ETA: Good news, maybe?
Breaking News: The FDA reversed its decision on Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine and agreed to review it for possible approval, Moderna said.
— The New York Times (@nytimes.com) February 18, 2026 at 8:55 AM
FDA reverses course, refuses to review Moderna’s application for new mRNA flu vaccine
The company expressed surprise and confusion about the decision, noting the FDA’s earlier support for the study plan.
www.cidrap.umn.edu/i…— CIDRAP (@cidrap.bsky.social) February 11, 2026 at 6:23 PM
Excellent summary of the (anti)healthcare story of the week:
… Moderna’s study included more than 40,000 adults age 50 and up and was intended to help the company get approval to use the vaccine in that age-group. In a press release, Moderna said the FDA determined that the company’s study was not “adequate and well-controlled” because the comparable vaccine used in the trial did not represent the “best-available standard of care” in the United States at the time of the study.
Neither federal rules for how drug studies must be designed, nor the FDA’s own guidance for flu vaccines, refer to the use of “best-available standard of care” in selecting comparator vaccines. Previous correspondence from the FDA to Moderna expressed a preference for the company to use a higher-dose vaccine for older adults as a comparator but stated, “We agree it would be acceptable to use a licensed standard dose influenza vaccine as the comparator in your Phase 3 study.”
The study followed a well-established framework for flu vaccine trials, according to virologist Angela Rasmussen, PhD, of the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. “The trial design they used is essentially the trial design that every single flu vaccine has used,” she tells CIDRAP news.
In an interview with The New York Times, Moderna’s president Stephen Hoge, MD, expressed surprise and confusion about the decision, noting the FDA’s earlier support for the company’s study plan. The company’s mRNA vaccine has been accepted for review in the European Union, Canada, and Australia. Moderna has requested a meeting with the FDA to understand the basis for their refusal…
Vaccine companies generally work with clear, well-established expectations of the kinds of studies considered acceptable by the FDA, Peter Hotez, MD, PhD, of Baylor College of Medicine, tells CIDRAP News.
“There was a commitment,” he said, adding that to “string Moderna along and all of a sudden say, nope, we’re not going to even review it” risks undermining confidence in FDA processes. The decision, Hotez warned, could “have an immediate chilling effect on the vaccine industry.” Vaccine makers may start to reassess whether to invest in US-based vaccine development if regulatory expectations shift late in the process.
The FDA “changed their mind,” about whether Moderna could use a standard-dose flu shot in the trial, Paul Offit, MD, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said, “which is really not fair.”…
Reporting today from STAT suggests that the decision to refuse Moderna’s application was not unanimous. Sources told STAT that Vinay Prasad, MD, director of CBER, overruled career scientists who had been preparing to move forward with a formal review.
A US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) spokesperson disputed that characterization, saying there was a “diverse set of conclusions” among staff…
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has criticized mRNA technology and has moved to scale back federal support for certain vaccine initiatives. During the COVID-19 pandemic, mRNA vaccines developed by Moderna and Pfizer were deployed widely and credited with preventing severe disease and death. The technology was recognized with the 2023 Nobel Prize in Medicine.
Since taking office, Kennedy, a vocal vaccine skeptic, has terminated hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of grants aimed at developing mRNA technology…
CDC reports 6 more child deaths from #flu, as virus levels stay moderate to high
Flu, respiratory syncytial virus, and COVID-19 levels still elevated in some parts of the country.
www.cidrap.umn.edu/i…— CIDRAP (@cidrap.bsky.social) February 13, 2026 at 2:35 PM
3. Wondering where things stand where you live? #Flu seems to be releasing its grasp on the NE, but lots of the country are still engulfed in flu transmission — more, actually, than about a month ago (map on the right).
For more on flu, see FluView here: www.cdc.gov/fluview/surv…— Helen Branswell 🇨🇦 (@helenbranswell.bsky.social) February 13, 2026 at 7:20 PM
#COVID survivors may be at higher risk for obstructive sleep apnea for up to 4.5 years post-infection
Hospitalized and non-hospitalized COVID patients were 41% and 33%, respectively, more likely to be diagnosed as having apnea than uninfected controls.
www.cidrap.umn.edu/c…— CIDRAP (@cidrap.bsky.social) February 17, 2026 at 3:27 PM
Risk of type 2 diabetes may be higher up to 3 years after COVID infection in unvaccinated, severely ill
Elevated risk was not seen among people who were partially or fully vaccinated.
www.cidrap.umn.edu/c…— CIDRAP (@cidrap.bsky.social) February 16, 2026 at 3:45 PM
Study finds no link between COVID-19 vaccines and autism
A new study finds no increase in autism rates in babies born to mothers who received COVID-19 vaccines just before or during pregnancy, compared with children of unvaccinated moms.
www.cidrap.umn.edu/c…— CIDRAP (@cidrap.bsky.social) February 11, 2026 at 6:25 PM
COVID infection may impair male fertility, but vaccination shows no effect, review suggests
No similar link found between infection and impaired fertility in females, new review suggests.
www.cidrap.umn.edu/c…— CIDRAP (@cidrap.bsky.social) February 12, 2026 at 2:50 PM
Five years after the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines started, it seems the mystery of why the Astra-Zeneca and J&J vaccines led to a rare but deadly side effect of unusual blood clots and bleeding has finally been solved.
It's a fascinating case of molecular mimicry that may help make vaccine safer.🧪— Kai Kupferschmidt (@kakape.bsky.social) February 11, 2026 at 5:10 PM
Long COVID Linked to Alzheimer’s Disease Mechanisms nyulangone.org/news/long-co…
#LongCovid #COVID #Alzheimers #dementia— Ian Kremer (@leadcoalition.bsky.social) February 13, 2026 at 8:19 PM
Portugal, Germany and Thailand Re-impose Covid Testing for Arrivals from China
As XBB.1.5 spreads rapidly, several governments are bringing back pre-departure COVID testing for travelers from China. Portugal now requires a negative test within 48 hours and will add wastewater sequencing on flights.— Denis – The COVID Info Guy (@thecovidinfoguy.bsky.social) February 10, 2026 at 12:02 AM
Source: archive.md/GUPtn
— Denis – The COVID Info Guy (@thecovidinfoguy.bsky.social) February 10, 2026 at 12:02 AM
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Right wing chaos agent Jay Bhattacharya strikes again—making the US less prepared for the next pandemic
One of the most important national centers for studying infectious diseases, based at the NIH, is no longer allowed to study pandemic preparedness or bio defense😨
www.nature.com/articles/d41…— Prof Gavin Yamey (@gavinyamey.bsky.social) February 13, 2026 at 2:46 PM
#NIH to deprioritize pandemic preparedness and biodefense research, @nature.com reports, saying director Jay Bhattacharya wants to focus on known diseases, not possible future threats.
What could possibly go wrong?
www.nature.com/articles/d41…— Helen Branswell 🇨🇦 (@helenbranswell.bsky.social) February 13, 2026 at 2:54 PM
His pledge was, of course, gaslighting
What happened, under his leadership, is that:
“many types of health information that steadily flowed from the government for years or decades has been delayed, deleted & in some cases stopped all together”
This was part of his dismantling of public health 😢— Prof Gavin Yamey (@gavinyamey.bsky.social) February 15, 2026 at 2:17 PM
… The collection and sharing of information was hurt by sweeping layoffs at federal agencies and the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. Officials took down health agency websites to comply with an executive order from President Donald Trump, causing outside researchers to archive federal health datasets and leading to a lawsuit that ended with a judge ordering the websites’ restoration…
Here are some examples of how less information is coming out of federal public health agencies than in past administrations.
The Project 2025 blueprint that’s been influential to the Trump administration called for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to enhance its data collection of U.S. abortions, but the agency failed to post its annual abortion surveillance report in November. (Nixon said it will come out this spring.)…
Fighting the nation’s overdose epidemic has long been a priority for both Republicans and Democrats. And the federal government has continued to collect and report on death certificate-based information on drug deaths.
But the Trump administration curtailed other kinds of overdose work, including shutting down the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN), which tracked emergency department visits — an early alert about drug-use trends. It was discontinued “as part of a broader effort to align agency activities with agency and administration priorities,” officials posted…
For three decades, federal health officials tracked food poisoning infections caused by eight germs. In July, the Trump administration scaled back required reporting to just two pathogens monitored by the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network, known as FoodNet…
The best part is that we won’t even know there’s a pandemic
No data, no problem— Madhu Pai, MD, PhD (@madhupai.bsky.social) February 13, 2026 at 3:19 PM
17. Ban the NIAID from working on pandemic preparedness & biodefense (www.nature.com/articles/d41…)
18. Lay out a pandemic “plan” that involves doing nil—just telling people to be healthy so that at least the healthy might survive in a new pandemic (insidemedicine.substack.com/p/a-rebuttal…)— Prof Gavin Yamey (@gavinyamey.bsky.social) February 14, 2026 at 5:53 PM
Six Planks of RFK Jr.’s Year of Health Care Demolition www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol…
— Mike Cohen (@mikec415.bsky.social) February 13, 2026 at 9:06 PM
… “His leadership has been absolutely disastrous, and it has almost single-handedly worked to dismantle the public health system in our country and many of the gains that we’ve made in research, science, and medicine,” Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) recently told Rolling Stone. “America’s exceptionalism really rests on our prowess in the areas of science, research, and medicine. And what he has done will really set our country back in terms of our [worldwide] standing…
Gutting the nation’s health systems
The Department of Health and Human Services, along with virtually every other government agency, was the subject of severe staffing cuts after Trump retook office. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and the National Institute of Health (NIH) — both of which were targets of criticisms and conspiracies related to the government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic — lost thousands of employees. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health was also stripped of staff and programs (the laid-off workers were reinstated in January amid backlash from labor unions and other advocates)…Making vaccine skepticism government policy …
The return of measles …
Using AI to produce bogus health reports
… Kennedy’s HHS apparently used AI to produce a report last year, titled “MAHA Report: Make Our Children Healthy Again,” which purported to expose “the stark reality of American children’s declining health, backed by compelling data and long-term trends.” The report relied on several sources that did not seem to actually exist, and researchers who were cited denied writing the material the MAHA report claimed they produced…Autism and Tylenol…
Revamping the food pyramid to focus on meat…
Part of the problem with the MAHA agenda, however, is that it not only doesn’t hew to scientific evidence, it’s openly antagonistic toward it. “We were told by the last administration to trust the experts — that’s not a thing, it’s not a thing,” Kennedy said at the Heritage Foundation on Monday. “Trusting the experts is not a feature of democracy and it’s not a feature of science. It’s a feature of religion and totalitarianism, but not of democracy.”
Leslie Manookian said at the 2022 Brownstone Institute Gala that measles infection protects kids from cancer (false) and infections can benefit kids & cause developmental leaps.
I wish that our current NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, who was in the audience & on another panel, had spoken up.— Mallory Harris, PhD (@malar0ne.bsky.social) February 14, 2026 at 6:54 PM
again, not great, but I will emphasize to people that most states have incredibly simple opt out procedures for vaccines. They literally hand you a one page form and you sign it and you're done.
The ship sailed here awhile ago.— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) February 13, 2026 at 11:42 AM
In a way, not surprising at all. Public officials like Dr. Birx (who was actually a respected expert on AIDS before Covid) and Fauci often restrained Trump's impulses and Trump hated it. He believes Covid cost him the election (and it did). His new appointees are a revenge against public health.
— Eric Michael Garcia (@ericmgarcia.bsky.social) February 17, 2026 at 12:00 PM
… Amid bipartisan pressure, [Trump’s] administration in May 2020 embraced Operation Warp Speed, a more than $12 billion investment in a public/private partnership to develop vaccines. It was a stunning success. Vaccines often take years or even decades to develop, but mRNA vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna were ready in December 2020, only eight months after Warp Speed began.
Other nations developed vaccines as well (and Pfizer was a joint German effort) but the US accomplishment was hugely important. America donated 800 million doses of vaccines globally, more than twice as much as any of its nearest rivals, China (284.5m), Germany (175m) and France (124m). Vaccines are believed to have prevented 19.8 million deaths worldwide, as well as uncountable amounts of illness, suffering, and chronic disability.
The bipartisan American investment, which the Trump administration led, was absolutely key to containing a horrific global pandemic which could have been exponentially worse without the stunning accelerated development of mRNA vaccines — one of the great public health triumphs in modern history. But this miracle cure was only the beginning. The massive investment in mRNA opened doors to numerous other medical advances…
These mRNA advances would obviously benefit people in the United States, who would be much less likely to die of cancer, flu, pandemics, and a range of other illnesses. But, as with the covid vaccines, the implications of the technology would be felt far beyond US borders.
Vaccine distribution to less affluent nations can be poor and maddeningly inegalitarian. But if the US could have a vaccine ready for the next pandemic before it starts, the number of lives saved could be incalculable.
Unfortunately, the skull’s head that is RFK Jr. and his team of crack conspiracy theorists loathe covid vaccines and mRNA technology, which they insist, sans evidence, pose dangerous risks to the public. Conspiracy theories range from fringe assertions that mRNA alters the human genome to Kennedy’s more straightforward but still utterly false insistence that they cause deaths in young people and don’t prevent infection…
Oh my God, look at these personnel complaints filed against Vinay Prasad: sexual harassment, retaliation against subordinates, & verbally berating staff.
— Prof Gavin Yamey (@gavinyamey.bsky.social) February 12, 2026 at 11:55 AM
As I said to @politico.com:
“MAGA meets MAHA meets libertarianism meets the Great Barrington Declaration meets the Brownstone Institute — this interconnected movement has now adopted animus towards vaccination almost at its core, & that’s not something one used to see on the right”
1/2— Prof Gavin Yamey (@gavinyamey.bsky.social) February 16, 2026 at 5:00 PM
Making American Moms Die Again.
— Boston Tom Levenson (@tomlevenson.bsky.social) February 15, 2026 at 10:40 AM
#CDC has had a full-time director for less than a month in Trump 2.0. People watching the situation think it's unlikely there will be another Senate-confirmed CDC director in this term.
With Jim O'Neill's firing, it doesn't have an acting director either. www.statnews.com/2026/02/15/c…— Helen Branswell 🇨🇦 (@helenbranswell.bsky.social) February 15, 2026 at 12:19 PM
Indeed—when NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya gave a talk at Duke recently, he literally said he is turning the NIH into “the research arm of MAHA”
I kid you not
I could not believe my ears when he said it so openly & proudly—he is reshaping NIH to please RFK Jr’s kooky anti-vaxx MAHA movement 👀— Prof Gavin Yamey (@gavinyamey.bsky.social) February 15, 2026 at 10:39 AM
This is cutting your nose to spite your face. Defunding hiv prevention and surveillance benefits no one regardless of who you voted for. Public health and disease prevention should not be partisan.
abcnews.com/Health/trump…— BK. Titanji (@boghuma.bsky.social) February 12, 2026 at 5:00 PM
Another reminder. Anne Frank and her sister Margot didn't die in gas chambers. They died of Typhus due to overcrowding at Bergen-Belsen women's camp, which also experienced outbreaks of tuberculosis and typhoid fever.
— Eugene Freedman (@eugenefreedman.bsky.social) February 14, 2026 at 9:03 PM
We now have a CDC grant tracker and are collecting information on CDC terminations. If your CDC grant was terminated, we need your help to gather data and documents! Please report!
grant-witness.us/submit-cdc.h…— Noam Ross (@noamross.net) February 12, 2026 at 8:23 AM
The American Medical Association is launching an effort to evaluate vaccine safety and effectiveness independently of U.S. government health agencies
— Scientific American (@sciam.bsky.social) February 12, 2026 at 1:21 PM
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South Carolina’s measles total rises to 962
The South Carolina Department of Public Health (DPH) announced 12 more measles cases in an ongoing outbreak.
www.cidrap.umn.edu/m…— CIDRAP (@cidrap.bsky.social) February 17, 2026 at 3:29 PM
4. Now #measles: #CDC reports that as of 2/12, there have been 910 confirmed measles cases so far this year.
That's more cases in 6 weeks than the US recorded between 2000 & 2010 combined. Yes, more cases in 6 weeks than in a decade.
How bad is this year going to get? www.cdc.gov/measles/data…— Helen Branswell 🇨🇦 (@helenbranswell.bsky.social) February 13, 2026 at 7:20 PM
RFK Jr's dream of "medical freedom"
www.yahoo.com/news/article…— Prof Gavin Yamey (@gavinyamey.bsky.social) February 17, 2026 at 9:36 AM
Dr. Annie Andrews on one reason why she’s challenging Sen. Lindsey Graham: “There’s one way to stop the spread of measles—vaccinations. I’m a pediatrician—and a measles outbreak is surging in my home state of South Carolina. This was all preventable, and we need to be honest about how we got here.”
— Jon Cooper (@joncooper-us.bsky.social) February 16, 2026 at 9:36 AM
13 new measles cases in South Carolina as Florida university outbreak grows
More than two-thirds of all cases (594) in South Carolina have occurred in children ages 5 to 17.
www.cidrap.umn.edu/m…
Photo: Steve Knight / Wikimedia Commons— CIDRAP (@cidrap.bsky.social) February 10, 2026 at 5:09 PM
UK: "More than 60 children infected in north London measles outbreak"
"Cases reported in 7 schools and a nursery in Enfield amid concern over low levels of MMR vaccination in capital"
"WHO recommends at least 95% of children should receive vaccine doses for each illness to achieve herd immunity."— Denis – The COVID Info Guy (@thecovidinfoguy.bsky.social) February 16, 2026 at 6:08 PM
Measles is a bellwether. Because it’s the most contagious vaccine-preventable disease, when vaccination rates drop, it’s the first to start spreading.
Now we’ve got mumps rolling up.
Expect more.
This is just the beginning of RFK Jr.’s successful infectious disease reintroduction plan.— Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD (@elizabethjacobs.bsky.social) February 14, 2026 at 6:34 PM
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Cambodia reports first H5N1 human case this year
Cambodia has reported 36 human H5 infections since 2023.— CIDRAP (@cidrap.bsky.social) February 16, 2026 at 3:27 PM
3 new human avian flu cases reported in China
The most recent case of H10N3 reported by the CHP would be the seventh ever reported.
www.cidrap.umn.edu/a…— CIDRAP (@cidrap.bsky.social) February 11, 2026 at 4:15 PM
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WHO criticizes CDC-funded vaccine study in Africa as unethical
The criticism was aimed at a controversial CDC-funded study of the hepatitis B vaccine in Guinea-Bissau, where nearly 1 in 5 people are chronically infected with the virus.
www.cidrap.umn.edu/h…— CIDRAP (@cidrap.bsky.social) February 16, 2026 at 2:56 PM
Minnesota health officials warn of sexually transmitted fungal infection outbreak
State health officials have identified 13 confirmed and 27 suspected cases of Trichophyton mentagrophytes type VII, a fungal skin infection that causes severe ringworm.
www.cidrap.umn.edu/s…— CIDRAP (@cidrap.bsky.social) February 12, 2026 at 5:07 PM
One by one, western countries are choosing nationalism over global solidarity
www.rfi.fr/en/france/20…— Madhu Pai, MD, PhD (@madhupai.bsky.social) February 17, 2026 at 6:42 AM
"Immune Reset"
Rebooting the immune system by depletion of B cells, like a reboot of a computer, to achieve cures vs autoimmune diseases
nature.com/articles/s41…
erictopol.substack.com/p/the-exhili…— Eric Topol (@erictopol.bsky.social) February 16, 2026 at 12:45 PM
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Our new OpEd 👇
— Prof Gavin Yamey (@gavinyamey.bsky.social) February 16, 2026 at 6:40 AM
On The Road – Winter Wren – Golden Gate Bridge 10K
Baud
Meanwhile, RFK Jr and Kidd Rock are working out together, because content is king.
Et tu, France?
ColoradoGuy
They want a bribe. I’m sure of it. This is the usual mob shakedown.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
I hate myself for thinking that Sirhan Sirhan shot the wrong RFK all those years ago.
RepubAnon
More and more, I think the Epstein Class views the future as AI and robots replacing the rest of us. Sounds like Malthusian excess population thinking when they encourage disease spreading.
Geo Wilcox
@RepubAnon: They just want a combo of the movies Elysium and Transcendence. Elon, he of AI robots and genetics interest fame, had a cameo appearance in Transcendence.
trnc
People like Hotez can’t possibly misunderstand that that’s the goal. Does he think that speaking in vague terms will make Kennedy, Prasad, etc reverse themselves?
Professor Bigfoot
We are so fucked.*
(*no, not doomed, we’re not quitting, but goddamn it’s gonna get ugly up in here)
ETA: Anne Laurie, you are a treasure. THANK YOU for your every post here!
Soprano2
That’s a nasty roundup of horribles, Anne.
It’s obvious to me that these people are thinly-veiled eugenicists. They truly believe that if you’re healthy and have a good immune system you can survive these diseases, and that all that vaccines and much of modern medicine does is keep the weak alive. I can’t think of a better explanation for why they want all of these diseases we can protect people from to start spreading again – they want to weed out the “weak”. Bill Maher is one of them, he pretty much said it in an episode of his show I listened to last weekend. He was talking about how he wasn’t that much against a lot of what RFK Jr. is doing, people need to be healthy! He’ll protest he believes in modern medicine, but I’m not sure that’s true for people who aren’t him.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: Bill Maher initially got into alt-med kookiness through his animal-rights activism: there’s no need for animal experiments if all medical science is a fraud. At one point he was outright denying the germ theory of disease and pushing the lie that Pasteur recanted on his deathbed. It was the thing that first made me realize Maher was out of his mind.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: He was talking about how he thinks all these vaccines our kids are taking suppress their “natural immune system”, and that this is bad. When it comes to health, he is kooky. I wish a historian who studies disease in the past would come on and challenge him, because before we had vaccines millions of people died because their “natural immune system” couldn’t protect them. That’s one thing he claims that kind of used to be true but isn’t anymore – it’s rare that he has anyone on his show who actually challenges any of his core beliefs. No one on this episode said a word about this craziness.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: I do wonder what he thinks about the fact that the “healthy eating” these guys are pushing is a nearly-all-meat high-protein diet.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
That was a fad in the 90s for weight loss.
Scout211
FDA reverses course, agrees to review Moderna’s flu vaccine
Breaking news this morning. The “double reverse?”
Baud
@Scout211:
Well, that’s good. Hopefully, the review will be fair.
sab
I am so old that I remember Adelle Davis, another popular nutritionist quack. She died at age 70 in 1970 or 1971, after a decades long career of spreading sketchy information about nutrition about pregnancy and childhood nutrition.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Baud: Yeah, and hopefully next Christmas I’ll find the keys to a Corvette E-Ray in my stocking. I’m not exactly holding my breath, given how badly the public health apparatus in the US has been compromised over the past year.
Baud
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
I’m not going to assume that these guys have become so powerful that they are immune to political and public pressure.
Soprano2
@Baud: The Atkins diet, my husband did that for awhile. How is it that now foods are coded “male” or “female”. The world is nuts. I read an article with Sam Kass, who was a chef for the Obamas when they were in the White House. He’s amazed at how suddenly all these conservatives are on board with health stuff, when they were so resistant when he and Michelle advocated for kids to eat healthier. I want to scream at these people “Don’t act stupid, the only reason they’re on board now is because it’s a man they like telling them that, rather than a black woman. Plus, they aren’t really for “health”, in case you hadn’t noticed that.” It drives me crazy that people can’t or won’t say what the truth is.
Professor Bigfoot
Or when they get mad at you for telling them the truth.
Jackie
In other health related news, a deep read from Pro Publica:
lowtechcyclist
Thanks, AL, for keeping us updated on all the latest (anti-) health news. It’s more depressing than a conversation with Marvin the Paranoid Android, but it’s necessary that enough of us know what’s being done in our names, whether we like it or not.
The notion that somehow America will be stronger if we let diseases ‘cull the herd’ is such bullshit. Yeah, it might kill off a lot of people they regard as weak and therefore superfluous and a burden on the rest of us, but they’d also make a lot of people weak and sickly who would be healthy if they got all the recommended vaccines. So the result would be a smaller herd that would still, by their standards, need a lot of culling. So we’d have a less healthy, less populous, and therefore less productive nation.
I continue to get pissed by news media using the term ‘vaccine skeptic.’ Genuine skepticism can be satisfied by sufficient evidence. RFK Jr. and his crowd are anti-vax cultists. Skepticism isn’t part of their toolkit.
Soprano2
@Professor Bigfoot: It was so funny to read his bewilderment, when he has to know full well exactly why they have the attitude they do now as opposed to their attitude when Michelle tried to get school kids to eat more vegetables and exercise more. I’m tired of all these people play acting dumb – it’s not helping anything.
bbleh
Not outta the woods yet, but that reversal of the reversal certainly improved MY morning.
Those people are SUCH charlatans and hacks. And just as bad, when they’re gone — as they will be — the damage they’ve done will remain and affect us for a long time: reduced capacity in public healthcare agencies, loss of public confidence, and of course the increases in disease and death we’ll suffer.
Is America Great Again yet?
Raoul Paste
Well, that was a pretty infuriating read. It’s a measure of our current corruption that RFK Jr publicly states that he thinks science and religion are equivalent, and the media doesn’t crucify him.
Shakti
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
The Kennedys have done far worse to family members who they thought might threaten their reputation for far less.
Obviously it wasn’t ethical in the slightest (and I don’t condone it). But compare that to how they treated RFK Jr. I can and will blame his parents,
RFK Jr is the family brand now and will be the Kennedy everyone remembers. He will wipe out any earned goodwill other Kennedys have earned by sheer scope and time.
My unfounded theory is that RFK Jr was born too early to benefit from vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella and therefore wants to make sure as many people suffer from it as possible.
bbleh
@Soprano2: @Professor Bigfoot: for them, “truth” is the belief accepted and promulgated by their Tribe, and good standing in the Tribe is extremely important to them and to their self-images. If you challenge the belief, you challenge the Tribe, and if you challenge the Tribe, you challenge them personally. So if some inconvenient conclusion based on fact and logic challenges the accepted belief, they’re not gonna listen to it or repeat it, and they’re gonna get mad at you if you insist on it.
Soprano2
@Jackie: People have always wanted the “one weird trick” that fixes everything that’s wrong with them. I went to a presentation about colloidal silver once. The guy was such an obvious fraud, but I could tell some people were lapping it up. I understand, I’ve struggled with chronic back pain since I was 27 (ironically, there is now a procedure that could help me, but my bones are too brittle now so the doc won’t attempt it. “Shattered vertebra” sounds bad.). I get why people are desperate, but the government shouldn’t give a sheen of respectability to all this snake oil.
zhena gogolia
@Shakti: He wasn’t born too early to benefit from vaccines.
sab
@zhena gogolia: He is my age. He would have missed all the usual childhood vaccines (measles, mumps, chicken pox, etc.)
But he undoubtedly did benefit from smallpox, tetanus and polio vaccines. With his swimming habits tetanus would be a must.
Scout211
No, he’s 72. But those of us in that group did experience mumps, chicken pox and the various measles because those vaccines weren’t available when we were young.
I often speculate his use of street drugs over the decades (and of course his “brain worm”) have caused him to become obsessed with freeing everyone from taking in any chemicals into their bodies, like someone who is now “born again.”
OTOH, that doesn’t explain the rest of his awfulness. It also doesn’t explain why the Trump administration gives him free rein to destroy public health.
He is a useful idiot to them but I’m not sure if he knows that.
Added text
knally
I do appreciate these roundups for how they cover so many health areas. I was particularly interested in the article about Astra-Zeneca and clots. Even with no medical knowledge it was well written enough to understand what had happened and the conclusion looks good for future vaccines.
Elizabelle
Appreciate your work, AL. But reading this stuff raises my blood pressure.
It’s an assault on so many fronts.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: That’s exactly it, the heart of the matter. This is all gender/psychosexual pathology.
It’s not just food, it’s medicine and forms of exercise that are gender- and party-coded. Strength training is masculine and right-wing; cardio is feminine and left-wing. Vegetables and fiber are feminine wussy diet interventions, high-protein/keto diets with lots of crazy supplements are masculine and MAGA. And getting a vaccine means you’re “afraid of a germ” and that you’re a pussy.
Jay
As always, thank you Anne Laurie.
Aziz, light!
@lowtechcyclist: R Effing K Jr is a vaccine skeptic in the same way that a creationist is an evolutionary biologist.
bbleh
@Matt McIrvin: and as Umberto Eco has observed, Fascism eschews thinking. Thinking — as opposed to action for action’s sake — is emasculating. Real Men don’t think, they go with their gut.
M31
@Jackie:
‘raw camel milk’ as an autism cure
what the everlasting fuck
Suburban Mom
@RepubAnon: Yes, for sure. And climate change will make many places unlivable. They don’t want it to get too crowded.
Scout211
I see that AL has added the reversal of the reversal up top. Good.
Like Baud, I am hoping that this will be a fair review of the Moderna vaccine. Fingers crossed.
kalakal
Something that puzzles me slightly is the recommendations that wrinklies born before 1957 dont need a measles shot because of childhood exposure. The first measles vaccines were licensed in 1963. Why isn’t the cut off 1963 rather than 1957?
David_C
The pandemic preparedness part of the NIH budget was a Fauci-inspired activity. After 9/11 and the anthrax letters, Congress wanted to set up a large biodefense effort, but Fauci got approval to use funding also for emerging infectious diseases. This has led to being ahead of the curve in the various outbreaks we’ve had since then.
It is unclear how big the changes will be and how it will affect other efforts of interest to me.
snoey
@kalakal: 1957 was picked because we can be almost certain that those of us that old had it. Younger people may have not been infected, then gotten a weak vaccine, and are now underprotected.
Chetan Murthy
A month ago I got what appeared to be a really severe flu. Like:
(1) for two days my head could only hold two thoughts: “estes kefauver” [1] and some HTTP tester I wrote 30+ years ago. Cray-cray.
(2) when I got up in the middle of the night to go pee, as I was standing there, my entire body was wracked with spasms from fever chills. Crazy fever.
It lasted a week, then I thought I was OK, so I went back to the gym, and by the end of the second week, I was back in bed. Then two more weeks to fully recover. I don’t think it was COVID (no sore throat), but I don’t know, b/c by the time I had gathered my wits enough to order a COVID test, the 5-day window for Paxlovid had passed, so I didn’t bother.
I thought I’d write about it for this reason: I was telling a guy in the gym about it last Friday, and some other guy walking past interjected that he’d also suffered the same disease course! In detail! And then I was telling my sister, and she said she’d had a friend who had the same disease course! So it seems that this is something common, and so I thought maybe people should be aware.
I think I got it by spending too much time unmasked around large numbers of people (at the pool, one Saturday, with tons of kids there for lessons; I woke up sick the next day). And I’m vaxxed (flu+covid) of course.
Anyway, if you get this, get a friend or family to get the test, maybe? If it’s the flu, you might be able to get Tamiflu? B/c shit, this is no weakling virus!
Shakti
@sab: 😆🤪 That reminds me I stepped on a nail in my backyard a week ago (new roof construction). I wonder if I need an update on that tetanus shot. I think I was an actual child when I last got a tetanus booster after i had a foot injury that didn’t heal for a month.
I wouldn’t roll the dice on chicken pox on a kid if it’s preventable. I did not enjoy my case of chicken pox. At least I didn’t have Reyes syndrome.
Scout211
Tdap every 10 years for all adults.
Ruckus
The people opposed to vaccines for all want to destroy this country – or at least where it has gotten to now. They think that vaccination for all does not clear out the riffraff – anyone who doesn’t follow their give me money and everything will be fine. For them. Their world does not revolve around all of us, but only around their group. They have to be mean, ignorant, and understand only one thing – money for them, crap for everyone else. They do not want a democratic government, they want money and power over others. They have zero idea, no, maybe actually only negative concepts of humanity and life. Life to them is them alone. They have zero idea how humanity works and only negative views about everyone but them. Must be difficult to live with one’s head up one’s own ass so far that it’s actually back on their necks.
Randal Sexton
When measles started returning I specced out the cost of getting a test to see if I still have immunity ( born in ‘56, had measles) versus getting a Mmr . Mmr was cheaper so I did.
Ruckus
I’d bet that many of us here are old enough to have been alive seeing life WITHOUT vaccines for most illnesses that really, really screw up a life. Polio, etc. I’m an old, born before many of the vaccines that make life so dramatically better existed and the tools of a doctor was a stethoscope so they could hear your heartbeat, even though they could do nothing to fix any of the numerous things that killed/disabled people at the time. At my 50th HS reunion I watched a woman walk in, who had used crutches to walk since we were in elementary school together, without them. I remembered many people would stay away from her in school because humanity had almost zero idea what would stop polio. We are seeing ignorant, jackass morons believing that we don’t have any of the problems/diseases that basically destroyed life. I remember that 3 of my friends near where I lived had iron lungs in their front rooms (only place they fit) for one of their parents because of diseases we couldn’t stop, or my neighbor my age, who lives in a wheelchair because she was a polio victim and only has one usable leg. People DIED or were very disabled before the vaccine. Vaccines changed life, and often has made life possible for a hell of a lot of human beings.
These jackass blankety blank assholes have their heads stuffed permanently up their exit port. They only see their own selves in life, like looking in a mirror 24 hrs a day, allowing them to see nothing but themselves. Of course their world and diet is full of their own exhaust solids, causing them to be completely Selfish Bastards.
Pardon my swearing, but watching, listening to people who have zero realistic concept of living and only negative concepts of everyone who isn’t them, and egos which are more full of shit than than a full sized rancher’s dump truck really does piss me off.
VFX Lurker
Thank you for keeping us safe, Anne Laurie.
GenX here. Two childhood MMRs. Flunked a measles titer in 2019; got a third MMR. Passed the same titer (barely) in 2020.
Flunked the titer AGAIN in 2025; got two MMRs spaced one month apart. I hope my measles immunity “sticks” this time.
Matt McIrvin
@Shakti: Yeah, sounds like you do. I went and got my Tdap booster with my last COVID and flu shots. Whooping cough (pertussis, the p in Tdap) is going around too because of antivaxxer parents and it’ll cover you there.
Matt McIrvin
@bbleh: If you can do enough pull-ups you just flex those guns at the virus and it’ll run away in terror! Or possibly terroir.
Citizen Alan
@RepubAnon: I have thought for many years that a lot of the seemingly inexplicable decisions that world leaders have been making over the course of my adult lifetime suddenly seem a lot more comprehensible if you assume that a massive reduction in the human population is the deliberate goal.
Gretchen
@kalakal: Because back then a lot of moms stayed home with their babies and those babies might have missed measles exposure for the first couple of seasons, but all 6 year olds would be exposed because they’re in school by then.
Gretchen
@Chetan Murthy: My daughter’s family (all vaccinated) had a disease course like this. They tested positive for Influenza A. My healthy, 35yo SIL was so sick he was hallucinating at one point. They all got better after a week, went back to work/school, but kept relapsing for 2-3 more weeks.
Gretchen
@Ruckus: so many of these folks are binary thinkers: either you die of a disease or you recover and are fine. That’s how they argue that we didn’t need vaccines because death rates were going down before they were introduced. They ignore that doctors could keep them alive and the resulting misery and disability weren’t prevented.
@Soprano2: I think the “one weird trick” thinking explains conservative thinking in general. They want a quick, simple answer: get rid of immigrants to get more jobs and housing. Tariffs will make taxes go down. Elect Trump and all of your dreams will come true.
Michael Fuhrer
Just FYI, this story (Portugal, Thailand, Germany reimposing testing requirements for visitors from China) is from very early 2023, during China’s exit wave from covid after zero-covid fell apart. (The story references XBB.1.5, the emerging variant at the time.)
Here’s a contemporary report.
hotshoe
@Gretchen:
Yes, essentially everyone older than born-in-1963 had the measles and are already immune, and would not benefit from a new vaccination.
I believe that the reason 1957 was chosen for the cutoff date for advising for the vaccine is just what you said: it gives their target population 6 years from birth to get out into the world and get exposed/ill/immune afterward.
If you’re older than born-in-1957, you can still get the measles vaccine — but the procedure is to ask your doctor to prescribe it, and the doctor will (presumably) order an MMR-titer test first to verify whether you do need a new vaccination or whether it would be a waste (and whether it would be a possible risk).
A bit unfortunate and rather stupid of me, I have no doctor, so I will simply relax confident in the knowledge that I had a horrible case of measles when I was a kid and am almost certainly immune-enough to be safe now.
dnfree
@Shakti: Once I got a splinter from an old floor, and my doctor said “When was your last tetanus shot? If you don’t remember, it’s going to be today.”