We Need Your Help Keeping COVID Vaccines Covered by Insurance.
And then there's whatever the "bonus" issue is.
We have a rare chance to politely coax a problem to fix itself.
There are a lot of bad things going on right now.
And that is truly unfortunate.
However, today we have a rare opportunity to “gently” fix an issue.
There’s no two ways about it, antivaxxers and science deniers have taken over.
And public health is hanging on by a thread.
Assuming you are reading this on April 16th, 2025, ACIP (CDC) is meeting today.
It’s a two-day meeting, and yesterday, they discussed two concerning things.
There was a discussion about moving to a risk-based approval system for COVID vaccines in the future.
This is an insane problem, and I used "insane" correctly, as we have already solved it.
Over the last two years, the public has fought for that recommendation because, ultimately, it’s the only thing forcing insurance companies to pay for the shots.
Cutting the recommendation won’t limit access to previously approved vaccines, but it will give insurance companies a reason not to pay.
This means you pay out of pocket.
We already covered the general idea that uptake is so low that if people want access to these vaccines, they should have access. No one is being forced to take them, so recommendations do not directly increase uptake the way mandates might.
There was a discussion about reintroducing the Bivalent.
The Bivalent was a failure in every way.
It does make sense to use multivalent vaccines, but even that terminology is not universally defined with the utmost clarity. We use that phrasing for the influenza vaccines, but each antigen is different enough that even though they are all influenza, they do not disrupt each other’s memory response.
With COVID, it does… It disrupts our immune memory response, giving sub-par protection, and this isn’t even a fringe idea… Moderna’s data says the same thing.
Trying to pass this off as a success is the most “polished turd” I’ve ever seen.
However, we had a pretty significant development in understanding why these low levels of protection have been prioritized over Novavax’s superior protection…
…Prepare for the plot to thicken…
After years of denial, it turns out that the NIH controls the mRNA patent.
Both BioNTech and Moderna are paying royalties after losing their court cases.
So, here’s what we’re going to do right now.
We’re going to be calm and patient with the ACIP members because all but two of them are brand new, and they are holding on by a thread as much as we are.
We are going to POLITELY email them at their public academic emails and remind them that some of the matters being discussed are settled issues.
We all need to find a way to placate the children who are trying to drive the car off the cliff, and, for the time being, these members are on our side.
There’s no script, and I don’t want to spam them thousands of times.
We just want to clarify that these are settled issues. We need to find a way to avoid revisiting them, as changing them might cause harm, and we need to do this without harming the member’s position.
We already got all the new members on ACIP last year, and we don’t want them to replace our current ACIP members with a bunch of sycophants.
In the next few days, you can look forward to a very large and definitive article on the science of Novavax’s effectiveness versus other COVID vaccines that should help in rallying the public on this issue.
But right now, we gotta deal with this.
Okay, that’s it, go get ‘em.
… And remember, be professional. These people could be our friends.
And feel free to point out that Novavax’s BLA should be approved for all ages.
CDC - ACIP voting Members for contact
Chair: Helen Keipp Talbot: keipp.talbot@vumc.org
Edwin Jose Asturias: edwin.asturias@ucdenver.edu
Noel T. Brewer: ntb@unc.edu
Oliver Brooks: olibro@aol.com
Lin H. Chen: lchen@hms.harvard.edu
Helen Y. Chu: helenchu@uw.edu
Sybil Cineas: Sybil Cineas@brown.edu
Denise J Jamieson: denise-jamieson@uiowa.edu
Mini Kamboj: kambojm@mskcc.org
George Kuchel: kuchel@uchc.edu
Jamie Loehr: Dr.Jamie.Loehr@Gmail.com
Yvonne Maldonado: bonniem@stanford.edu
Charlotte A. Moser: moser@email.chop.edu
Robert Schechter: R.Schechter@cdph.ca.gov
Albert C Shaw: albert.shaw@yale.edu
Karyn Lyons: Karyn.Lyons@Illinois.gov
Jane Zucker: jzucker@health.nyc.gov
Bonus: Contact notorious antivaxxer Tracy Beth Hoeg.
She’s the holdup on Novavax, or at least she has been positioned to be the holdup.
She is not our friend or on our side.
You are welcome to be less nice, but these are also publicly available emails.
tracy.hoeg@ucsf.edu
tbhoeg@mit.edu
I don’t want anyone to “harass” anyone, but sending emails to this public email address for the foreseeable future might be helpful in getting full vaccine protection.
Thank you for all you do.
Thank you. Just individually emailed the lot. 🤞🏻