CDC ACIP public comment: Let them know you're pro-vaccination
The CDC ACIP & FDA VRBPAC have members who think most of the public is anti-vax or don't care to get boosted even though it's a good idea. I'm not anti-vax & want to be heard so I submitted a comment.
CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is accepting public comment on the updated COVID boosters through September 21, 2023 11:59 p.m. EST
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/index.html
This is the committee that decides on whether or not to authorize covid vaccines and who will be restricted or allowed to get the updated boosters. I made a comment and you might want to too.
There are people on this ACIP committee like Cody Meissner, signer of the infamously wrong Great Barrington Declaration,1 who has in the past voiced incoherently anti-vax opinions and vague opposition to vaccine development.2 Paul Offit, who is on the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC),3 appears to favour restricting vaccines to only the very old,4 — “focused protection” is something promoted by the Great Barrington Declaration, with the idea of natural herd immunity taking it’s natural course among youths, which of course results in some dying (something that’s only seen as good from a eugenics pseudoscience perspective). Someone anonymous at the FDA was quoted in WaPo as saying they didn't think they should update boosters for new variants because they believe the public has “little interest in getting repeated injections”5 — calling them “injections” itself invokes anti-vax talking points. In other words there are people at government agencies who might be anti-vax, or at least believe a majority of the public is anti-vax, and so the government appears to be catering to the anti-vax contingent by restricting vaccine development, frequency, and putting limits on who can get it, for reasons other than a scientific basis.6 Mike Osterholm was quoted in Stat News saying that public health is trying to “thread the needle” between people who want to be vaccinated and the anti-vaxxers who want nobody vaccinated.7 Trying to implement policy that’s halfway between Qanon and reality is not rational, and it’s costing people’s lives, because what the government recommends has direct impact on what a lot of healthcare providers do, what insurance covers, and what the public and even healthcare workers believe is real.
If anti-vax is NOT you, you might want to say something to this agency and be counted. People’s CDC has suggestions on what to suggest and why when making a public comment.8
WBUR - Here & Now - Herd Immunity Is 'Pixie Dust Thinking,' Infectious Disease Expert Says - October 14, 2020 - by Robin Young Most of the document’s 9,000 signatures are private, but among its public signers are Nobel laureate Michael Levitt from Stanford University; Dr. Cody Meissner, professor of pediatrics, an expert on vaccine development at Tufts Medical Center; and a doctor at Stanford, where Scott Atlas, the president's current science adviser who believes in herd immunity, studied. Scientists have discredited this theory, especially for coronaviruses.
Teams Human: Incoherent natural immunity claims at FDA meeting on vaccines. Jan 26 2023 But somehow he’s not concerned about that with “natural infection” which also comes with big risks? And somehow he’s at an FDA meeting but doesn’t know that vaccine development can progress?
Washington Post: FDA proposes switching to annual coronavirus vaccine, mimicking flu model. By Laurie McGinley. January 23, 2023 Paul A. Offit, a member of the panel who is a vaccine expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine recently that it is fruitless to try to “prevent all symptomatic infections in healthy, young people by boosting them with vaccines containing mRNA from strains that might disappear a few months later.” Offit said such boosters should be reserved for older people, or those who are immunocompromised or have multiple medical conditions.
Washington Post: FDA proposes switching to annual coronavirus vaccine, mimicking flu model. By Laurie McGinley. January 23, 2023 It also reflects a view that “chasing variants” with ever-changing booster formulations is ultimately futile, in part because the public has little interest in getting repeated injections, according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about it.
Restricting vaccine access because of anti-vax bs or waiting for hospitals to overflow is unethical, Nobody should be basing vaccine access on financial focus, right-wing politics, hopium, perceived administrative inconvenience, nor anti-vax disinformation. CHLOE HUMBERT, APR 2, 2023 The CDC’s own presentation at the ACIP meeting in September 2022 included a chart that showed protection waning by 6 months and essentially no protection from symptomatic infection by 8 months. There is still benefit in regards to death and hospitalization after 8 months but that of course diminishes over time too.
Stat News: FDA offers radio silence on question of spring Covid boosters, as other countries push ahead By Helen Branswell March 16, 2023 “We currently live in a world where those that want additional booster doses really want them. And those that don’t want them don’t want them at all. And what we’re trying to do is thread that needle,” Osterholm said.
