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.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 