My head is spinning. Support the troops and all.
paywall-free link to the article I think b_b meant to post: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/24/world/covid-boosters-vaccine-cdc-director.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuonUktbfqohkQVUZBybKWsIjolqNgubOzPk2gXjlMCWPUnNcxu8eAo6NvkzBbu9vZsE-1CicXplBLLorDrRU_9NoAnZMGUOus4fW39MMOTk0ooa-GTtshcLABrpotG6yNWP8dbh2mfi2tUmLdTbtC_Td1CcnIw9looB3Ng3_gQx-za_HGuN30th73u5wRcwpAGddO1TZ-qXgGB58O92ZbxHD6QRQW-5RXD7bntb0-KtXOUwJSgqAFCUjlD56vNBMO9oXPLL8Lgoicaf9hrYXDW9oLOS5FiPVEo140Vxs9sJXF0HbFk8&smid=url-share
Weird. It says "the vote was close", which was part of her reason for overruling their recommendation.
Umm... in a national healthcare crisis, wouldn't you expect the denial of preventative health care measures to require at least a supermajority, if not a unanimous vote? Instead of, "Sorry 360 million Americans, Walt decided to vote against additional preventative measures during a health crisis, so the entire board has to go with his tie-breaking vote."
CDC seriously needs to rethink their messaging and the methods by which they go about determining what messages and policies to put forth. I have no doubt this is an organization with everyone's best interests at heart, but honestly... they are fucking this up. Again.
This would be a totally different calculus if this were last April and we were facing a shortage. But last time I checked we have a glut of vaccine available. We're giving out like 15% of the doses per day that we were at our peak in April or May. Data are great when you have them, but in the fog-of-war you do the prudent thing. And the prudent thing, since we know it's basically safe, is to tell everyone to load up.
I want to be forgiving in a way. I don't know what indemnity the FDA and CDC workers have if they make a bad choice. I was very frustrated in the beginning of the pandemic at Congress's lack of willingness to indemnify the health community. I and many people I know wanted to try some things (with informed consent, obviously), but we couldn't convince our lawyers that we weren't opening ourselves up for some serious lawsuits if things went awry. The Republicans tried to indemnify businesses who forced workers back to work. Democrats did nothing. That was the state of play. So I'm sure the CDC and FDA are operating by old rules because Congress hasn't given them a choice to do otherwise. Most of what's wrong with America is Congress's fault, and most of what's wrong with Congress is the GOP's fault.
Obviously the people giving out the vaccines are confused too. I went to one CVS and they said they were doing health workers, but that they only had Moderna. They sent me to another location where they had Pfizer. When I got there there said only immunocompromised. What a bad way to make policy.
It is one of those daily digest pages. The booster stories are under the Alaska one.