TO: CDC ACIP, CC President Joe Biden
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 healthcare workers believe is real.
- https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/10/14/herd-immunity-coronavirus
- https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxflxS4HrmGhRs8hBjYsEo7zF70zrQqrsr
- https://www.fda.gov/advisory-committees/vaccines-and-related-biological-products-advisory-committee/roster-vaccines-and-related-biological-products-advisory-committee
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2023/01/23/covid-vaccine-once-a-year/
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2023/01/23/covid-vaccine-once-a-year/
- https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2022-09-01/04-COVID-Link-Gelles-508.pdf
- https://www.statnews.com/2023/03/16/fda-offers-radio-silence-on-question-of-spring-covid-boosters-as-other-countries-push-ahead/
Correction note: Cody Meissner is on the FDA VRBPAC committee, not the CDC ACIP committee. (Both are committees on vaccines and vaccination.)
https://www.regulations.gov/comment/CDC-2023-0060-1143