Page 4 - Macip News Today

Would say there is not enough data here to justify that full recommendation of going to high risk individuals. but i think dr. walensky and the fda understands how upset the public is, especially those who are willing to get those first two immunizations, and theyre terrified of getting breakthrough covid. and breakthrough long covid, especially with the data showing brain matter brain degeneration. she had to make a tough judgment call and ultimately i support what she did. >> how unusual is it...

I dont think so. in fact, what dr. walensky has done is aligned her agency with what the fda recommendations were. the fda recommendations were actually then taken up by the acip and the acip rejected one of the recommendations. this aligns. i think what is confusing for people is the good news is the transparency. you can watch this the meetings, hear the discussions on social media. the bad news, it is really hard to see how the sausage is made. it is really confusing and you think people dont...

Voices then you have a panel weigh in, say this is what weve decided and the director says, no, im going to change my mind on that. were regular old americans trying to figure out the right thing to do. how do we navigate this? >> there were a couple things said at yesterdays meeting at the acip that were important. first they made the statement that the most important thing we need to do is vaccinate the unvaccinated. the second thing they said is if you are a member of the general public and y...

Breaking with advisers? >> well, if what she wound up doing was mostly siding with the fdas recommendation and, you know, its -- i understand both sides of this discussion, both from the advisory committee and immunization practices and her statement this morning and ultimately i side with d dr. walensky, but it is based on very limited data. we have from israel showing that the ithird immunization gives substantially increased protection against hospitalizations and breakthrough cases and possi...

The end acip will likely go along with the fda recommendations. >> where do you fall on that question of what the purpose of vaccines is because he think the longer we are in this pandemic the more important that question is. is it to prevent severe infection and death, is it to try to prevent as many people as possible from getting sick at all? how do you view that and how do you think that informs the policy discussion? >> well, i want it all. i want to vaccinate -- i want to vaccinate our cou...

Comorbidities or different professions almost gets you to that place. we will see if acip goes along with it and theres other consequences if they dont, then that looks like there is a war between fda and cdc and that would be very damaging as well. >> nobody wants to see that. all right. dr. peter hotez down in texas, thank you very much. >> thank you. and up next, growing tension at the state department over the mysterious havana syndrome. plus the abrupt resignation of the u.s. special en...

Disease and people with high-risk jobs, health care workers and people working in mass transit who are around people all the time. is it it right to do this in incremental fashion, or should they authorize booster shots for everybody out of the box? >> i think, john, it will depend a lot on what the acip does today. even though they say people over 65 and those with high-risk conditions, its really important how you define high-risk conditions. if you define high-risk condition a bmi, body mass ...

Those at risk to the fda, would you have expected a decision from the fda before cdc takes it up? >> absolutely. im a little confused on what the acip is actually meeting about because its not clear whether the fda is going to accept the committee recommendation or not. typically they do, but these of course are extraordinary times and there is a rationale for extending that vaccine protection for third immunizations down the 40 and 50-year-olds. so the risk i guess is that if fda does not accep...

Protection. and in an environment where there arent a lot of other easy things that we can do, the masks become a very important tool. >> well, i hope -- i hope that he will listen to -- to you and the facts and the studies. i mean, he is a medical doctor. now, the surgeon general there. um, "the new york times" is just reporting that the fda has authorized booster shots of the pfizer vaccine for those who are 65 or older and those at high risk. of course, you said on the -- the board of pfizer....

Evaluated? >> well, the acip, the advisory committee of the cdc focuses on the science as the fda does but also focuses on implementation and equity and so there will be quite a robust discussion covering the -- the idea of booster shots and which groups should get those booster shots. it does seem that the data that was presented to the independent advisory committee of the fda, the information that was presented really was not compelling enough in my mind that boosters should be available for ...