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Tag: ACIP

  • Fact-checking CDC vaccine panel on baby hepatitis B shots

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    Since roughly 1991, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended all babies get a dose of the hepatitis B vaccine at birth. The CDC committee that helps set vaccine policy voted Dec. 5 to overturn that decadeslong policy.  

    The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’ new recommendations say mothers who tested negative for hepatitis B should discuss the need for the vaccine with their doctors. For babies who do not receive a birth dose, the committee suggested the initial vaccine dose be given “no earlier than 2 months of age.”

    The committee is composed of members hand-picked by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., an anti-vaccine advocate who in June fired all 17 of the prior panel’s members.

    Here are four fact-checkable moments that stood out from ACIP’s Dec. 4 and 5 discussion leading up to the vote:

    Many people are unaware they have hepatitis B

    Several ACIP committee members and health administrators questioned the need for vaccination among certain children who they described as “low-risk” for hepatitis B exposure.

    But it can be hard to know a child’s exposure risk. 

    Hepatitis B is transmitted through bodily fluids like blood, semen and vaginal fluids. But it is a highly infectious and tough virus that can live on surfaces for up to a week. Small amounts of dried blood on innocuous household items like nail clippers, razors or toothbrushes could be enough.

    Hepatitis B infection is stealthy. It can be asymptomatic, sometimes for years. The CDC estimates about 640,000 adults have a chronic infection, but about half of them do not know they are infected and contagious.

    Even if a pregnant mother tests negative for the hepatitis B virus, her newborn can come in contact with it in other ways and through other people. Before the vaccine became recommended universally at birth, only around half of children under 10 who were infected with hepatitis B contracted it from their mothers during birth.

    Since many people are entirely unaware of their infections, it can be hard to know if a person is at elevated risk or resides in a community with infected individuals.

    A box of hepatitis B vaccine is displayed at a CVS Pharmacy, Sept. 9, 2025, in Miami. (AP)

    Vaccinations are to protect babies, who are most vulnerable to hepatitis B

    Some ACIP members said that vaccinating all babies against hepatitis B at birth mainly protected other, higher risk people.

    That’s misleading. Vaccination at birth aims primarily to protect newborns, who are particularly vulnerable to hepatitis B. 

    The hepatitis B virus attacks the liver. Infected infants have a 90% chance of developing the disease’s more dangerous chronic form. A quarter of those babies will go on to die prematurely from the disease when they become adults.

    Untreated, chronic hepatitis B infections can cause cirrhosis and death. It is also one of the leading causes of liver cancer. Patients can seek treatments to reduce the virus’ worst effects. But there is no cure.

    “We used to have 18,000 or 20,000 kids a year being born with this, a quarter of them going on to have liver cancer,” said Dr. James Campbell, pediatric infectious disease doctor at the University of Maryland. “We now have almost none.”

    Infection rates are low because the decades-old hep B vaccination strategy was working

    “This disease has become a victim of the vaccine,” said Dr. H. Cody Meissner, a committee member who voted against changing the recommendations. “We’re seeing disease rates go down because of the effectiveness of the vaccine.”

    Meissner is right that hepatitis B cases dropped dramatically following the introduction of birth-dose vaccination.  

    The hepatitis B vaccine uses proteins from the surface of the hepatitis B virus to provoke an immune response that gives the body a defense against future infection.

    Before the vaccine, around 200,000 to 300,000 people were infected with hepatitis B each year, including about 20,000 children.

    Since hepatitis B vaccines began being universally administered to babies, overall cases are down to around 14,000 annually. The change is especially dramatic among young people. In 2022, the CDC reported 252 new chronic hepatitis B infections among people up to age 19, or 0.4 out of every 100,000 kids.

    “It’s a mistake to say that because we’re not seeing much disease, we can alter the roots or the frequency or the schedule for administration,” Meissner said. “Because we will see hepatitis B infections come back.”

    Many countries vaccinate for hepatitis B at birth; the U.S. is not an outlier

    Committee members repeatedly compared the United States’ guidance with other countries, including Denmark, as part of the rationale for walking back the universal recommendation to provide a hepatitis B vaccine dose at birth.

    The U.S. is not a global outlier in recommending hepatitis B vaccines for newborns. In September 2025, the CDC reported that “of the 194 WHO member states, 116 countries recommend universal hepatitis B birth dose vaccination to all newborns.”

    Hepatitis B vaccine birth dose vaccination policy by county as of September 2025. (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

    Denmark’s standard vaccination schedule includes vaccines protecting against 10 diseases, but hepatitis B is not one of them. Denmark recommends hepatitis B vaccines only for babies whose mothers are infected with the virus, said the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. 

    Unlike Denmark, the U.S. does not have a national health care system, making it harder for Americans to access regular prenatal care and track patient records across doctors. The U.S. also has lower rates of prenatal screening for hepatitis B.

    RELATED: Hepatitis B vaccine Q&A: Why do babies need the shot?

    RELATED: RFK Jr. wants to delay the hepatitis B vaccine. Here’s what parents need to know.

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  • RFK Jr.’s Buddies Are Back to Undermine Vaccines

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    The federal government is officially back to work, and unfortunately, so is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s influence over the country’s public health. Early next month, a panel of outside advisors assembled by Kennedy will meet once again and probably take a sledgehammer to more vaccines.

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently posted the draft agenda for the next meeting of its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, scheduled for December 4 and 5. Among other things, ACIP plans to discuss the childhood vaccination schedule as well as “contaminants” in vaccines. Though it’s not exactly clear what ACIP will vote on during this meeting, some of its members will likely try to remove the decades-old recommendation that children be vaccinated against hepatitis B starting at birth—a decision that even some GOP lawmakers are trying to prevent.

    “I want to make America healthy, and you don’t start by stopping recommendations that have made us substantially healthier,” Senator Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) told CBS News’ Face the Nation in an interview released Sunday.

    The hijacked ACIP

    Earlier this year, Kennedy unilaterally dismissed all 17 members of the ACIP, the panel of outside experts that helps guide the CDC’s vaccine policies. He then quickly added new advisors, many of whom—like Kennedy himself—have a history of spreading misinformation about vaccines.

    In its two meetings to date, the rejiggered ACIP has issued several recommendations welcomed by the anti-vaccination movement. It moved to ban the few remaining vaccines that contained thimerosal, for instance, an ingredient that antivaxxers have long accused of causing autism with dubious evidence. Though thimerosal was removed from most vaccines as a precaution in the early 2000s, studies since have failed to find any link to autism, and autism rates have only continued to rise. The ACIP also called for children under four to no longer receive the combination measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella vaccine (MMRV), a decision that the previous CDC had left up to parents.

    These decisions, and the ACIP’s general shift away from science-backed evaluation, have helped fuel the internal collapse of the CDC. In late August, RFK Jr. fired former CDC director Susan Monarez just four weeks into her role, reportedly because she refused to sign off on the ACIP’s recommendations without conducting her own review; soon after, much of the CDC’s senior leadership resigned in protest.

    So far, the ACIP’s worst decisions have been limited in their scope. Few vaccines today include thimerosal, and most families weren’t vaccinating their very young children with the MMRV shot. But the potential removal of universal at-birth hepatitis B vaccination threatens to be its most sweeping and damaging change yet.

    Unscientific fears

    Hepatitis B is spread through direct contact with bodily fluids. In adults, it’s usually transmitted via sex or by sharing contaminated needles. But the virus can also be passed from an infected mother to the child during childbirth.

    Though a hepatitis B infection can be managed with antivirals if it becomes chronic, there is no curative treatment currently. Most children with hepatitis B will have it for the rest of their lives, and about a quarter will experience serious health problems, including cirrhosis and liver cancer.

    Thirty years ago, ACIP and the CDC began to recommend that everyone receive the hepatitis B vaccine when young, eventually moving towards at-birth dosing for the first shot. This strategy was only adopted after previous attempts to just vaccinate the highest-risk groups failed to significantly lower cases. And since its implementation, rates of hepatitis B, especially in children, have steadily fallen in the U.S. The vaccine is also safe, with its most serious side effects, like anaphylaxis, being exceptionally rare and manageable with proper monitoring.

    At the last ACIP meeting in September, CDC staff argued in support of at-birth vaccination and warned that more children would almost certainly develop hepatitis B if the policy was removed. Both sessions of the ACIP ran long, and at the very last minute—amidst lots of confusion about what the members were actually voting on—the ACIP unexpectedly chose to table its planned vote on hepatitis B. Given the inclusion of hepatitis B on Friday’s agenda, however, it appears that reprieve was short-lived.

    The inclusion of the childhood vaccine schedule on Thursday’s agenda is also plenty concerning. Antivaxxers have made no secret about their desire to tear the schedule to shreds if they could. The Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccination group founded by RFK Jr., hosted its “Moment of Truth” conference earlier this month. During the conference, Mark Gorton, president of the MAHA Institute—a group founded to bolster Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy” movement—called for the “childhood vaccination schedule to be eliminated.”

    As before, the reformed ACIP has not revealed the contents of its votes scheduled for this next meeting. So it’s still up in the air just how far its members will go in trying to change the schedule. But there’s certainly no reason to be optimistic about what lies ahead for the country’s public health under the reign of RFK Jr.

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    Ed Cara

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  • CDC Panel Votes to Nix Current Covid Vaccine Recommendations

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    On Friday, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted to drop its recommendation that U.S. adults should generally receive the covid-19 vaccine, instead endorsing an individualized approach.

    In a unanimous decision, the ACIP members agreed that adults 65 and older should decide on their own or with their doctor whether to get vaccinated for covid-19. The ACIP also recommended that people between the ages of 6 months and 64 years make an individual decision about covid-19 vaccination (yes, you read that correctly), while being informed that the benefits of vaccination are most apparent in those at higher risk of severe illness.

    A screencap of ACIP blurbage articulating the new recommendations. © ACIP

    The ACIP narrowly avoided recommending that Americans should require a prescription to get the covid-19 shot, however, though only barely.

    A chaotic ACIP meeting

    The votes capped off a chaotic and disorganized discussion held Friday over the safety and effectiveness of the covid-19 mRNA vaccines.

    Retsef Levi, a longtime skeptic of the covid-19 vaccines and a professor of operations management at MIT Sloan School of Management, led the ACIP discussion, as well as the working group on covid-19 vaccines. Levi is one of several ACIP members handpicked by Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. who has a long history of misrepresenting vaccine research.

    CDC staff presented reams of evidence that covid-19 vaccines, even today, still reliably prevent serious outcomes like hospitalization and death, including in very young children. Many outside experts also testified in support of maintaining widespread access to these vaccines for every American who wants them. But ACIP members often questioned the findings or made their own poorly evidenced attempts to attack the safety of the vaccines.

    At one point, for instance, ACIP members argued in support of a paper claiming to show extensive DNA contamination of the vaccines—a study that outside experts have criticized for glaring flaws and that is now being reviewed over potential concerns by its publisher. At another point, members argued that the covid-19 vaccines could possibly raise the risk of cancer, a claim widely refuted by most experts (mRNA vaccine technology is actively being studied as a way to prevent and treat certain cancers).

    What this vote means for covid vaccine access

    The language of the ACIP votes today was not disclosed until the very last minute, and it’s not entirely clear how they will impact vaccine access.

    Late last month, the Food and Drug Administration limited its explicit approval of the updated covid-19 boosters to people over 65 or those with a higher risk of severe illness. The ACIP’s recommendation to move to an individualized approach, assuming it’s adopted by the CDC, may further delay or prevent people from obtaining a covid-19 booster if they so choose.

    That said, several states like New York have already taken steps to ensure continued vaccine access and public coverage of the vaccine to all their residents. This week, the country’s largest health insurance association, America’s Health Insurance Plans, also announced that its members will rely on the previous ACIP recommendations to determine their coverage of the covid-19 vaccine for the time being. It additionally stated that patients covered by these plans would not experience cost-sharing through the end of 2026.

    In a 6 to 6 vote, the ACIP declined to endorse a recommendation calling for people to require a prescription for the covid-19 vaccines—ACIP chairman Martin Kulldorff issued the tiebreaker, voting “no.”

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    Ed Cara

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  • RKF Jr.’s hand-picked committee changed its recommendations for key childhood shots

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    A key committee of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted Thursday to alter its recommendation on an early childhood vaccine, after a discussion that at times pitted vaccine skeptics against the CDC’s own data.

    After an 8 to 3 vote with one abstention, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will no longer recommend that children under the age of 4 receive a single-shot vaccine for mumps, measles, rubella and varicella (better known as chicken pox).

    Instead, the CDC will recommend that children between the ages of 12 to 15 months receive two separate shots at the same time: one for mumps, measles and rubella (MMR) and one for varicella.

    The first vote of the committee’s two-day meeting represents a relatively small change to current immunization practices. The committee will vote Friday on proposed changes to childhood Hepatitis B and COVID vaccines.

    But doctors said the lack of expertise and vaccine skepticism on display during much of the discussion would only further dilute public trust in science and public health guidance.

    “I think the primary goal of this meeting has already happened, and that was to sow distrust and instill fear among parents and families,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, chair of American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Infectious Diseases, during a Zoom press conference Thursday.

    “What we saw today at the meeting was really not a good faith effort to craft immunization policy in the best interest of Americans. It was, frankly, an alarming attempt to undermine one of the most successful public health systems in the world,” O’Leary said. “This idea that our current vaccine policies are broken or need a radical overhaul is simply false.”

    Giving the MMR and chickenpox vaccines in the same shot has been associated with a higher relative risk of brief seizures from high fevers in the days after vaccination for children under 4 — eight children in 10,000 typically have febrile seizures after receiving the combination shot, compared with four out of 10,000 who receive separate MMR and chickenpox shots at the same time.

    Distressing as they are for family members to witness, seizures are a relatively common side effect for high fevers in young children and have not been associated with any long-term consequences, said Dr. Cody Meissner, a former pediatric infectious diseases chief at Tufts-New England Medical Center who is serving on ACIP for the second time (he previously served under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama).

    The problem with splitting vaccines into multiple shots is that it typically leads to lower vaccine compliance, Meissner said. And the risks of not vaccinating are real.

    “We are looking at a risk-benefit of febrile seizures … as compared to falling below a 95% coverage rate for herd immunity, and the consequences of that are devastating, with pregnant women losing their babies, newborns dying and having congenital rubella syndromes,” said Dr. Joseph Hibbeln, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist and another current ACIP member.

    Meissner, Hibbeln and Hilary Blackburn were the only three members to vote against the change.

    The meeting ended with a vote regarding continued coverage of the MMRV shot under the CDC’s Vaccines for Children Program, a publicly-funded service that provides immunizations to nearly half of the nation’s children. VFC currently only covers shots that ACIP recommends.

    As chair Martin Kulldorff called the vote, several committee members complained that they did not understand the proposal as it was written. Three abstained from the vote entirely.

    As the meeting broke up, members could be heard trying to clarify with one another what they had just voted for.

    The committee also spent several hours debating whether to delay the first dose of the Hepatitis B vaccine, a shot typically given at birth, until the child is one month old. They will vote on the proposal Friday.

    The medical reason for altering the Hepatitis B schedule was less clear.

    “What is the problem we’re addressing with the Hepatitis B discussion? As far as I know, there hasn’t been a spate of adverse outcomes,” said pediatrician Dr. Amy Middleman, one of several people to raise the point during the discussion and public comment period.

    Committee member Dr. Robert Malone replied that changing the recommendation for when children should get vaccinated for hepatitis B would improve Americans’ trust in public health messaging.

    “A significant population of the United States has significant concerns about vaccine policy and about vaccine mandates, [particularly] the immediate provision of this vaccine at the time of birth,” Malone said. “The signal that is prompting this is not one of safety, but one of trust.”

    Hepatitis B is often asymptomatic, and half of infected people don’t know they have it, according to the CDC. Up to 85% of babies born to infected mothers become infected themselves, and the risk of long-term hazards from the disease is higher the earlier the infection is acquired.

    Infants infected with the hepatitis B virus in the first year of life have a 90% chance of developing chronic disease, and 25% of those who do will die from it, according to the the American Academy of Pediatrics.

    Since the vaccine was introduced in 1991, infant hepatitis B infections have dropped by 95% in the U.S. Nearly 14,000 children acquired hepatitis B infections between 1990 and 2002, according to the CDC; today, new annual infections in children are close to zero.

    This week’s two-day meeting is the second time the committee has met since Kennedy fired all 17 previous ACIP members in June, in what he described as a “clean sweep [that] is necessary to reestablish public confidence in vaccine science.”

    The next day, he named seven new members to the committee, and added the last five earlier this week. The new members include doctors with relevant experience in pediatrics, immunology and public health, as well as several people who have been outspoken vaccine skeptics or been criticized for spreading medical misinformation.

    They include Vicky Pebsworth, a nurse who serves as research director for the National Vaccine Information Center, an organization with a long history of sharing inaccurate and misleading information about vaccines, and Malone, a vaccinologist who contributed to early mRNA research but has since made a number of false and discredited assertions about flu and COVID-19 shots.

    In some cases, the new ACIP members also lack medical or public health experience of any kind. Retsef Levi, for example, is a professor of operations management at MIT with no biomedical or clinical degree who has nonetheless been an outspoken critic of vaccines.

    “Appointing members of anti-vaccine groups to policy-setting committees at the CDC and FDA elevates them from the fringe to the mainstream. They are not just at the table, which would be bad enough; they are in charge,” said Seth Kalichman, a University of Connecticut psychologist who has studied NVIC’s role in spreading vaccine misinformation. “It’s a worst-case scenario.”

    Though ACIP holds three public meetings per year, it typically works year-round, said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a former ACIP member in the early 2000s.

    New recommendations to the vaccine schedule are typically written before ACIP meetings in consultation with expert working groups that advise committee members year-round, Offit said. But in August, medical groups including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and Infectious Diseases Society of America were told they were no longer invited to review scientific evidence and advise the committee in advance of the meeting.

    That same month, Kennedy fired CDC director Dr. Susan Monarez — who had been appointed to the position by President Trump and confirmed by the Senate. This past Wednesday, Monarez told a Senate committee that Kennedy fired her in part because she refused to sign off on changes he planned to make to the vaccine schedule this month without seeing scientific evidence for them.

    She did not specify during the hearing what those changes would be.

    ACIP’s recommendations only become official after the CDC director approves them. With Monarez out, that responsibility now goes to Health and Human Services deputy secretary Jim O’Neill, who is serving as the CDC’s acting director.

    Asked by reporters on Wednesday whether the U.S. public should trust any changes ACIP recommends to the childhood immunization schedule, Sen. Bill Cassidy (Rep. – LA) was blunt: “No.”

    Cassidy chairs the Senate committee that oversees HHS, and cast the deciding vote for Kennedy’s nomination. Before running for office, Cassidy, a liver specialist, created a public-private partnership providing no-cost Hepatitis B vaccinations for 36,000 Louisiana children.

    He cast his vote after Kennedy privately pledged to Cassidy that he would maintain the CDC immunization schedule.

    As public trust in the integrity of CDC guidelines wobbles, alternative sources for information have stepped up. Earlier this year, the American Academy of Pediatrics announced that it would publish its own evidence-based vaccination schedule that differs from the CDC’s on flu and COVID shots. And on Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law giving California the power to establish its own immunization schedule, the same day the state partnered with Oregon and Washington to issue joint recommendations for COVID-19, flu and RSV vaccines.

    On Tuesday, an association representing many U.S. health insurers announced that its members would continue to cover all vaccines recommended by the previous ACIP — regardless of what happened at Thursday’s meeting — through the end of 2026.

    “While health plans continue to operate in an environment shaped by federal and state laws, as well as program and customer requirements, the evidence-based approach to coverage of immunizations will remain consistent,” America’s Health Insurance Plans said in a statement. The group includes major insurers like Aetna, Humana, Kaiser Permanente, Cigna and several Blue groups. UnitedHealthcare, the nation’s largest insurer, is not a member.

    It’s unclear what will be covered after 2026.

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    Corinne Purtill, Jenny Gold

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  • RFK Jr.’s Handpicked Vaccine Panel Nixes Measles-Chickenpox Combo for Kids Under 4

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    Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s handpicked vaccine recommendation panel has just issued guidance that, if acted on, could overhaul when and how children receive vaccines designed to protect them from dangerous diseases like measles, rubella, and chickenpox.

    The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) met on Thursday. In an 8 to 3 vote, they recommended against the use of the combined measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella (chickenpox) vaccine in children under four. They are instead now recommending that children should only receive two separate vaccines covering these four diseases.

    Kennedy’s new guard

    The ACIP has traditionally been a panel of independent experts organized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help steer the country’s vaccine policy. Their recommendations, while non-binding, carry significant weight; many states mandate that children receive all the vaccines recommended by ACIP before entering public school, for instance. But under U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., critics say that ACIP has become a platform for vaccine skepticism.

    In early June, Kennedy unilaterally fired all 17 former members of ACIP and then, without any outside review, appointed eight new members, some of whom have previously misrepresented science on vaccine safety or who have financially benefited from attacking vaccines. Kennedy added five new members to the panel earlier this week, including some individuals who have questioned the safety and effectiveness of the covid-19 vaccines.

    At the panel’s last meeting in June, in a majority vote, Kennedy’s new members recommended the removal of a mercury-based additive called thimerosal from the very few remaining vaccines that contain it. The recommendation was formally adopted by the government in July. Anti-vaccination proponents have long blamed thimerosal in vaccines for causing autism and other neurological conditions, even after it was phased out from all childhood shots two decades ago out of an abundance of caution. And dozens of studies have since failed to support any link between thimerosal (or, for that matter, any vaccine or specific ingredient) and autism.

    Under Kennedy’s leadership, the CDC has been rocked by a series of high-profile departures. The Centers’ director Susan Monarez was reportedly fired for reportedly refusing to support Kennedy’s vaccine agenda—a decision that spurred the resignation of several other senior CDC staff and an unprecedented public display of support from remaining employees.

    Monarez testified at a Senate hearing earlier this week, alleging that Kennedy had pressured her to rubber-stamp recommendations from ACIP. She also stated that Kennedy told her that the childhood vaccine schedule was going to change in September and that she needed to be “on board with it.”

    What the latest vote means for these vaccines

    In what was its second meeting since Kennedy dismissed the former members in June, the panel first debated the safety of the measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella (MMRV) vaccine.

    The MMRV vaccine was approved in 2005 as a convenient alternative to children being given the MMR vaccine and a separate varicella vaccine, providing protection against all four diseases at once. Soon after its release to the public, however, evidence emerged that the first dose of the MMRV vaccine is associated with a slightly increased risk of febrile seizure (seizures caused by a fever) in children under the age of four as compared to the MMR plus varicella vaccine. Importantly, an additional risk of seizure wasn’t seen with the second dose of the MMRV vaccine given to older children.

    The CDC was the first to discover and acknowledge this risk and has long recommended that, unless parents specifically request the MMRV vaccines, younger children should receive the MMR plus varicella vaccine as their first dose and the combined MMRV vaccine for the second dose. At Thursday’s ACIP meeting, CDC staff presented data showing that about 85% of parents choose the MMR and a separate varicella vaccine as recommended for the first dose. But since some families may prefer their children taking fewer vaccines overall, parents were advised they could opt for either vaccine strategy.

    Febrile seizures are certainly scary for both the parent and for the child to experience. However, they’re generally short-lasting and aren’t often linked to longer-term health problems. In turn, the vast majority of these kinds of seizures aren’t tied to vaccination but to infections.

    The long and short of it is that this change is wholly unnecessary, given that most parents take the CDC’s advice and don’t use the MMRV vaccine for the first dose. But the ACIP’s vote will effectively remove a family’s right to decide which shot their young children receive—an ironic fate given how anti-vaccination proponents often frame their decision to not vaccinate themselves or their children as an expression of freedom.

    CDC staff noted that the ACIP’s recommendation could affect Medicaid coverage of these vaccines, as well as coverage offered through the Vaccines for Children (VFC) program, a federal program that provides vaccines to families unable to afford them. And it’s possible that some children who would have received the MMRV vaccine will end up not receiving the two separate vaccines for any number of reasons.

    That said, the ACIP voted ‘No’ on whether the VFC should change its coverage in alignment with the new recommendation. This means that the program should stick to its existing coverage of the MMRV vaccine.

    The ACIP also discussed whether it should continue to recommend universal hepatitis B vaccination starting at birth—a policy first endorsed by the group over 30 years ago. But due to a longer meeting than scheduled, the ACIP has delayed its vote on the matter until tomorrow. The ACIP is expected to weigh in on the covid-19 vaccines tomorrow as well.

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    Ed Cara

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  • Tucker Carlson Incorrectly Claims CDC Mandating Kids Get Covid-19 Vaccine For School

    Tucker Carlson Incorrectly Claims CDC Mandating Kids Get Covid-19 Vaccine For School

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    Before you make a claim about what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is going to do, maybe, just maybe, you should look at what the CDC can and can’t actually do. On October 18, FOX News host Tucker Carlson claimed on a tweet that “The CDC is about to add the Covid vaccine to the childhood immunization schedule, which would make the vax mandatory for kids to attend school.” Yet, the CDC clearly states on its website that “State laws establish vaccination requirements for school children.” And the CDC, by the way, ain’t one of the 50 states in the U.S.

    On the tweet, Carlson included a video of himself from his FOX News show named after himself “Tucker Carlson Tonight” essentially making the same claim:

    As you can see in the video, Carlson began the segment with, “So here’s an amazing story that’s been effectively buried.” Whoa. Buried? By whom and for what reason? And buried in what? In cheese? Carlson did not really specify any of these but went on to say, “This week the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is expected to add the Covid-19 vax to the list of required childhood vaccines. If this happens, your children will not be able to attend school without taking the Covid shot.” The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is indeed meeting on October 18 and 19 in a virtual meeting that can be viewed on a webcast. The agenda does include a discussion about “Covid-19 vaccines in children.” The ACIP develops recommendations on the use vaccines that in turn are forwarded to CDC’s Director and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for approval. Once approved, these recommendations will be published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). The ACIP consists of public health, medical, and scientific experts external to the CDC.

    While Carlson may be a number of things, he is neither a medical, public health, or scientific expert nor a lawyer. A number of real medical doctors, scientists, and other relevant experts pointed out the clear problems with Carlson’s statement. For example, Peter Hotez, MD, PhD, Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine, wrote, “Actually, the CDC clearly says that ‘state laws establish vaccination requirements’ and Fox News knows this. Guessing just another antivaccine dog whistle for their ratings,” in the following tweet:

    In his tweet, Hotez thanked @doritmi, who is Dorit Reiss, LLB, PhD, a Professor of Law at the University Of California (UC) Hastings School of Law and expert in these law-ish kind of things, for alerting him to Carlson’s claim.

    Later in his tweet thread, Hotez offered something that Carlson didn’t include in his tweet, verifiable official sources supporting what he was saying: links to CDC websites. Once of these websites clearly indicates that, “State laws establish vaccination requirements for school children. These laws often apply not only to children attending public schools but also to those attending private schools and day care facilities.”

    So does that make what Carlson tweeted a “swing and a mis,” as in misinformation? Well, Tara C. Smith, PhD, a Professor of Epidemiology at the Kent State University College of Public Health, used the word “misinformation” in the following tweet about Carlson’s tweet:

    So with a number of real experts out there who have had many research publications on vaccines and infectious diseases, whom did Carlson bring on as a guest? Well, he gave some air time to Martin Makary, M.D., M.P.H., a Professor of Surgery at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and whose stated areas of expertise on the Johns Hopkins website are things like abdominal Surgery, advanced laparoscopy, bile duct surgery, pancreatic surgery, and various other pancreas and gall bladder related procedures.

    So did this air time turn out to be hot air time? Well, in the video, Makary made some pretty strong statements without providing much evidence to support them. For example, he asserted that “the CDC’s committee that’s voting, I mean, that it is essentially a kangaroo court, you have to be an official ‘card-carrying vaccine fanatic’ to be on that committee. If you are not then they are basically not going to accept that some vaccines are important and others lack the evidence to support broad distribution.”

    Wow. Presumably by “kangaroo court,” Makary didn’t mean a court of actual kangaroos, which would be weird and fascinating at the same time. Dictionary.com defines a “kangaroo court” as a “self-appointed or mob-operated tribunal that disregards or parodies existing principles of law or human rights, especially one in a frontier area or among criminals in prison.” Hmm, isn’t calling the ACIP a “kangaroo court” jumping like a kangaroo to conclusions about the ACIP without providing real supporting evidence? Makary also mentioned a German study without clearly describing the study, pointing out its strengths and limitations, or providing enough information so that viewers could find the study themselves.

    There certainly have been plenty of problems with the Covid-19 response from the CDC, the Biden Administration, and the Trump Administration. Throughout the pandemic, communications and policies have often been very inconsistent. For example, the CDC relaxed their face mask recommendations in the Spring of 2021 and then again in the Spring of 2022 despite scientific studies showing the value of face masks in preventing transmission of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and other countries like Japan maintaining greater face mask use. In both cases, Covid-19 surges in the U.S. soon followed. Plus, in a number of situations, the Biden and Trump Administrations could have done more to push Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna to publicly release more of their Covid-19 vaccine data earlier.

    But suggesting that the CDC will be somehow making the Covid-19 vaccine mandatory for all kids to attend school around the U.S. and calling the ACIP a “kangaroo court” would be leaping way too far in a way that may court even more problems for our society. It could leave the very wrong impression that the CDC is somehow a dictatorial organization when the opposite may have been the case during the pandemic. Public health experts and scientists have raised concerns that the CDC has continued to bend to political pressure and prematurely relax Covid-19 precautions. mandating alling the

    If Carlson is really interested in seeing real science drive pubic health decision making then why not have a panel of real relevant scientists on his show. Such a panel could then provide real scientific facts that discount what Carlson has asserted. They could even say things like, “by the way, did you actually look at the CDC web site that says what the CDC can and can’t do. It’s on something called the Internet.”

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    Bruce Y. Lee, Senior Contributor

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