Category: current events

CDC ACIP Highlights on Covid 19 Vaccine

There was a lot to digest in today’s CDC ACIP meeting on Covid-19 vaccines. I missed the morning sessions but managed to see a few of the afternoon presentations.

The presentation by Dr. Retsef Levi, PhD, MIT, ACIP Work Group Chair, the Covid -19 Vaccine Discussion Framing Work Group (WG) was basically pretty critical of the Covid-19 vaccines in general.

The opposing reply to this (favorable to vaccines) was put together by University of Iowa’s Dr. Stanley Perlman, Dr. H. Bernstein, and Dr. M. Miglis, Additional Workgroup Considerations in Covid-19 Vaccination Policy and Practice.

For a change, I listened to the Public Comment section. I usually have not paid attention to them because most of the speakers were opposed to vaccines. Today was different. All of them were strongly supportive of vaccines.

There is a bottom line to this. I watched the voting session, which was very interesting. There were 4 voting questions. I had to take pictures of them because they were not included in the on-line schedule. It was easily the most interesting session of the afternoon, at least for me.

Voting question 1: all but one member voted “yes,” the committee chair Kulldorff voted “no.”

Voting question 2: one member suggested striking this one, but they voted anyway. What’s worrisome is that it was split between the yes and no votes; only the chair, Kulldorff, could break it and he voted “no.” Looks like common sense won; otherwise it would have made access very difficult.

Voting question 3: The video lost audio for a long time, but eventually it turned out that the votes were “yes” unanimously on the assumption that pharmacists counted as “health care providers.”

Voting question 4: The votes were all “yes,” mainly because they decided that pharmacists could make this work. One member questioned the wording which suggested that you needed to talk to your doctor about getting the vaccine because of the wording “shared clinical decision-making.” They glossed over it.

It looks like access to the Covid-19 vaccine will remain mostly open for now.

Public Comments on Upcoming CDC ACIP Meeting Posted

I have just noticed that there are over 5,000 comments posted on the comments section of regulations.gov in the section entitled Meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices-September 2025.

The link to the comment section is on the CDC ACIP meeting announcement web page, “Written Public Comments.”

This is the first time I’ve seen a written comment section like this for the meetings. I think it gives people a sense of what health care professionals and others think about how things are going with the current approach to preventive medicine at the CDC.

Upcoming CDC ACIP September Meeting on MMVR & Covid-19 Vaccines

The upcoming meeting on the MMVR and Covid-19 vaccines will include voting on the MMVR and Covid-19 vaccines. Usually, the committee posts the actual voting questions, which so far I have not seen on the meeting agenda. I’ll be looking for them in the next couple of days.

Here is the link to the Center for Infectious Disease and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota article which bears directly on the meeting topics.

CDC ACIP Meeting Agenda Posted

I just noticed that the CDC ACIP draft agenda for upcoming meeting on September 18th and 19th has been posted. There will be votes on the MMRV, Hepatitis B, and Covid-19 vaccines.

University of Iowa Physician Wins Lasker Award!

How about some good news? This just in, University of Iowa Physician-Scientist, Dr. Michael Welsh, wins the 2025 Lasker Award for his research on cystic fibrosis.

His work and the work of two other researchers with whom he’ll share the award set the stage for the development of new drugs which saves the lives of those who suffer from cystic fibrosis.

I learned from the article that the cystic fibrosis gene was discovered in 1989; I was a second-year medical student then. Since then, the development of new treatments has meant that many people who died in early adulthood now can live into their 80s.

Congratulations to Dr. Welsh and colleagues!

24th Anniversary of 9/11 Attack on America: A Reminder of Our Connection to Each Other

I’m thinking about the upcoming commemoration of the 24th Anniversary of the 9/11/2001 attack on America. There will be the annual event in New York City.

In Muscatine, Iowa, there will be the annual Patriot Day ceremonies sponsored by the City of Muscatine and the Muscatine Fire Department. After the morning ceremony, the Memorial Stair Climb will begin at 8:52 a.m. at the Muscatine High School football stadium bleachers.

The KCRG news reported on August 7, 2025 that 3 more World Trade Center victims were identified last month by DNA testing. The New York medical examiner’s office continues testing the remains recovered from the wreckage.

Like many people, I remember where I was and what I was doing when the attack happened in 2001. I was the general hospital psychiatric consultant on duty at the hospital at the time. I was hustling up the stairs back to my office after responding to a consultation request.

I happened to glance at the big television screen on the wall of the main floor lobby in the south part of the hospital. I watched in horror as a newscast showed the fire and smoke coming from one of the towers, which I later learned came from the plane crashing into the building. The rest of the day was full of reports of the attack.

When we visited New York City in 2017, we saw the Memorial & Museum Plaza as well as the Survivor Tree, the Callery Pear. It was discovered at Ground Zero, scarred and scorched but alive and replanted at the Memorial in 2010 after being nursed back to health at the city nursery. It is still alive and well today. It remains a symbol of strength, hope, and a reminder of our connection to each other.

The Butterfly House or The Bigfoot Monarch Roundup

Sena went over to ForeverGreen, a popular landscaping and garden center locally, to see the butterfly house. She got pictures and video clips which showed the monarch butterfly management operation they have. They have quite a conservation program, including a large monarch butterfly house enclosure along with demos of life cycle stages. The butterfly house is just part of the deal and it’s open to the public. It opened in June of this year and runs until September 14th. The schedule shows there’ll be a big release then and possibly even tagging prior to that. You might want to call ahead and check to see if they’re still going to tag the monarchs.

I think this is also a good way to rehabilitate Bigfoot’s image because they could be sort of like ranch hands tending to the monarch as they go through their life cycle. The monarchs migrate to Mexico every fall. You can learn more about the monarch watch program and why many people believe the monarchs are at risk of extinction.

Upcoming CDC Advisory Committee Meeting in September 2025-Or Not?

I’ve been checking the Centers for Advisory Committee schedule on their website for weeks and the only way I found out there is an upcoming meeting is on the Federal Register schedule. Sena found it in a news outlet story. As of this morning around 9 a.m., there was no announcement on the CDC website yet. That may change later today.

According to the Federal Register, the CDC ACIP will hold a meeting on September 18, 2025, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., EDT, and September 19, 2025, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., EDT.

Under Supplementary Information:

“The agenda will include discussions on COVID-19 vaccines; Hepatitis B vaccine; measles, mumps, rubella, varicella (MMRV) vaccine; and Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV). The agenda will include updates on ACIP Workgroups. Recommendation votes may be scheduled for COVID-19 vaccines, Hepatitis B vaccine, MMRV vaccine, and RSV. Vaccines for Children (VFC) may be scheduled for COVID-19 vaccines, Hepatitis B vaccine, MMRV vaccine, and RSV. Agenda items are subject to change as priorities dictate. For more information on the meeting agenda, visit https://www.cdc.gov/​acip/​meetings/​index.html.”

However, I also noticed a news article posted by the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) indicating that the meeting might be postponed because of the recent upheaval around vaccine policy and personnel.

This meeting’s actual timing and schedule items could be moving targets.

Iowa State Fair Cribbage Tournament and More!

I just have a few remarks about the Iowa State Fair Cribbage Tournament which took place today. I don’t have the results and it could be a week before anything is announced about the winner. Here are the rules:

Note the $1 entry fee and you have to bring your own cribbage board, cards, and pen. In the past there have been as many as 200 entrants (that was in 2015). We’ve never entered.

I also wanted to let you know that Sena has started a new cribbage tradition. Whenever she wants to play cribbage, she just puts the deck of cards in our automatic shuffler and makes a racket.