CDC positioning to escape blame for school COVID vax mandates ahead of immunization schedule update

CDC Advisory Panel Meeting

• The CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) could vote Thursday to add COVID-19 vaccines to routine immunization schedules, giving the green light to school districts to require COVID vaccination - and perhaps annual boosters - as a condition of enrolling.
• Most states will either recomend or require the vaccines, but this is not a proxy for state mandates.

CDC is now going further than Moderna

• Only people over 50 or high-risk will need annual COVID boosters
• Stephane Bancel, CEO of Moderna, questioned why healthy 25-year-olds would need them
• Through its public messaging that all ages stay "up to date" with COVID immunizations, the CDC is trying to ensure that people of all ages are protected

The CDC is keenly aware it could be blamed for a potential new round of school vaccine mandates

• "States establish vaccine requirements for school children, not ACIP or CDC," the agency tweeted Wednesday, responding to a video by Fox News host Tucker Carlson that claims ACIP approval "would make the vax mandatory for kids to attend school."
• In a slide shown during the ACIP meeting, the CDC says that adding COVID vaccines to the childhood immunization schedule is an important step toward inclusion of COVID-19 vaccines in routine vaccination program.

The real power of the recommendations is that they tend to be adopted quickly by blue jurisdictions

• In the four months since COVID vaccines received emergency use authorization for children ages 6 months-4 years, the lowest-risk age group for COVID complications, only 9% had received even one dose
• By the same 17-week mark after EUA, older age groups had much higher rates
• 38% have taken one dose and 31% two doses, rising to 67% and 58% for 12-17 year-olds

COVID infection fatality rates (IFR)

• Stanford medical professor John Ioannidis has updated his estimates
• Median IFR: 0.0003% for 0-19 years, 0.003% for 20-29, and 0.011% for 30-39
• IFR jumps substantially between ages 50-59 (0.129%) and 60-69 (>0.501%).
• The current analysis suggests a much lower IFR in non-elderly populations than previously suggested

Some observers suspect the immunization schedule vote is intended primarily to protect vaccine makers from legal liability rather than boost COVID vaccine uptake in children.

• The vote "is both irrelevant and embarrassing since it throws a spotlight on the way parents have rejected the shots for kids," former New York Times drug industry reporter Alex Berenson wrote in his newsletter.
• The vaccine makers are also facing new scrutiny for their representations of their products.

https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/cdc-tries-escape-blame-school-covid-vax-mandates-ahead-immunization