A Chaotic CDC Meeting Ends with a Surprising Twist: Broad Access to COVID-19 Vaccines Maintained
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) meeting was marred by chaos, confusion, and bizarre comments. However, the committee ultimately voted unanimously to maintain broad access to COVID-19 vaccines, a recommendation that may have been unintentional.
The two-day meeting saw a push to require prescriptions for every COVID shot fail in a split vote. The ACIP adopted a recommendation for adults 65 and older and people aged 6 months to 64 years to get a COVID-19 vaccine based on shared clinical decision-making. This means that individuals in these age groups can still access COVID-19 vaccines at no cost, either through federal or private health insurance plans.
The language adopted by the committee states that for individuals 6 months to 64 years, vaccination is based on "individual-based decision making—with an emphasis that the risk-benefit of vaccination is most favorable for individuals who are at an increased risk for severe COVID-19 disease and lowest for individuals who are not at an increased risk, according to the CDC list of COVID-19 risk factors." However, the significance of this stipulated "emphasis" on who actually has access to the vaccine is unclear.
The inexperienced and dubiously qualified panel did not have a good grasp of how any of their recommendations would translate to real-world practices. For instance, in two other votes related to COVID-19 vaccines, the panel voted in favor of recommending changes to informed-consent processes. However, it’s entirely unclear what those recommendations mean in practice—if anything.
One of the most contentious issues discussed during the meeting was the proposal to make it a universal requirement that anyone (even those 65 and up) would need a prescription from their doctor to get a COVID-19 vaccine. This requirement would dramatically limit access, creating barriers for many people, including the numerous Americans without a primary physician, and increase health care costs overall.
Despite the chaos and confusion that characterized much of the meeting, the panel teetered on adopting the recommendation, with a vote of six in favor, six against. Martin Kulldorff, the chair of the panel, voted no, breaking the tie and ensuring that the requirement was not adopted.
Dopey Debates: A Discussion Marked by Absurdity
The overall discussion on COVID-19 vaccines during the meeting was as absurd as the earlier parts of the two-day gathering. During the deliberations, CDC staff experts presented scientifically rigorous presentations of the latest epidemiology, safety, and vaccine effectiveness data.
Data continue to show that the COVID-19 vaccines protect against emergency department and urgent care visits among children and adults, as well as hospitalizations and critical illness in people aged 65 and older. However, outside sources who presented unvetted evidence and associations suggested that COVID-19 vaccines cause cancer and nefariously linger in the body.
The members themselves brought their own conspiracy theories and bunkum to the table. Hillary Blackburn, a pharmacist and daughter-in-law of Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), noted that her mother developed lung cancer two years after getting a COVID-19 vaccine, suggesting without any evidence that there could be a link.
Evelyn Griffin, an obstetrician and gynecologist in Louisiana who reportedly lost her job for refusing to get a COVID-19 vaccine, meanwhile, did her own research and tried to suggest that the mRNA in mRNA vaccines could be turned into DNA inside human cells and integrate into our genetic material. She made this assertion to a scientist at Pfizer (a maker of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine), asking him to respond.
The Pfizer scientist explained that it was not biologically plausible: "RNA cannot reverse transcribe to DNA and transport from the cytoplasm to the nucleus and then integrate. That requires a set of molecules and enzymes that don’t exist in humans and are largely reserved for retroviruses."
A Hot Mic Catches Someone Saying "You’re an Idiot"
At the very start of the meeting, liaisons from mainstream medical organizations pressed that the ACIP committee needs to ditch such anecdotal nonsense and unvetted data, and return to the high-quality framework for evidence-based decision-making that ACIP has used in the past.
However, Retsef Levi, who works on operations management and has publicly said that COVID-19 vaccines should be removed from the market, responded by falsely claiming that there are no high-quality clinical trials to show vaccine safety, so calls to return to methodological rigor for policy making are hypocritical.
During his response, a hot mic picked up someone saying, "You’re an idiot." It’s unclear who the speaker was—or how many other people they were speaking for.
The CDC Adopts the Recommendation
After this story was published, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention adopted the recommendation, which will broadly maintain requirements that federal and private health insurance plans cover COVID-19 vaccines at no cost. The CDC noted in adopting the recommendation that such decision making can be done in consultation with providers, "including physicians, nurses, and pharmacists."
Most people receive COVID-19 vaccines from their local pharmacists. Earlier this year, the FDA limited the approvals of this year’s shots, which have previously been available to anyone 6 months of age or older.
The FDA’s new restriction limits them to adults aged 65 and up and for people between the ages of 6 months and 64 years who have an underlying medical condition that puts them at high risk of severe COVID-19.