susan Monarez, the nominee to lead the #CDC, supported vaccines during her appearance today before the Senate HELP committee, but side-stepped questions aimed at seeing if she distances herself from the anti-vax views of her would-be boss, Secretary Kennedy. www.statnews.com/2025/06/25/s…
— Helen Branswell 🇨🇦 (@helenbranswell.bsky.social) June 25, 2025 at 11:46 AM
STATNews is paywalled (and pricey), but I’ll do my best to update information as it becomes available. Any other BlueSky feeds I should be tracking, please let me know!
We finally have roll call. Lots of representatives missing. I'm guessing they don't want to be party to this mockery of a critical advisory commitee.
— Edward Nirenberg (@enirenberg.bsky.social) June 25, 2025 at 2:29 PM
===
There is a brief, partial presentation on the Evidence to Recommendations framework for COVID-19 vaccines. Not sure how this works since there is no vote for COVID-19 vaccines scheduled.
www.cdc.gov/acip/downloa…— Edward Nirenberg (@enirenberg.bsky.social) June 25, 2025 at 2:05 PM
===
I think the benefits and harms slides give the best summary:
— Edward Nirenberg (@enirenberg.bsky.social) June 25, 2025 at 2:05 PM
===
VAERS reports peaked in 2007 following HPV vaccine rollout. Reports within year can cluster seasonally. 300M COVID vaccine doses were given in first 6mo after 2020.Dec.17.
I know some Epidemiological methods and models are difficult. But I'm concerned about a growing deficit of object permanence.— Brian Wasik (@brianrwasik.bsky.social) June 25, 2025 at 2:16 PM
Yesterday:
PALLONE: With regard to vaccines, are you just afraid to receive public comments on proposals? There's been no public process
RFK JR: We have a public process for regulating vaccines. It's called the ACIP committee.
PALLONE: You fired the committee!— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) June 24, 2025 at 11:12 AM
Rep. Carter: How could you justify the termination of HIV vaccine studies?
RFK Jr.: Every year Congress pours money into it and it accomplishes nothing
Rep. Carter: These NIH dollars save lives
RFK Jr.: Show me one life
Rep. Carter: I can show you a lot of lives— FactPost (@factpostnews.bsky.social) June 24, 2025 at 1:43 PM
Vaccines no, authoritarian government surveillance yes…
The guy who pushed the notion that people are being controlled by microchips pushed by Bill Gates, now wants people to wear tracking devices.
— Ryan Mac 🙃 (@rmac.bsky.social) June 24, 2025 at 3:09 PM
Elizabelle
RFK Jr. is a horrible person. His cousin, Caroline Kennedy, warned pre-election that he is a predator.
Interestingly, the Bezos WaPost won’t ever let me put that up as a comment. But. The second sentence is factual and reported news.
Vaccines save lives. RFK Jr and TRUMP are corrupt fools and constant liars. They should be under indictment, not in enormously powerful jobs.
Trollhattan
Wearing a wearable. Is that like eating an edible?
Also, under Republican venality, not too busy bombing to drop a spare on California.
Suzanne
I feel like I have said that RFK is a garbage human and that vaccines are so great that I will take every single one in pretty much every permutation of words that I can spaghetti. So in this comment, I’m gonna focus on the new dumb thing he said, which is about wearables.
WTF?! Show me some evidence that these are accurate enough to be useful, and more importantly, that they matter. By that I mean are they, at population scale, an impetus to change behavior? Who does he think is going to be monitoring these devices? To say nothing of the privacy concerns, the cost and who bears it, the electronics waste…..
ETA: And I say this as someone who has an Apple Watch and uses it for workout tracking.
Raoul Paste
You know, I don’t think that Joe six pack wants to be forced to wear a device that reports to the government. So I hope this wish gets wide coverage.
Not exactly “land of the free“
Princess
Vaccines save insurers a ton of money. A ton. That’s why countries with single payer do them for free.
West of the Rockies
Anyone else pondering a measles booster? I was born in ’62. Apparently the measles vaccine between 1962-67 were not good. Are the vaccine side effects the normal ones we expect?
japa21
Wearables vs Vaccines… Debate which is better to spend Federal money on.
CaseyL
@West of the Rockies: You *do* need to get boosters, every 10 years, both for MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) and Tdap (Tetanus, Diptheria, and Whooping Cough).
I got my MMR and Tdap boosters a few months ago, five years early, precisely because I didn’t trust one would be available when I was due to get it. Except for some minor ache around the injection site, I had no reaction/side effect at all.
Princess
@West of the Rockies: I’d say zero side effects. And I’m someone who gets slayed by the Covid vaxx. I got the measles booster about six years ago.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@West of the Rockies: you can have your doctor do a test to determine if you need a booster, or you can just ask your pharmacist to give you one.
Despite this nonsense hearing by the quacks among us, it won’t do you any harm to get a second measles vaccine.
VFX Lurker
Thank you for keeping us informed, Anne Laurie.
I turn 50 tomorrow (woo!). This means I qualify for Shingrix and a vaccination against bacterial pneumonia (yay!). Will get those done ASAP.
We have a mysterious Hepatitis A outbreak here in Los Angeles, so I’m also making sure my spouse and I have protection against Hepatitis A. Our walk-ins for the first dose of Twinrix were not covered by insurance, but we could still choose to get them (unlike a second dose of the 2024-2025 COVID shot). Hoping my husband’s second and third doses can be covered by insurance under an office visit, since he flunked a titer test for A and B.
I flunked a titer test for measles in 2019, got a third MMR that same month, then passed the same test in 2020. I might ask for a titer before my next annual physical, since measles seems to be making the rounds.
Again, thank you for keeping us informed. My parents are up-to-date on all of their COVID immunizations thanks to your blog posts.
Elizabelle
I think a lot of us should comment on social media about life before vaccines were prevalent. Some of us remember avoiding polio, and knowing people who caught it. (Speaking for others there.)
Younger people may take vaccines for granted, since they work so well. They need to be reminded of life before. Jackals have commented on spending their toddlerhoods in their backyards, because their parents were afraid to expose them to polio.
These experiences have disappeared from public memory. Fight all this disinformation with proven history, and it will be especially effective when it’s a family memory; from us or our parents/grandparents.
Screw RFK Jr. I wish some of the parents who lined up to get their beloved children polio vaccines, and MMR, and all the rest, could line up to kick his ugly MAHA a$$.
I guess killing dozens of Samoan children wasn’t enough for him.
West of the Rockies
Thanks, everybody! Gonna schedule an appointment for a booster.
Belafon
@HopefullyNotcassandra: Just to let everyone know, insurance can charge you for the test.
Chetan Murthy
@West of the Rockies: @CaseyL: @HopefullyNotcassandra: During my regular PCP visit, I asked him in no uncertain terms about infectious diseases and vaccination. We reviewed my vaccine records (from my time as a UCSF patient) and the only gap was MMR (TDAP, pneumonia, Shingrix, Hep C (B?), something else all covered). He suggested I get a titer for measles; I asked if that was cheaper than the shot. He immediately offered the shot. I got the MMR and my 6-months covid shot.
I mentioned this to my mom, and she got her MMR and 6-months covid shot as well. I have a friend in BOS who got his titer checked, and he’s low on mumps, so he’s getting it. And he’s gonna push his mom on the same.
I think we should -all- push our doctors to get us up-to-date on all these suckers. We don’t know what the future holds, and while the gettin’s good, we should get ourselves as protected as possible. And we should push all our friends and family to do the same.
Doc Sardonic
@Suzanne: They are NOT accurate enough, I just spent the weekend in the hospital because my wearable alerted me to a heart arrhythmia and another piece of home medical tech, which is a little more advanced verified it. Both pieces of tech’s algorithms were wrong, yes I had an irregularity in my heartbeat, but not a life endangering one.
Chetan Murthy
I’m certainly not a medical professional, but I thought that the tetanus vaccine wore off, and you needed a booster every 10yr, but the MMR was basically “do the two-shot course, and you’re set for life” ? Not that it matters to me: I got an MMR booster a month ago.
VFX Lurker
Good idea. I’m GenX, but my dad was born before the mumps vaccine. Mumps left my dad permanently deaf in one ear, and hard of hearing in the other ear.
He loves listening to music (classical and opera), so I’m glad he retained some of his hearing. He made sure me and my brother got all of our shots.
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: Was just saying in bsky that I don’t think crankdom and grift completely explain RFK Jr’s war on vaccines. The need to prey on weaker people, especially kids, does.
Chetan Murthy
1979: my friend H.R. got the mumps; it “dropped” on him. [sterility, IIRC]
Chetan Murthy
@Elizabelle: I read someplace that he gets paid by antivaxxer advocacy groups. ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.’
Suzanne
@Doc Sardonic: I’m glad it turned out to be nothing worth worrying about! Dang!
I enjoy mine for workouts and step tracking and things like that. But it is in no way a medical device.
Glidwrith
Can’t link because on the phone: reports coming in that HUD is going to kick out all of the NSF staff in their building and move in HUD Secretary gets a penthouse suite, private elevator and gym for his family and 5 parking spaces for his cars.
No plans for the displaced NSF scientists.
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker: makes me want to look up the Caroline K statement and anything subsequent.
Chetan Murthy
@Glidwrith: https://bsky.app/profile/dangaristo.bsky.social/post/3lsf4yagfzs2t
ETA: some juicy bits in the thread replies: HUD secretary is taking their space; he’s got 5 cars, a floor for his executive assistants, and (haha) a private elevator.
Elizabelle
@Chetan Murthy: those stories have to come out, and we have to amplify them.
Baud
@Glidwrith:
Obviously a liberal elitist.
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker: Much of the anti-vaccine feeling is, IMO, motivated by ableism and fatphobia. There was a definite desire that I saw expressed, often barely concealed, for COVID to kill sick and fat people. Vaccines are for the weak and aesthetically displeasing.
Also, it’s this very masculine version of health, the kind that concentrates on building muscle mass and eating too much protein.
Chetan Murthy
@Elizabelle: they came out long ago. Nobody in the media paid any attention: I mean, it’s not like Biden stuttering, y’know?
Doc Sardonic
@Suzanne: Thanks. Right now the Apple Watch and the Kardia are batting .500, December 2022 they kept Elvis from leaving the building because I didn’t feel bad enough to go to the ER. But when both pieces of tech’s algorithms and my spouse are yelling at me to go, so I did.
Belafon
@Chetan Murthy: I saw that yesterday but didn’t see anything other than the bsky post. Is there a news article out about it (I can’t click on that stuff at work)?
Harrison Wesley
@Trollhattan: I’m a rebel. I’m going to wear an edible.
Suzanne
@Doc Sardonic: So I wear my Apple Watch when running. I’ve taken a few hard falls while wearing it, maybe five. One of those times, my watch detected it and suggested that I call an ambulance. But not the other four times.
Chetan Murthy
@Belafon: https://www.alxnow.com/2025/06/24/report-national-science-foundation-headquarters-to-be-taken-over-by-hud-displacing-1800-employees/
Elizabelle
@Suzanne: from personal observation: I think a few parents would rather blame a vaccine (external factor) for their child’s autism than acknowledge it is genetics and perhaps fate. Gives them a weird — and false — sense of control. Perhaps helps assuage guilt, where no guilt should be placed.
MrPug
@Raoul Paste: If their God Trump commands them to wear a Trump wearable, they will very gladly and happily comply.
Harrison Wesley
@West of the Rockies: I had an MMR shot a couple months ago. I didn’t have much reaction but I usually don’t to vaccines.
Chetan Murthy
@Elizabelle: The vaccine takes the place of the Rat God (or whatever) in their mythology. People need to tell themselves stories to make sense of the world, and “a lot of shit is just random chance and all you can do is work to minimize bad luck” isn’t a good enough story. E.g. during covid, those people who needed a 100% certainty that the vaxx would prevent subsequent infection, or no-way-no-how were they gonna get the vaxx.
Emily B.
I have been wondering: Is it completely ridiculous to draw some parallels between measles-induced immune amnesia and AIDS? Measles’ effect on immunity is temporary and rarely fatal—which is not the case with AIDS. But both HIV and measles do long-term damage to the immune system.
Then I think: Is this an argument that would even get through to the anti-vaxxers? They probably have conveniently forgotten how awful the AIDS crisis was, too.
MrPug
I’m waiting for the day RFKjr, effectively, outlaws vaccines. That certainly seems to be the endgame here. I sure hope Cassiday is proud of his legacy as a Senator.
Citizen Alan
@Raoul Paste: If a Democrat had proposed this, every evangelical in the country would be screaming that it was the Mark of the Beast.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
There is no argument that will get through. The only thing that works is staking an even more absurd position than the anti-vaxxers until it’s obvious to even someone as scientifically illiterate as NYT reporter that the anti-vaxxers are full of it.
mayim
@West of the Rockies:
My primary care nurse practitioner has approved a measles booster for me, as I was a mid-1960s baby.
I’m not a scientist but I have professional knowledge relevant to the vaccination “debate”: as a genealogist, I’ve researched/written about way too many families that lost several children at a time to a disease we can now prevent.
[puts on librarian hat} It’s sanitation/public health, rather than vaccines, but it’s an interesting read: The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson, about how cholera transmission was figured out.
Harrison Wesley
An additional problem (I don’t recall where I read about it) is that childhood vaccination rates are falling. More people are buying into anti-vax nonsense. Having RFK joining in doesn’t help.
JanieM
@CaseyL: As far as I’ve read in various sources, you don’t need to get the MMR vaccine every ten years. See e.g. the Yale School of Medicine website on the subject. Also see this NPR article. Even for people at high risk, it only recommends one booster. I’d be curious to know who’s recommending boosters every ten years
ETA: Tdap *is* every ten years. I was going to just forget about it because I get such a bad reaction to it, but then I needed the pertussis to be around the newborn grandkid.
Chetan Murthy
Excellent! I feel compelled to add that at this time in our country, it would be a disqualifying position if my PCP refused to approve my getting vaccines for diseases that were in circulation in the country for any reason other than “it would not be safe for you”.
It ain’t my doc’s job to tell me what is a low risk or not, not at a time like this. If it’s safe, I’m gonna decide, not him/her.
ETA: and my PCP has been very good about this, including agreeing to OK my getting a course of Paxlovid to take with me when traveling.
Harrison Wesley
I got a Hep A shot a couple weeks ago on the advice of an ad by the Florida health department. I figured if those folks are pushing it, something really bad must be happening.
Suzanne
@Elizabelle:
Mr. Suzanne is a SLP and much of his caseload involves screening for and diagnosing autism, and then providing ongoing therapy services. Sometimes for years. He has said similar things.
People have a hard time accepting randomness. Especially some religious people who feel like illness or injury is karma or retribution or somesuch.
Raoul Paste
@Citizen Alan: Yep. I hadn’t considered the Mark of the Beast angle
Captain C
@Emily B.: I suspect that argument would lead to them going, “Well, all those AIDS people are bad/sinners/unfit. They deserve to suffer and die horribly.”
Because many of these people are straight up sadists towards anyone they don’t like.
Ken B
@West of the Rockies: I got the MMR earlier this year. I was born in 1962 and the medical types said I could either get the vaccine booster or get the immunity test and then get the booster. I decided to get the booster.
Usual side effects for me of a vaccine, the arm that took the jab was tender the next day and I was tired that day as well. That was it.
Note: I was told that drinking lots of non-alcoholic drinks was a good idea with any vaccine, so I do, usually the only side effects are a tender or sore arm and feeling tired the next day.
Barney
CDC vaccine report cites study that does not exist, says scientist listed as author | US news | The Guardian
A review on the use of the preservative thimerosal in vaccines slated to be presented on Thursday to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) outside vaccine committee cites a study that does not exist, the scientist listed as the study’s author said.
The report, called Thimerosal as a Vaccine Preservative published on the CDC website on Tuesday, is to be presented by Lyn Redwood, a former leader of the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense.
It makes reference to a study called Low-level neonatal thimerosal exposure: Long-term consequences in the brain, published in the journal Neurotoxicology in 2008, and co-authored by UC Davis professor emeritus Robert Berman.
But, according to Berman, “it’s not making reference to a study I published or carried out”.
Berman said he co-authored a similarly named study in a different journal – Toxicological Sciences – that came to different conclusions than those suggested by Redwood.
“We did not examine the effects of thimerosal in microglia … I do not endorse this misrepresentation of the research,” he said.
laura
I’ve got a wearable in my hand right now- it’s a smart phone and that’s more than enough. Wearables scrape your data and your data is up for grabs or sold or stolen. I’m sick up to here with the conversion of citizen to consumer of government services. I resent being reduce to a commodity. If I had a serious medical condition in which telemetry was used by my doctor, that would be a different thing altogether. But that’s not what fried baseball mitt is suggesting. He’s conflicted with way too many conflicts of interest.
Betty Cracker
@Suzanne:
That rings true.
Cheryl from Maryland
@West of the Rockies: I had measles and rubella in the early 60s pre-vaccine. My doctor told me to go ahead and get the MMR vaccine without having my blood titrated. Had it last month. No side effects. So check with your doctor.
Betty Cracker
@laura: Agree about the data scraping. If this plot point becomes widely known, good old American paranoia (only justified this time) may enter the chat with a vengeance.
lowtechcyclist
@Chetan Murthy:
Update: https://www.alxnow.com/2025/06/25/hud-announces-relocation-to-national-science-foundation-building-in-alexandria/
And Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin thinks it’s great: “What a day for Virginia. It’s doubly exciting because we are not only seeing this move, which is going to include 2,700 employees, but also it affirms that Virginia is the place to be.”
It’s been nearly 27 years since I moved north of the Potomac, but Virginia can’t see the back of this guy a moment too soon.
CaseyL
@JanieM:
My medical records are online, and include a “Preventive” section, which lists all the shots, exams, and tests I’ve had, and the ones I’m due for in the next few years.
I *think* MMR was on that list – feeling too lazy to look it up right now – but I know Tdap is. It could be I added MMR myself, because the only other time I’ve had the shot would be when I was a child and the immunity could have waned by now. With all the cases this year, I didn’t feel like taking a chance.
I also got a Hep A shot – one of two, with the second one due in November – once I heard about the cluster of cases down in L.A.
prostratedragon
From Science, another article on the Vaccine Integrity Project.
Trollhattan
@Suzanne: My bike computer has incident detection and will call my contact if I don’t intervene within something like 30 seconds. “He done got run over, fetch the remains here.”
The current one fixed a problem with the previous, which thought stopping quickly just using the brakes was a crash and I found myself constantly trying to remember how to cancel.
laura
@Betty Cracker: stares bitchly in period tracking.
prostratedragon
@Chetan Murthy: Grrrr!
Was it the Institute of Peace who got their building back from these goons?
CaseyL
@Betty Cracker: It’s very likely he’s a eugenicist, but it’s also likely he has concluded the way to save the global environment is to kill as many humans as he can. Both can be true.
Lapassionara
@Elizabelle: I remember the polio days well. Two children on my not so long street had polio one summer (I think maybe the summer of 1948). They both survived, but with life-changing effects. Lots of photos in the newspaper of young people in iron lungs. The relief when a vaccine became available was pretty much universal, and we all lined up at school to receive our doses. I don’t recall anyone who declined to get the vaccine.
Matt
@Elizabelle:
I assume murder is just like heroin for him; successive doses need to be stronger to get the same high.
prostratedragon
@prostratedragon:
Well, sort of. A federal judgevrestored the entire organization, and with it their access to the building:
Bill Arnold
@Suzanne:
It’s even (Leviticus) biblical; injury due to bad luck was considered to be evidence of unholiness, basically. Along with any other obvious sort of physical disability. (One could say that Ol’ ‘el was a bigot towards denizens of the chaos/the causal realm.)
Leviticus 21:18-21 (New International Version)
Trollhattan
@Matt: When he calls vaccines “a holocaust” he might just be jealous.
kindness
I didn’t think Thimerosal was still used as a preservative for vaccines so I googled it:
Since 2001, thimerosal has been removed or reduced in most childhood vaccines. Some multi-dose vials of the influenza (flu) vaccine still contain thimerosal. Flu vaccines without thimerosal are also available.
Pretty much what I figured. Us Boomer kids were the pharma industries lab rats. No doubt we got the Jolt Cola of mercury exposure with our earliest vaccines.
Trollhattan
@Bill Arnold:
In the idiom of the time: “Verily, it sucketh to be thou, thou who knowest full well what thou hath dideth.”
kindness
I have Kaiser. They’ll give you booster vaccines for the MMR & like stuff every 10 years. I’m about to get mine updated. I got measles when I was about 8 years old. I don’t think I got the MMR vaccine as a child.
dc
The Stat article from Internet Archive (archive.is): https://archive.is/ASFmS
Bill Arnold
@Raoul Paste:
Yeah. Mr. Trump is clearly timesharing his brain with a [demonic] entity, that is either cosplaying The Antichrist, or is The Antichrist. :-)
Either way, enforcing the Mark of the Beast would be an expected move.
CaseyL
@Raoul Paste: I thought the MAGA hats were already the “Mark of the Beast.” However, those seem mostly to be worn by MAGA men, so maybe the wearables are meant to lure in MAGA women.
Rusty
@West of the Rockies: You can get a titer test to check your immunity. My doctor ordered that, turns out my immunity was strong (the bonus being they check for the other two, mumps and rubella too).
Jay
snip
https://www.wonkette.com/p/man-discovers-brady-bunch-not-mos
Some how, despite this, I doubt they will be pro-vaccine.
sab
@Suzanne: My granddaighter is autistic, and in retrospect she showed many of the signs long before her first vaccine. Fortunately her mother has never been one to accept the vaccine guilt b.s.
Mai Naem mobile
The brother of the Surgeon General nominee is big into wearable tech(i forget his name.) I vaguely remember some article I read that RFK Jr had influence in pushing making wearable tech more easily regulated or not regulated at all by the FDA.
I figure the cost benefit analysis of vaccines is so good that the insurance companies will continue to offer them for free.
frosty
@Chetan Murthy: I got the titer; good on measles, low on mumps. Haven’t done anything about it yet but I probably will before an overseas trip this fall.
Chris S. Sherbak
@West of the Rockies: I am. I have my annual tomorrow and am going to ask about it.
Chris S. Sherbak
Also, re: the call for other BlueSky peeps to follow, https://bsky.app/profile/lilscience.bsky.social has been posting on TT and IG thru the pandemic and walking people thru very complex issues with humor and clear concern. She followed the meeting today and gave some thoughts on IG. She’s got a Substack and has a sh-t ton of papers on her Link Tree.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: I heard that crap from my mother. “Only fat and sick people die from Covid. Did you know all those people in the hospital are great big fat people?” I told her that wasn’t true, but she had Fox News brain.
Miss Bianca
@West of the Rockies: Very late to the thread, but I got an MMR vax. Apparently I had either never received one in the first place or it had worn off or something, because the titer result that came back indicated that I had no measles immunity.
The Lodger
@Jay: After Hudson and Tucker, I thought the other two kids would be named Packard and DeSoto.