There was a Moderna presentation at the CDC ACIP meeting regarding the next generation covid-19 vaccine. It’s a second generation, single antigen vaccine. Unfortunately a lot of people talking about it online, on social media, and in some forums, don’t have the expertise in this to really discern what it all means. Some people have erroneously and incorrectly claimed that Moderna is “trying to bring back the bivalent vaccine” from previous seasons. This is false. It’s possible some enthusiasts misconstrued the issue because the trial covered in the presentation was conducted with the bivalent because that was available at that time. I also think that this is getting muddled up with the weird erroneous and non-factual comments made in the news by RFKJr about Novavax. Some people are also spreading anti-vax talking points about mRNA vaccines — claims that are not true.
Be aware that there seem to have been considerable efforts to make Novavax into a meme stock, and there may be people who are motivated in strange ways to confuse the issue. It’s not always about making money, product cults are unfortunately enticing to a lot of people for social reasons, many who are feeling at loose ends these days, and a lot of communities are being target marketed leveraging that, but also there are people who just want attention. Nobody should get medical advice from social media hot shots who might be credentialed but may still be unreliable, because there are lots of incentives and motivations and relationships that may lead to poor science communication when people are promoting their work on social media.
And definitely nobody should be getting medical information from media interviews with RFKJr either because he’s not even a doctor and says stuff he’s pulling out of the air, or somewhere else.
The CDC ACIP meeting to determine recommendations for the covid vaccines will take place in June 2025. The discussion in this recent meeting around the covid vaccines may have been less than reassuring, that’s for sure, and doesn’t give me any hope for an actual vaccination campaign to improve uptake sadly, which is what we need. However, I’d like to remind everyone that this shockingly lukewarm vibe from this committee has been the case at basically every CDC ACIP meeting for years now, sometimes with people pushing the idea that the vaccines should be restricted to the very old, or just restricted seemingly based on following the politics. I’ve been writing about the wishy-washy CDC guidance for years now. So all hope is not lost here by any means based on odd stuff said at this meeting. But it means that everyone who cares needs to make our voices louder than the anti-vaxxers who are but a loud minority. The problem is that people on the side of science-based medicine have rested on the laurels of fact. We simply can’t do that. Everything is political and doctors and public health experts need to get political on this. Don’t take vaccines for granted, nobody ever should have.
My letter to elected representatives:
I want vaccines. I want research on effective vaccines funded, I want covid vaccines, I want vaccines covered by all insurance, and I want free vaccination available to the uninsured. I want vaccines mandated in congregate and high risk settings like nursing homes, hospitals, schools, and the military.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose the contents of my letter for your own.