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Here are 10 questionable things Dr. Anthony Fauci did during the pandemic years as Americas COVID-19 czar:
In Faucis defense, there were extenuating circumstances for some of these failings. His advice on masks and his prediction about herd immunity were made early in the pandemic when information was still preliminary and uncertainty was high. He deserves the benefit of the doubt on those issues, just as he might on the 6-foot separation rule.
He might also merit a pass on discussing the importance of aerosol spread and the social effects of lockdowns, which were not appreciated by many experts at the time. For the other charges suppressing public debate, politicizing the pandemic as a justification for the excessive use of government authority and his failure to take responsibility there are no excuses.
His supporters would say those negatives are outweighed by the reassurance he provided the public and his emphasis on promoting vaccination. Thats for each individual to decide.
But whatever that verdict, a prosecution or persecution of Fauci is not warranted. With the facts we have now, he does not merit criminal investigation as such critics as business titan Elon Musk and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, have suggested. This is not postwar Soviet Union or East Germany or communist China of the 2020s, where doctors and scientists were prosecuted as political agents and enemies of the state.
We need a thorough investigation of what our scientific elite did during the COVID-19 pandemic but in the name of open investigation not witch hunts.
No good purpose would be served by subjecting Fauci, one of Americas most prominent scientists and beloved by half the country, to criminal scrutiny, and in fact, some very bad purposes would be served.
First, there is little evidence that he broke any laws. The closest his adversaries can come is accusing him of lying to Congress about gain-of-function research, a broad charge that could certainly be defended on technical grounds. That is not to say Fauci was acting in good faith when he answered questions in front of Congress; merely, that he was not acting in a criminal fashion. He is hardly the first, nor will he be the last, to testify in front of Congress that way.
Second, turning the investigative powers of the state on a prominent scientist would have a chilling effect on the entire scientific community. The last thing we want is for young scientists to be looking over their shoulders while they do their work; we want them pursuing research goals, useful truths and public health solutions.
Not to exonerate him on his missteps, but investigating Fauci would be naked politicization of science something Fauci himself can be accused of. There are plenty of scientists who have and will continue to inject politics into science, itself a breach of honest scientific inquiry. Government officials need not engage in that.
The late British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, famously said, Advisers advise, ministers decide. The balance between the scientific community and those who make public policy is fragile. A certain amount of tension between the two is necessary and even desirable. The scientists of the Manhattan Project did not always get on with the politicians in charge of the project, but that tension helped them reach their ultimate goal more quickly.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, both the scientists and the politicians completely upset that balance: the public health community, including Fauci, through the excessive hubris of their public pronouncements, and politicians such as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo who pursued disastrous, unscientific policies (sending elderly COVID-19 patients back to nursing homes) or California Gov. Gavin Newsom dining at a fancy French restaurant during Californias coronavirus surge.
It will take years for the public health authorities and the public to trust each other again. It will take much longer if the politicians decide to embark on a legal crusade against Fauci. He is far from blameless, but he is in no way a criminal, and America does not need that spectacle.
Dr. Cory Franklin is a retired intensive care physician.
Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.
COVID variants are emerging every now and then. With every new mutation, the variant's ability to escape immunity increases and so is its transmission rate. Immunity against COVID is also increasing. However, the danger due to COVID is still not over. COVID is still killing around 1,700 people a week around the world, the World Health Organization said Thursday, as it urged at-risk populations to keep up with their vaccinations against the disease. WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus sounded a warning on declining vaccine coverage. More than seven million COVID deaths have been reported to the WHO, though the true toll of the pandemic is thought to be far higher. Despite the continued death toll, "data show that vaccine coverage has declined among health workers and people over 60, which are two of the most at-risk groups," the UN health agency's chief told a press conference. New COVID variantsNew COVID variants, named FLiRT and FLuQE are spreading at a higher rate. In recent months, the "FLiRT" subvariants of COVID-19, specifically descendants of the Omicron variant JN.1, have gained attention. These subvariants, such as KP.1.1, KP.2, and JN.1.7, include mutations in the amino acids of the viruss spike protein, most notably F456L, V1104L, and R346T. KP.2 has been particularly significant, contributing to an increase in COVID-19 infections in Australia and elsewhere around May. The spike protein, found on the surface of SARS-CoV-2, facilitates the virus's attachment to human cells. The FLiRT subvariants arise from random mutations in the virus's genetic code, resulting in changes to the spike protein. FLuQE (KP.3) is a new variant that has arisen as a direct descendant of FLiRT, featuring the same mutations found in FLiRT variants. However, FLuQE includes an additional amino acid change in the spike protein, specifically Q493E. This alteration means that the amino acid glutamine at position 493 has been replaced by glutamic acid. Given the spike protein's length of 1,273 amino acids, this change is significant. This modification could potentially enhance the virus's ability to infect human cells. The change from a neutral to a negatively charged amino acid may affect how the virus interacts with cells, altering its infectious capabilities. FLuQE's distinct mutation at position 493 may have implications for how the virus behaves compared to its predecessors. This could have important implications for understanding and managing the spread of this variant. How to stay safe?COVID-19 preventive measures include vaccination for eligible individuals, wearing masks in crowded or indoor settings, practicing frequent hand hygiene, maintaining physical distancing when possible, and ensuring adequate ventilation in enclosed spaces. These measures help reduce the spread of the virus and protect individuals and communities from COVID-19 infection.
Fox News contributor Dr. Nicole Saphier looks back at the medias fearmongering over COVID-19 four years after the pandemic on "The Bottom Line."
A new report by the Heritage Foundation's Nonpartisan Commission on China and COVID-19 found that the COVID pandemic caused $18 trillion in economic losses to the U.S. and placed blame for the outbreak on the Chinese government.
FOX Business exclusively viewed an advance copy of the report, which estimated that as of December 2023, the pandemic's total economic cost in the U.S. topped $18 trillion after taking into account several ways in which the pandemic affected the economy.
That figure includes more than $8.6 trillion caused by excess deaths; more than $1.825 trillion in lost income; $6 trillion due to chronic conditions such as "long COVID"; and mental health losses of $1 trillion and educational losses of $435 billion pushed the total above $18 trillion.
"The COVID-19 pandemic has exacted a staggering toll on the United States, both in human lives and in economic terms. The total estimated cost of $18.007 trillion is a stark reminder of the profound impact this global health crisis has had on the nation," the commission wrote. "By understanding and acknowledging these costs, we can lay the groundwork for holding accountable those whose negligence or overt actions exacerbated the pandemic's severity."
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The Heritage Foundation's Nonpartisan Commission on China and COVID-19 found that the pandemic's economic toll on the U.S. totaled more than $18 trillion. (Reuters/Brendan McDermid/File)
The report noted there were 1,476,457 excess deaths in the U.S. from 2020 to 2022 during the height of the pandemic.
In terms of lost economic output, real gross domestic product in that period was 2.5% below what was projected in early 2020 before the pandemic began.
It added that the pandemic was "the most disruptive and costly event of the 21st century" and that the worldwide excess deaths from COVID were estimated to be 28 million, according to an analysis by The Economist.
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The report noted there were nearly 1,476,457 excess deaths in the U.S. from 2020 to 2022, which contributed $8.6 trillion to the economic toll. (Bing Guan/Bloomberg via Getty Images/File)
Regarding the origins of COVID, the commission found that it "very likely stemmed from a research-related incident in Wuhan, China."
"Although it remains theoretically possible that COVID-19 emerged via zoonosis in the wild or spillover in a wet market (spillover is a virus originating in animals before it passes to humans), there is no evidentiary basis for either of these hypotheses despite extensive testing over four years," the commission wrote.
The report also included a timeline of the Chinese government's actions as part of a "systematic cover-up" of the origins of COVID that began, at the latest, in December 2019, as well as its failure to take steps to contain the virus within its borders.
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The COVID pandemic caused substantial disruptions to daily life and economy. (Jeffrey Greenberg/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images/File)
Commissioners provided recommendations for Congress to consider as it looks to hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable for its role in the COVID pandemic, which include:
The commission also provided recommendations for the president to take action on. Those include making it a diplomatic priority for China to allow an unfettered scientific and forensic investigation into COVID's origins, and imposing economic sanctions on Chinese officials and entities who were complicit in or supported the "distortion and concealment" of information related to the COVID pandemic.
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"In the absence of self-accountability by China, and in view of its obstructionist role in international institutions, the Commission believes that only holding the Chinese government accountable and liable for its negligence and malfeasance can provide both China's government and other governments with the incentives and impetus to act differently in the future," the commissioners wrote.
The report said that it's up to the U.S. government to take action on its recommendations and expressed hope that other governments will take inspiration from the commission's work, adding, "Better to take bold action now than to ask ourselves why we didn't do more if an even deadlier pandemic emerges in the future."
COVID-19 levels have been rising in nearly all parts of the Bay Area over the past month, wastewater data shows.
While not as high as the winter surge, doctors said the increase is hitting earlier than in past years and is likely to continue climbing.
UCSF infectious disease specialist Dr. Peter Chin-Hong said the increase is hitting hospitals, too. He cautions those at high risk to take precautions.
"Over the last few months I have taken care of quite a few patients in the hospital," he said. "They tend to be older than 75 or very immune compromised. Pretty much everybody I've taken care of didnt get the new shot."
Chin-Hong said extreme heat and summer celebrations are pushing more people inside. That coupled with a new, more contagious variant and a decrease in immunity six months after the winter spike are all partly to blame for the summer surge this year.
"We are kind of still in the middle of it," Chin-Hong said. "After the July Fourth, it was super hot, a lot of people went indoors. I'm expecting those numbers to continue to be high for a few more weeks, but I'm crossing my fingers that those numbers will also start going down sooner than they did last year."
The dog days of summer might be infull swing, but for flu vaccine makers, its a busy time prepping for this fall's influenza season.
CSL Seqirus said it kicked off influenza vaccine shipments on July 9, when it began to ship out its three options, according to a press release. The companys portfolio includes unique offerings such as Flucelvax, the first and only cell-based influenza vaccine and Fluad, which is recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) for people 65 and older.
CSL Seqirus also makes the egg-based vaccine Afluria for people six months of age and older.
"As we begin distributing influenza vaccines to healthcare providers throughout the U.S., it is imperative that we work to maintain high vaccination rates this season to help reduce the burden of influenza-related illnesses and the risk of severe outcomes, the drugmakers chief health officer, Gregg Sylvester, M.D., said in a statement.
Last flu season in the U.S. saw significant decreasesin vaccination rates and a spike in influenza-related hospitalizations and deaths, CSL Seqirus said, citing preliminary CDC estimates.
Sanofi, for its part, said it began itsinitial vaccine shipments on July 10, with more planned through October.Sanofis 2024/2025 flu vaccine portfolio includes its Flubloka quadrivalent shot that's made using insect cellsas well as standard and high-dose versions of its Fluzone.
GSK said it started shipping its doses on July 11 following a licensing and lot-release approval from the FDA, according to a release. The company said it worked quickly to getdoses produced and shipped after vaccine strain recommendations were made in February.
GSK markets Flulaval and Fluarix and expects to distribute more than 36 million doses in the U.S. this flu season.
It takes about two weeks after vaccination for antibodies to develop to combat flu, so vaccination is recommended ahead of the season, according to CSL Seqirus. That would ideally be in September or October for those who need only one dose, the CDC says.
The CDC advises all eligible people who are six months and older receive an annual vaccine, especially those at an increased risk of severe complications, including older adults, pregnant people and children under five years old.
Topline
Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., on Thursday weighed in on the discussion surrounding Joe Bidens mental fitness for office by posting a series of photos of the president being vaccinated against COVID-19 and implying the immunizations could be to blame for what she called a rapid physical and cognitive declinedespite no medical evidence the shots cause such symptoms.
U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., speaks with reporters as she leaves the U.S. Capitol on May 17, ... [+] 2024.
Boebert on Thursday morning tweeted I wonder what could have caused Joe Bidens rapid physical and cognitive decline? alongside four photos of the president being vaccinated for COVID-19 over the course of almost two years.
The photos, taken between January 2021 and October 2022, show the president receiving the first two doses of the vaccine and two booster shots.
Boeberts post was made despite a lack of medical evidence showing the coronavirus vaccines cause any kind of long term mental or physical decline in patients who receive them, and contribute to a dangerous misinformation campaign that experts estimate caused millions of people to go unvaccinatedleading to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths.
Biden, who has been under fire from opponents and allies alike since he appeared confused and unable to keep up in a presidential debate on June 27, has in the past been accused by Boebert and others of having dementiaa general term for loss of memory, language and other cognitive abilitiesdespite the White House earlier this month denying Biden has "any form of dementia."
There is no evidence to suggest that cognitive decline or symptoms are caused by Covid vaccinesno studies exist to indicate an increased risk of neurological disorders or memory loss from the COVID-19 vaccine and and there is no evidence the coronavirus vaccine causes or worsens dementia, according to the Alzheimer's Society.
A recent study published in the The New England Journal of Medicine found that while cognitive and memory impairment have been reported by those who have been infected with COVID-19 or who are suffering from long Covid, those who were vaccinated experienced less cognitive symptoms than those who were not.
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319,000. That's how many Covid deaths could have been avoided after vaccines became available if those affected had been immunized, as of May 2022, according to NPR.
Biden has faced concerns about his fitness for office since the June 27 debate, in which he stumbled, lost his train of thought and appeared confused throughout the event. He and his team later blamed the poor performance on exhaustion and an illness. Despite his repeated assurances he is prepared to be president for another four years, previous allies have come out of the woodwork to encourage him to drop out of the race and allow the Democratic nomination to go to someone else. The New York Times editorial board said Biden should leave the race in a call later echoed by The Chicago Tribune, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Boston Globe. Big-name supporters like Walmart heir Christy Walton, billionaire Michael Novogratz and actor George Clooney have all repeated the request, and a dozen Democratic representatives have suggested they've lost confidence in the presidents ability to beat Trump in November. In an interview with ABC days after the debate, Biden was asked whether he would be open to taking a neurological and cognitive test. Biden responded by saying, No one said I had to, and then said: every day I have that test.
U.S. President Joe Biden receives his updated COVID-19 booster at the White House on Oct. 25, 2022.
This isn't the first time Boebert has supported far-right conspiracy theories. She has, on multiple occasions, repeated the claim that the 2020 election was "stolen" from former President Donald Trump despite no evidence to support the claim. Rolling Stone later reported that she was involved in helping to organize a deadly riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, that sent elected officials fleeing armed insurrectionists, but Boebert later denied her involvement. Boebert expressed support for the conspiracy theory QAnon in July of 2020 and has made several white Christian nationalist statements, including speaking against the separation of church and state. She also accused a judge in Trump's hush-money trial, in which the former president was convicted of dozens of felony counts, of being "corrupt."
Theres no indication that the coronavirus tenure is ending.
FLiRT is the newest variant that now accounts for the large majority of COVID-19 cases, according to Yale Medicine. Its strains include KP.1.1, KP.2 and KP.3.
Overall reported cases are increasing, too, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The virus has been detected in greater frequency in both emergency departments and wastewater.
Dr. Seth Cohen, the Medical Director of Infection Prevention at the University of Washington Medical Center and a UW clinical associate professor, said a variant is the result of the virus natural evolution.
He said the coronavirus is circulating and infecting millions and millions of people around the world, and it acquires changes to the genes.
If those modifications become clinically significant, meaning capable of causing severe infection or evading immunity, its considered a variant of concern.
Previous variants of concern, including alpha, beta, delta and omicron, have dissipated, though they havent fully disappeared.
While Cohen said associated symptoms are similar to variants of the same omicron lineage, there are specific mutations in the spike protein the part that attached the virus to humans and is responsible for causing infection.
In Washington, Oregon and Idaho combined, 11,751 COVID tests were administered during the past two weeks. Some 11.6% were positive, which represents a 1.7% increase from the previous week, the CDC reported.
The causes for the increasing infections include both social and biological factors, the infectious disease specialist said.
A lack of existing immunity to FLiRT is one reason, with summers social events also providing an avenue for transmission.
The antidote to this spell of the virus remains the same: vaccination.
Questions circulate regarding whether the available shots would be effective against this new variant.
To address this, the CDC released a statement in late June recommending an updated inoculation to protect everyone 6 months or older through the 2024-25 fall and winter.
In the meantime, the current vaccines efficacy is not lost. It is still highly protective against hospitalization and death, Cohen said.
USA Facts reports that 74.8% of Washington is fully vaccinated, while only 42.1% opted to add a booster. In Idaho, 55.7% of residents are fully vaccinated and 26% received a booster.
Shots are extremely vital for those 65 and older or with weakened immune systems; individuals if unvaccinated with those factors should not wait for the release of the new vaccine.
If infected, informing others and staying home is still crucial, especially for some people. That includes older and immunocompromised people, whom Cohen warned need to be more vigilant, considering they often face more severe complications.
Ultimately, although it seems research and medicine have tackled many concerns relating to this explosive virus, Cohen thinks the vaccination will see a new formulation at least every year.
Weve seen a summer wave, he said. I think we should continue to expect that in future years, unless something dramatic happens.
A dog in the Philippines is vaccinated against rabies. Owners who brought their pets in for the shot were given free pet food. Josefiel Rivera/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images hide caption
A few years ago, as a first year doctor in the Philippines, Ricky Dann Marquez had to pin a teenage patients hands to the hospital bed.
It was terrible. It was terrible, he says.
The worry was that the girl would thrash about, bite someone or worse. We had to tie the patient to the bed so that she would not strangle anyone, Marquez says.
The girls mother informed Marquez that, a month ago, a stray dog bit her daughter and, recently, shed started acting strangely. She was uncontrollably aggressive and irrationally afraid of water.
She had rabies. The family did not know to seek out rabies shots for their daughter immediately after the dog bite. If they had, shed likely be just fine. But now that she had symptoms, it was too late. There was nothing Marquez could do. Rabies tops the list of the worlds deadliest diseases with a nearly 100% fatality rate if the person bitten does not get immediate treatment.
Her mother was just watching her at the bedside, telling her that she loves her, Marquez recalls. That was the most heartbreaking part when the mother was telling her goodbyes to her daughter.
Each year, about 60,000 families say goodbye to a relative dying from rabies. And that number could be a gross underestimate, according to the World Health Organization, since many cases go unreported.
The vast majority of the recorded cases a whopping 95% are in Asia or Africa. The heaviest burden is borne by those living in poverty in rural areas, where stray dogs roam and vaccines may not be readily available or may cost more than people can afford to pay.
In Gabon, the four-dose regimen could run $25 per inoculation if the patient doesnt have insurance coverage, according to Dr. Annick Mondjo, deputy coordinator for the countrys rabies elimination program. Plus, she says, the vaccine must be kept cold and many far-flung communities dont have the necessary refrigeration.
As a result, she says, after a dog bite many families rely on hope hope that the dog is not a rabid dog.
Now a new program offers a different kind of hope.
Starting this month more than 50 lower-income countries will be able to apply to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance for financial aid to pay for the human vaccine and related supplies, like refrigeration. This initiative, which was delayed several years by the COVID pandemic, is aligned with the Zero by 30 campaign, a plan spearheaded by WHO and others aimed at ending rabies deaths caused by dogs by 2030.
It will be a game changer, says Terence Scott, the director of programs at the Global Alliance for Rabies Control. Its huge in terms of having access to that post-exposure prophylaxis to the vaccine itself.
However, he calls the human rabies vaccine an interim approach. He hopes that the Gavi announcement will push decision makers and political leaders to take another step: We need to address the disease at its source.
His goal is to stop rabies before it reaches people.
Aiming for dogs
In the past four decades, North and South America have proven that rabies can be controlled. The region has slashed the number of human rabies cases by over 95%. Between January 2023 and early May 2024 the two continents had just nine cases of rabies caused by dogs.
We have all the tools available to eliminate rabies, says Marco Vigilato, who coordinates the Pan American Health Organizations rabies elimination program.
One of the most essential tools, he says, is not the human rabies vaccine but the dog rabies vaccine.
According to WHO, up to 99% of human rabies cases come from dogs it could be a bite, a scratch or even a lick, since the virus is in a rabid dogs saliva and can make its way into a small cut in the skin.
Thats why Vigilato says public health money - usually earmarked for humans - should also go toward animals.
Canine rabies kills people, so this is a public health problem, he says.
He lauds the success of regular, mass dog vaccination campaigns that are free for dog owners and that enlist not only veterinarians, Vigilato says. Doctors, dentists and nurses join the effort, as do police and army personnel.
Others have taken note, including Kenneth Chawinga,who wanted to see if what had worked in the Americas might work in Zambia.
In 2018, when he was the district veterinary officer in Kabwe District in central Zambia, he realized his community was spending so much money on vaccinating people after theyd been exposed to rabies that it would be cheaper to vaccinate the thousands of dogs in the district.
But, he says, before he could launch a mass dog vaccination, he needed to confront another challenge. In his rural area, where dogs are often used for hunting, there was a myth floating around.
[They] think, if you vaccinate their dogs, then they would become weak. They wouldn't be strong hunters, he says.
After convincing a local company to pay for the vaccines, he reached out to the community, he says, through the local radio station and through the traditional leaders, because these have got influence, especially in rural areas.
Pet owners came to public vaccination events. The vaccinators also hit the streets to give shots to free roaming dogs. He estimates that theyve reached more than 70% of dogs in the district.
And Chawinga says it's made a difference.
For a year now, we have not received a case of rabies in humans, says Chawinga, who now works for Zambias Department of Veterinary Services. Vaccinating dogs is not only the cheapest option, it's also the most effective one.
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This is a KFF Health News story.
As bird flu spreads among dairy cattle in the U.S., veterinarians and researchers have taken note of Finland's move to vaccinate farmworkers at risk of infection. They wonder why their government doesn't do the same.
"Farmworkers, veterinarians, and producers are handling large volumes of milk that can contain high levels of bird flu virus," said Kay Russo, a livestock and poultry veterinarian in Fort Collins, Colorado. "If a vaccine seems to provide some immunity, I think it should be offered to them."
Amon a dozen virology and outbreak experts interviewed by KFF Health News, most agree with Russo. They said people who work with dairy cows should be offered vaccination for a disease that has killed roughly half of the people known to have gotten it globally over the past two decades, has killed cats in the U.S. this year, and has pandemic potential.
However, some researchers sided with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in recommending against vaccination for now. There's no evidence that this year's bird flu virus spreads between people or causes serious disease in humans. And it's unclear how well the available vaccine would prevent either scenario.
But the wait-and-see approach "is a gamble," said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University. "By the time we see severe outcomes, it means a lot of people have been infected."
"Now is the time to offer the vaccines to farmworkers in the United States," said Nahid Bhadelia, director of the Boston University Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases. Even more urgent measures are lagging in the U.S., she added. Testing of farmworkers and cows is sorely needed to detect the H5N1 bird flu virus, study it, and extinguish it before it becomes a fixture on farms -- posing an ever-present pandemic threat.
Demetre Daskalakis, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said the agency takes bird flu seriously, and the U.S. is stockpiling 4.8 million doses of the vaccine. But, he said, "there's no recommendation to launch a vaccine campaign."
"It's all about risk-benefit ratios," Daskalakis said. The benefits are blurry because there hasn't been enough testing to understand how easily the virus jumps from cows into people, and how sick they become. Just four people in the United States have tested positive this year, with mild cases -- too few to draw conclusions.
Other farmworkers and veterinarians working on dairy farms with outbreaks have reported being sick, Russo said, but they haven't been tested. Public health labs have tested only about 50 people for the bird flu since the outbreak was detected in March.
Still, Daskalakis said the CDC is not concerned that the agency is missing worrisome bird flu infections because of its influenza surveillance system. Hospitals report patients with severe cases of flu, and numbers are normal this year.
Another signal that puts the agency at ease is that the virus doesn't yet have mutations that allow it to spread rapidly between people as they sneeze and breathe. "If we start to see changes in the virus, that's another factor that would be part of the decision to move from a planning phase into an operational one," Daskalakis said.
On July 8, researchers reported that the virus may be closer to spreading between people than previously thought. It still doesn't appear to do so, but experiments suggest it has the ability to infect human airways. It also spread between two laboratory ferrets through the air.
In considering vaccines, the agency takes a cue from a 1976 outbreak of the swine flu. Officials initially feared a repeat of the 1918 swine flu pandemic that killed roughly half a million people in the United States. So they rapidly vaccinated nearly 43 million people in the country within a year.
But swine flu cases turned out to be mild that year. This made the vaccine seem unnecessarily risky as several reports of a potentially deadly disorder, Guillain-Barr Syndrome, emerged. Roughly one of every million people who get influenza vaccines may acquire the disorder, according to the CDC. That risk is outweighed by the benefits of prevention. Since Oct. 1, as many as 830,000 people have been hospitalized for the seasonal flu and 25,000 to 75,000 people have died.
An after-action report on the 1976 swine flu situation called it a "sobering, cautionary tale" about responding prematurely to an uncertain public health threat. "It's a story about what happens when you launch a vaccine program where you are accepting risk without any benefit," Daskalakis said.
Paul Offit, a virologist at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, sides with the CDC. "I'd wait for more data," he said.
However, other researchers say this isn't comparable to 1976 because they aren't suggesting that the U.S. vaccinate tens of millions of people. Rather they're talking about a voluntary vaccine for thousands of people in close contact with livestock. This lessens the chance of rare adverse effects.
The bird flu vaccine on hand, made by the flu vaccine company CSL Seqirus, was authorized last year by the European equivalent of the FDA. An older variety has FDA approval, but the newer variety hasn't gotten the green light yet.
Although the vaccine targets a different bird flu strain than the H5N1 virus now circulating in cows, studies show it triggers an immune response against both varieties. It's considered safe because it uses the same egg-based vaccine technology deployed every year in seasonal flu vaccines.
For these reasons, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and about a dozen other countries are stockpiling millions of doses. Finland expects to offer them to people who work on fur farms this month as a precaution because its mink and fox farms were hit by the bird flu last year.
In contrast, mRNA vaccines being developed against the bird flu would be a first for influenza. On July 2, the U.S. government announced that it would pay Moderna $176 million for their development, and that the vaccines may enter clinical trials next year. Used widely against covid-19, this newer technology uses mRNA to teach the immune system how to recognize particular viruses.
In the meantime, Florian Krammer, a flu virologist at Mount Sinai's Icahn School of Medicine, said people who work on dairy farms should have the option to get the egg-based vaccine. It elicits an immune response against a primary component of the H5N1 bird flu virus that should confer a degree of protection against infection and serious sickness, he said.
Still, its protection wouldn't be 100%. And no one knows how many cases and hospitalizations it would prevent since it hasn't been used to combat this year's virus. Such data should be collected in studies that track the outcomes of people who opt to get one, he said.
Krammer isn't assuaged by the lack of severe bird flu cases spotted in clinics. "If you see a signal in hospitals, the cat is out of the bag. Game over, we have a pandemic," he said. "That's what we want to avoid."
He and others stressed that the United States should be doing everything it can to curb infections before flu season starts in October. The vaccine could provide an additional layer of protection on top of testing, wearing gloves, and goggles, and disinfecting milking equipment. Scientists worry that if people get the bird flu and the seasonal flu simultaneously, bird flu viruses could snag adaptations from seasonal viruses that allow them to spread swiftly among humans.
They also note it could take months to distribute the vaccines after they're recommended since it requires outreach. People who work beside dairy cows still lack information on the virus, four months into this outbreak, said Bethany Boggess Alcauter, director of research at the National Center for Farmworker Health.
Health officials have talked with dairy farm owners, but Boggess' interviews with farmworkers suggest those conversations haven't trickled down to their staff. One farmworker in the Texas Panhandle told her he was directed to disinfect his hands and boots to protect cows from diseases that workers may carry. "They never told us if the cow could infect us with some illness," the farmworker said in Spanish.
The slow pace of educational outreach is a reminder that everything takes time, including vaccine decisions. When deciding whether to recommend vaccines, the CDC typically seeks guidance from its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or the ACIP. A consultant to the group, infectious disease researcher William Schaffner, has repeatedly asked the agency to present its thinking on Seqirus' bird flu vaccine.
Rather than fret about the 1976 swine flu situation, Schaffner suggested the CDC consider the 2009-10 swine flu pandemic. It caused more than 274,000 hospitalizations and 12,000 deaths in the U.S. within a year. By the time vaccines were rolled out, he said, much of the damage had been done.
"The time to discuss this with ACIP is now," said Schaffner, before the bird flu becomes a public health emergency. "We don't want to discuss this until the cows come home in the middle of a crisis."
