CDC ends Covid vaccine recommendation for healthy kids and pregnant women

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: NBC News

May 27, 2025, 10:50 AM EDT


The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will no longer recommend routine Covid shots for healthy children and pregnant women, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Tuesday. “We are now one step closer to realizing @POTUS’s promise to Make America Healthy Again,” he said in a post on X.

Kennedy said the vaccine would no longer be recommended for "healthy pregnant women," but it was unclear who would qualify as pregnancy itself is considered a risk factor for Covid complications. The change from the CDC comes a week after Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary announced the agency planned to restrict the use of Covid shots to older adults and children and adults with underlying medical conditions. New Covid shots for healthy children and adults will need to go through lengthy placebo-controlled clinical trials before they can get approved.

Kennedy has a long history of opposition to a variety of vaccines, including the Covid shot. In 2021, he filed a citizen petition requesting that the FDA revoke the authorization of the vaccines. The same year, he described the Covid vaccines as “the deadliest vaccine ever made,” specifically due to rare cases of myocarditis in young men. Studies have found that the risk of myocarditis is higher in people with a Covid infection and usually more severe than after vaccination.

Under Kennedy, the FDA slow-walked the approval of Novavax's shot before approving it earlier this month. In an unusual move, the FDA limited its use to people 65 and older and teens and adults with at least one condition that puts them at risk for severe illness. There are no mandates in the U.S. for anyone to get the Covid shot.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/covid-vaccine-kids-pregnant-women-cdc-recommendation-rfk-jr-rcna207312

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"CDC" didn't end it. The fucking loon place-holder appointees did.

[Marthe48]

1. Down is up, sick is healthy

I picked up a couple of prescriptions at Giant Eagle today. I thought I'd get another Covid booster while I was there, but they didn't have any and hadn't heard if they will get any more in. I'm in a small s.e. Ohio town, so this lack of boosters might just be local. I'm going to look around to see if I can get it elsewhere, maybe call the health department.

I can imagine drug dealers on the street selling vaccines :/ >sarcasm< ???

Oh yeah, and I hope a leopard eats faces.

[gypsy11]

6. It's not local

Ran into the same issue in New England.

[Bayard]

2. I'm wondering if you can still get one if you pay for it yourself

[IronLionZion]

3. I suspect the brain worm is making the decisions here

Next up they'll ban any treatment of brain worms

[progree]

4. The OP linked article has a short section on what this means (will I have to pay for it, can I get it at all? )

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

[k_buddy762]

5. What?!

"with Covid still killing about as many people as the flu and traffic accidents"

Seriously? I had not seen this. Do you have a source? I have folks that would be very interested in this.

[progree]

7. Here's a thread from a couple of days ago

Why are more than 300 people in the US still dying from COVID every week?
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220342473

Sympthsical and I had a roundy-round on this beginning with https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220342473#post3
It varies week by week and Covid deaths has recently dipped below flu deaths but is still close

It was at a rate higher than U.S. traffic deaths until a few months ago, which was when I last looked. Anyway, a quick Google
https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/nhtsa-2023-traffic-fatalities-2024-estimates
40,901 fatalities reported in 2023 (that comes to 787/week)

COVID-19 drops to 10th leading cause of death in 2023
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-drops-to-10th-leading-cause-of-death-in-2023/
COVID-19 was blamed as the "underlying" primary cause for 49,928 deaths in 2023 (960/week)

That was 2023. More recently esitmates on traffic fatalities in 2024 are down a few percent. Using the 300/week figure for Covid, it appears more accurate to say Covid fatalities are a little less than half of traffic deaths currently.

================================================
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/04/upshot/covid-illnesses-mild-winter.html
In late December, around 600 people were dying each week.
so somewhat less than 2023's 787/week traffic fatalities (76% as many)

================================================
I'll correct my post to "more than a third" of U.S. traffic fatalities to get a little closer (300/787 = 38%)

===============================================
Edited to add
CDC: preliminary estimates of 2024-2025 season Covid deaths (10/1/24-5/17/25): 30,000-50,000.
https://www.cdc.gov/covid/php/surveillance/burden-estimates.html

Using the mid-range figure of 40,000 and ignoring deaths during the remaining 4 1/2 months of the year (mid-May through September), that comes to 40,000/52 = 769/week, about the same as traffic fatalities, so that's probably where I got the impression that they were about the same.