The U.S. is headed toward two very different vaccination realities
Category: News & Politics
Via: perrie-halpern • last year • 22 commentsBy: Daniela Hernandez and Doha Madani
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Turmoil at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and states' beginning to take more control of their own vaccine decisions threaten to fracture the once-national consensus around immunization, setting the stage for a reorganization of the way vaccination recommendations work across the United States.
The moves together point toward an increasingly stark divide emerging in the United States around vaccinations, with some Republican-led states starting to roll back or eliminate mandates while Democrat-led states split from the CDC to come up with their own vaccination guidance.
On Wednesday, California, Oregon and Washington announced they are forming a public health alliance to provide "credible information" about vaccine safety in response to the recent firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez, the resignations of top scientists that followed her ousting and the Food and Drug Administration's new controversial guidelines for who should get Covid shots.
Last week, New Mexico's Health Department announced it was ordering pharmacies to "remove potential barriers and ensure access to COVID-19 vaccines." Colorado did the same Wednesday.
Also Wednesday, Florida's surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, moved to eliminate vaccination mandates across the state, including in public schools. Other states have also weighed rolling back vaccination mandates, most notably Texas, where dozens of anti-mandate bills have been introduced in the Legislature.
The split comes as once-fringe and long-debunked claims about the health risks of vaccinations have found mainstream appeal and been embraced by the Trump administration.
"Repeatedly hearing that vaccines cause autism or that an mRNA vaccine will alter your DNA can erode public trust," said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease expert at the University of California, San Francisco, referring to two of the most common pieces of vaccine misinformation.
For decades, the federal government, in close collaboration with infectious disease experts, has crafted guidelines for who should receive vaccinations and when. States and medical organizations used the guidelines to administer shots to millions of people, and insurance companies relied on them to determine payment. The recommendations were based on clinical studies and aimed to minimize both individual and societal risk.
But as vaccine hesitancy has skyrocketed in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and online misinformation campaigns, vaccination mandates have become a political flashpoint. Distrust in vaccines has created a rift that threatens to split the country into two distinct zones, delineated not by borders or geography but by state governments' stances on the medical establishment's right to dictate who must get a jab and who gets a pass.
In an op-ed Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. described "cloth masks on toddlers, arbitrary 6-foot distancing, boosters for healthy children, prolonged school closings, economy-crushing lockdowns, and the suppression of low-cost therapeutics in favor of experimental and ineffective drugs" as "irrational" policies that had a "devastating" toll on Americans.
Lockdowns and school closures certainly had economic and mental health drawbacks, and data suggests that vaccinated and unvaccinated people may transmit the virus at similar rates because they have comparable viral loads — or amounts of virus in their respiratory tracts — according to a 2022 paper in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
However, the vaccines were effective at reducing hospitalizations and the number of severe Covid cases, two factors that overwhelmed health care systems early in the pandemic and precipitated lockdowns in the United States and around the world.
Once Covid vaccines became available at the end of 2020, following intense investment by the first Trump administration, states started to ease lockdowns and social distancing rules.
What didn't let up — and still hasn't — was the fear around the purported dangers of the new Covid shots, which were developed using a new type of vaccine technology, known as mRNA, that was at once revolutionary but difficult to understand.
The novelty compounded the uncertainties about the long-term health repercussions of a previously unknown virus and the pervasive feelings of loss the pandemic created, including loss of personal freedoms. That created the perfect conditions for divisiveness over vaccinations, Chin-Hong said, and the Covid shots became an easy scapegoat.
"The vaccine is something you could focus on, instead of a general feeling of loss," he said.
Kennedy, among the highest-profile figures of the once-small anti-vaccine movement, was confirmed as HHS secretary as he struck a more moderate tone on vaccines, which he has since abandoned.
In June, Kennedy gutted a 17-person independent vaccine advisory committee at the CDC. He replaced the members with a group that included vaccine skeptics and people critical of the Covid vaccines. In early August, he also cut $500 million in mRNA vaccine contracts.
After the FDA approved a new version of the Covid vaccine in May, Kennedy announced that the CDC would recommend that doctors administer the shots only to adults ages 65 and above, as well as people with certain pre-existing conditions. Previously, Covid vaccinations were recommended more widely.
Following that change, the American Academy of Pediatrics took the unusual step of issuing its own vaccination recommendations — the first time in 30 years its guidelines were significantly different from the federal government's.
"It is going to be somewhat confusing. But our opinion is we need to make the right choices for children to protect them," Dr. James Campbell, vice chair of the academy's infectious diseases committee, told NBC News.
That might have been the first visual fracture in the country's growing vaccine divide.
The governors of California, Oregon and Washington are following in those footsteps, saying they are working to provide unified recommendations to "ensure residents remain protected by science, not politics." They warned that there will be severe consequences if the CDC becomes "a political tool that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science."
"President Trump's mass firing of CDC doctors and scientists — and his blatant politicization of the agency — is a direct assault on the health and safety of the American people," the statement said.
HHS criticized Democratic-run states in a statement for pandemic policies that "eroded the American people's trust in public health agencies." It also defended the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
"ACIP remains the scientific body guiding immunization recommendations in this country, and HHS will ensure policy is based on rigorous evidence and Gold Standard Science, not the failed politics of the pandemic," the statement said.
The news release announcing the West Coast Health Alliance on Wednesday criticized the CDC's dismantling, saying there is an absence of consistent, science-based federal leadership in public health. It said the alliance's shared principles will be finalized "in the coming weeks."
Without clarity from the federal government, individual states may begin to craft their own public health orders. New Mexico's Health Department announced last week that it was ordering pharmacies to "remove potential barriers and ensure access to COVID-19 vaccines" after some pharmacies said they couldn't administer the new versions of the Covid shots until the CDC advisory panel met and issued its official guidance.
Insurance companies, which look to the federal government for guidance about what's covered by health plans, will also be figuring out the changing landscape in coming months.
Vaccines recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices are generally free because of provisions in the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
Tina Stow, a spokesperson for the health insurance industry group AHIP, said in a statement that the organization was reviewing the FDA announcement and would monitor upcoming recommendations from the CDC "on considerations around coverage," alongside its members.
"Individual health plans and plan sponsors will be prepared to make coverage decisions informed by science, the latest medical evidence and data," she said. "This process will be evidence-based, evaluate multiple sources of data, including but not limited to ACIP, and will be informed by customer needs."
Coverage decisions for vaccinations can also hinge on recommendations from medical organizations like the American Association of Pediatrics.
More chaos unfolded at the CDC in recent days after the White House said it was firing Monarez as its director after she refused to resign. Attorneys for Monarez said she "refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts" and "chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda."
Her dismissal sparked a mass exodus of top CDC officials. Nine former directors and acting directors accused Kennedy of endangering Americans in an essay Monday in The New York Times.
"During our respective C.D.C. tenures, we did not always agree with our leaders, but they never gave us reason to doubt that they would rely on data-driven insights for our protection, or that they would support public health workers," they wrote.
They urged Congress to "exercise its oversight authority" over HHS and called on state and local governments and philanthropic givers to fill in the gaps where possible.
Kennedy defended his decisions, including gutting the CDC, in his own guest essay Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal. He accused the CDC of squandering public trust for decades.
He wrote that the organization should focus on infectious diseases — its original mission — and that other programs focused on chronic diseases, such as diabetes or heart conditions, should be moved away from the CDC.
"The CDC must restore public trust — and that restoration has begun," Kennedy wrote.
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Covid has been known about since 1965. Why it took over 50 years, a lab leak and mass infection to get even a questionable vaccine is simply mind boggling.
It became political long before Trump's firings. The Democrats and Biden campaign used the outbreak as a political tool during the 2020 campaign and election, they censored social media posts of those who didn't push exactly what they wanted, doctors were removed from positions because they spoke out about the clown that was in charge of the facility the virus was leaked from.
It's not a political problem. It's a pharmaceutical problem that has been going on for decades.
I think it's also a political problem. Politics has infiltrated the CDC, we saw it in full force during the COVID pandemic. And you are correct that while we saw it in full force during the outbreak, it has been a growing issue for a long time.
IMO the pharmaceutical problem is about money. After all, they make more money over time from drugs to help you get over a bug rather than a one-time immunization that prevents you from catching said bug in the first place.
How can this be about Big Pharma? This is about being against vaccines that have been around forever, and protect our society from some of the worst diseases out there. This is just utter madness that Florida wants to do away with the basics.
And btw, the technology that was used to treat COVID is now being used for targeted therapy for cancer.
RFK Jr. is being pounded in a Senate hearing today.
It was a direct reply to the last sentence in the post that I replied to. Can you deny that 'Big Pharma' has chased the dollar much more than any real cure? Can you deny that partisan politics has infiltrated the CDC?
I've always been pro-vaccine but I recognize that people do not always have the best intentions and both 'Big Pharma' as well as the CDC is staffed by people. How many people from the CDC have left government service and accepted a high-paying job in 'Big Pharma'.
Like everything else in this world, follow the money. Big Pharma has been heavy in lobbying for a long time, giving $ millions to politicians. While it used to favor Republicans, it switched in the 2020 elections and continued in the 2024 elections.
Where Big Pharma’s campaign cash is flowing in this election | PharmaVoice
As Snuffy said - It's about money. Plain and simple. Why develop a medication that can CURE an illness when you can treat only the symptoms and keep the money rolling in.
Pay attention to these medicinal commercials that have flooded our TVs. Most of these medications cause side effects that are far worse than what they are going to cure. So, now the patient has to pay for another medication to counter the side effects from the first medication. Oh, we can't forget that NONE of these are cheap. They advertise financing in these same commercials.
Covid has been known of since the '60s. But it wasn't until 2019 that a vaccine was rushed through. What was all these labs doing for the last 50 years? Well, we know what ONE lab was doing and it wasn't developing a vaccine for the public.
The CDC needs to stay out of politics. PERIOD. They are a federally funded center. At no time should they be making "donations" to any candidate or party.
No, this is about forced compliance.
The term "coronavirus" was coined in 1965. Corona viruses are a family of virus that is given the name because they have spikes that look like a crown.
Covid 19 is a "novel" coronavirus, meaning a strain not previously identified. We didn't have a vaccine and humans didn't have much immunity to it because it was brand new.
It was political before Biden was ever elected. That said, the Biden Administration's handling of the situation was definitely an early look into the contempt they would increasingly show for anyone who dared question the liberal groupthink.
I'm going to have to disagree here. It's definitely a political problem. It's become like climate change, where nobody is allowed to mention any facts that contradict the aforementioned groupthink.
And yet still no real vaccination.
There definitely is a pattern. In both instances, COVID and climate change, the same people pushing a narrative censor(ed) others.
Because it's not one disease. It's a family of diseases. The Wednesday vaccine isn't going to work on the Uncle Fester strain, and that vaccine isn't going to work on the Pugsley variant. Every time a new member of the family is born, they have to start all over.
People who suppress free speech are never on the right side of history.
Which vaccines have been banned? Removing mandates is not the same as removing vaccines. Removing the mandates has only now started an effort to disseminate information about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines. Apparently being able to just order people to take vaccines eliminated the need to inform and educate the public. And expecting the public to jump through hoops to find information couched in techno-obfuscating language is not a reasonable way to run a government program.
People are being treated like feedlot cattle, run through the chute and shot up with who knows what. If people are upset with that practice for the beef on their plates then why would they accept that practice for themselves? The mandates turned the idea of "informed consent" on its head. Even now the medical professionals are tearing hair over loss of mandates while the public is concerned about loss of insurance coverage.
The whole medical system is screwed up. Nothing works in a rational, common sense manner.
Removing mandates makes it possible for people who don't understand or have been ill-informed or misinformed to not get their children vaccinated, which will ruin herd immunity.
Yes, that is quite possible and even likely. But mandates are not a substitute for educating the public. The health policy approach has been to only write a regulation, create a mandate, and not do anything else. Where does "informed consent" fit into the regimen of mandated medical care?
If the United States has achieved herd immunity then where does the threat to that herd immunity come from? It doesn't come from inside the herd. We're required to be vaccinated to protect us from an external threat that seems to escape the mandate. That suggests the mandate is not being enforced uniformly, likely influenced by politics rather than science.
The medical community is attempting to establish a zero tolerance metric that current vaccines cannot achieve. Most of the vaccines are not 100% effective. And some cannot tolerate the vaccines. Someone is going to lose the immunity lotto. They're always at risk with or without herd immunity. And external threats to herd immunity that seem to escape the mandates are an even greater risk for those who cannot be protected by vaccines.
So, the current system of mandated vaccination does away with "informed consent", is not uniformly enforced, and doesn't protect the most vulnerable from external threats to herd immunity. And there's not a better way to do this?
There is almost nothing that is 100% effective and using that metric for use/non-use is frankly stupid, as is the metric of 100% safety. The reason for the requirements is to achieve the best possible outcome for the most people because the more people vaccinated, the more people who will not die or become severely ill. All of the caterwauling is by people who don't know what they are talking about. The vaccination program in the US has been unquestionably successful in reducing and almost eliminating these diseases that were once rampant amongst children.
So, all of you self identified individualists and conspiracy theorists out there can just go fuck yourselves right up the ass. Stick your conspiracy theories firmly up there, too.
And, yet, that is the goal set by the medical community and is used as justification for mandating vaccination. The zero tolerance criteria has not been put in place by anti-vaxxers.
So, go get vaccinated. What is stopping you? If someone has been vaccinated then they are protected and have nothing to worry about, right?
The argument isn't about access to vaccines. The argument is about ability to force someone else to do something. Herd fear is being manipulated to force people to utilize for-profit medicine. That paycheck raises questions and concerns about corruption and motivations that have little to do with health. School funding is based on attendance so a high number of absentees affects the bottom line. How much profit did Pfizer make off the COVID pandemic? Even vaccine advocacy groups raise concerns about insurance coverage. So, don't play coy and pretend money is not a huge factor in the medical community's advocacy.
For-profit medicine is not a conspiracy theory. When the reason given for pumping multiple vaccines into infants is to avoid additional administrative fees then who is medicine really serving? For-profit medical care is constantly trying to find new ways to encourage people to visit doctor's offices and pay those administrative fees. Wellness checks, 'preventive' care, telemedicine are all low cost, high-profit medical services. With the exponential increases in medical costs, what happens if an insurance company denies a claim? And the patient won't find out until its too late.
Someone, somewhere, is spending an extraordinary amount of money for our vaccines. Just because a patient isn't paying for the vaccine doesn't mean it's free. Hair-on-fire fearmongering over threats to the money flow is not a conspiracy theory. Forcing people to submit to mandates issued by for-profit medicine is not a conspiracy theory. The medical community can write a regulation, impose a mandate, and make money. And there's no need to educate the public about anything. That's not a conspiracy theory.
So your body your choice isn't something liberals support anymore? or is their stance on this fungible? based on ideology?
“…based on ideology?”
Based on established scientific evidence, this is again, yet another issue that has become hopelessly, needlessly politicized.
Vaccinations are about everyone's bodies in a collective society where we share air and space.
I'm okay with the Florida decision as long as the rest of society can arrest and prosecute anyone who chooses not to vaccinate their kids and then their kids spread a preventable disease that causes injury or death to another US citizen. When we start arresting and charging those who are directly linked to the spread of preventable diseases, some potentially being charged with negligent homicide, I think the anti-vaccers might just have a change of heart.
Question: Those vaccines during covid for children 5 years old and under:
1) Were they necessary?
2) Were they harmless & safe?
"Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is getting credit for a mea culpa for saying what seems obvious: “For 75 years, the CDC and public health have been preparing for COVID-19, and in our big moment, our performance did not reliably meet expectations,”
This is a classic act of contrition theater, in which Walensky avoids taking any responsibility for the agency’s failure to understand the threat the nation faced or the CDC’s unfounded “guidance” regarding how to slow the spread of COVID, measures that the agency now acknowledges are flawed.
It is not a small issue that CDC personnel undermined respected scientists outside of government who quarreled with mask mandates, social distancing, shutting schools, closing businesses, and promoting universal vaccination with serums whose known risks to some were downplayed. All this while dismissing Americans who doubted that the CDC had a monopoly on “the science.”
In truth, the CDC did a great deal of damage to public faith in science and enormous damage to public trust in government writ large. The more consequential cost, of course, is what epidemiologists know as excess death — those whose lives were lost following government guidance on how to save their lives.
Walensky’s apology came as a prelude to the release of an internal review of the CDC’s management that she ordered in April in response to growing criticism including the threat of a congressionally mandated investigating commission."
The CDC is broken and apologies can’t fix it
END OF STORY!
It is a story alright. Not a very honest one because now the anti-vaccers and dumb shits who refused to wear masks seem to be claiming victory when nothing could be further from the truth. They are still wrong. They are monumentally ignorant for not following basic health and safety guidelines. You can argue all day long after the fact whether masks only prevented the spread of Covid in just case or possibly prevented the spread in a hundred million cases, we don't know. But what we do know is THAT YOU'RE A FUCKING MORON IF YOU DON'T TAKE AT LEAST SOME PRECAUTION EVEN IF IT ONLY SAVES ONE PERSON.
That's the actual "End of story". The rest of the miserable fuck nuggets that are hating on the CDC can go fuck themselves because not a single one of them has done even a fraction of what the average CDC employee has done for Americans health. Are they perfect? Of course not, no organization is. You can always find fault with any group whether its private or government, but the vast majority of what the CDC has done and has been doing was for the American publics health and welfare has been positive and necessary.
I'd rather have my personal primary care physician run the nations health care than RFK Jr.