Last edited Tue May 27, 2025, 05:31 PM - Edit history (2)
these are questions of concern not only for healthy children and pregnant women, but all healthy non-senior adults. And in fact for unhealthy and senior adults too if updated vaccines simply aren't produced this fall . . .
If the FDA deems Pfizer’s and Moderna’s updated vaccines as “new” products, requiring fresh trials, it’s extremely unlikely doses would be ready for the fall for anyone, including seniors or the severely immunocompromised.
Medicare and Medicaid require that the vaccines are free for patients. The Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare, requires private insurers to cover all vaccines that are recommended by the CDC’s vaccine committee and director.
Children without insurance can get free vaccines through the government-run Vaccines for Children Program. But massive cuts to health care funding unveiled in March forced some local and state health departments to lay off staff and cancel vaccine clinics.
and this CBS article has a
huge section on that:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/rfk-jr-dropping-covid-vaccine-guidance-for-kids-pregnant-women/ar-AA1FzR9r
BEGINNING WITH: "While COVID-19 vaccines still remain available for now, experts say that access to the shots for children and during pregnancy could get harder once Kennedy's changes are official"
Some other info from the CBS article
Kennedy's move, announced Tuesday on X, appears to effectively shortcut a process set up by the agency's outside advisers to discuss and make changes to the CDC's influential vaccination guidance, which is directly tied to what insurers are required to cover and liability protections.
Those advisers had already been weighing whether and how to narrow the agency's COVID-19 vaccine recommendations to only older adults and other people with an underlying condition that put them at risk of more severe illness from COVID-19.
Kennedy's announcement also goes further than the advisory panel, which had been weighing including pregnant women as among those who would remain eligible for COVID-19 vaccine recommendations, given their increased risk of severe disease and the fact that it could also help provide some protection to their newborns.
It is not clear why Kennedy chose to announce the decision without waiting for the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to complete its deliberations. The panel had been expected to vote on the issue at the routinely scheduled June meeting hosted by the agency.
"With the COVID-19 pandemic behind us, it is time to move forward. ...using common sense" Vianca N. Rodriguez Feliciano, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, said in an email.
"common sense" is a favorite phrase of these right-wing literal asswipes. I don't see anything "common sense" about this, with Covid still killing about as many people as the flu and more than a third as many as in traffic accidents, and evolving (
new strain NB.1.8.1. has been a cause of increased Covid hospitalizations in Taiwan by 78% in recent weeks and an almost doubling of the proportion of A&E (emergency room) patients in China testing positive for Covid)
Edited from "as many as in traffic accidents" to "more than a third as many as in traffic accidents" thanks to k_buddy762's question
= new reply since forum marked as read