At the start of an unprecedented meeting of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Vaccines Committee, scientists from agencies that generate and interpret data to notify this group of votes are usually to counter statements that respond to statements that question and dispute the safety and efficacy of approved vaccines.
At Wednesday’s meeting, agency experts answered polite but atypical questions about Covid-19 diseases and vaccines. Many were counted as whether the data was biased or misinterpreted, and as being counted as being counted as going to the hospital due to Covid-19, but in fact they might have been hospitalized for something else.
The Advisory Committee on Vaccination Practices Thursday’s agenda includes two planned presentations on topics that have been feeding vaccine skeptics for decades. One is the form of mercury used as a preservative in vaccines, and is used for the risk of rare ferril attacks after several types of combination drug vaccines.
The presentation will be given by the newly appointed chairman of the committee and former leaders of Child Health Defense in anti-vaccine organizations by CDC staff or working groups who have met for months to discuss the topic.
On Tuesday, CDC experts posted evidence reviews on both topics labelled as background briefing material. By Wednesday, one of the documents regarding the vaccine’s preservative thimeromonal had been removed because they had not experienced the “appropriate process to be posted.”
Agency scientists often gather together the available research before these meetings to support a brief member of ACIP members, and presentation slides are commonly posted in advance. However, a former CDC official with knowledge of the group’s processes said that the CDC scientist’s detailed briefing document submission was unusual.
Officials said that it is a quiet sign that career scientists are U.S. health and welfare secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is trying to reshape the process of notifying vaccine recommendations for US health and welfare, and what the Human Services Secretary feels is a quiet sign.
“I think it’s very interesting that these documents have been published,” said a former CDC official who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation.
Questions asked by new committee members on Wednesday showed distrust in the evidence showing the safety and efficacy of the Covid-19 vaccine.
Following an announcement last month by the secretary of HHS Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Covid-19 vaccines will no longer be recommended for healthy and pregnant women, showing data that hospitalization rates for children under the age of 2 continue to be mindful of.
The CDC noted that the rate of hospitalization for Covid-19 in babies and toddlers is roughly the same as that of older adults last year.
Dr. Cody Meissner, a professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth University, noted that, based on the latest CDC data, about 1.6 out of the approximately 100,000 babies under six months were hospitalized for infection in the week that closes May 31st.
“This is a very rare disease not only in adults today, but also in young children,” Maisner said.
Dr. Christopher Taylor, a CDC respiratory disease data expert, said that the data on the website shows current weekly rates, but scientists have used cumulative numbers for more than a year for presentations.
Absolutely speaking, since July 2024, CDC data shows that 268 of the 100,000 babies under six months were hospitalized due to Covid-19. For adults aged 65 to 74, the same percentage was 266 for every 100,000.
Children between 6 and 23 months were hospitalized at a comparable fee to adults aged 50 and 64 years, and were approximately 100 years old for every 100,000 people.
“In cumulative numbers, this remains a huge burden for the youngest and oldest age groups,” Taylor said.
Healthy children can still receive the COVID vaccine after consultation with health care providers, a contingent known as shared clinical decision-making. Recommendations for pregnant women have been removed from the vaccine schedule, but pregnancy remains at a higher risk of severe illness from infection.
Meissner also asked whether the Covid-19 hospitalization reported by the CDC represents a person with a severe illness with a Covid-19 infection, or whether those patients may be in the hospital for other reasons and if Covid-19 happened to be tested positive while they were there.
“For example, people may have been hospitalized due to appendicitis, and it happens that asymptomatic colonization is very common with this virus, which gives us a positive (test) result,” he said.
However, Taylor said that while it is true that the definitions used by the researchers rely on laboratory-based COVID-19 infections, their clinical data will pass through another layer of scrutiny to see if the patient has symptoms consistent with COVID-19 and has been given a drug that matches COVID infection.
Taylor added that early in the pandemic, many hospitals need to require all patients to be screened for Covid-19 during their stay. However, since then, most hospitals have stopped practicing..
Committee Member Dr. Retsef Levi, professor of operational management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, asked about potential confoundings in CDC research. He speculated that the controls in the study, consisting of people suffering from other types of respiratory infections, were actually those injured by Covid-19 vaccinations, which are at a higher risk for those respiratory infections.
“In that case, we assume the vaccine is protective,” Levi said. “But another explanation is that the vaccine actually makes you more vulnerable to multiple viruses.”
Dr. Ruth Linkgel, an epidemiologist at the CDC, said control subjects were selected to closely match hospitalized patients with COVID-19 hospitalised patients in terms of age and symptoms.
“I think the control here is something I want to understand the relative impact of vaccination,” she said.
Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, a senior advisor to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration who attended the conference as a liaison member, said she was also concerned about confounding in the CDC study and preferred to look at data from randomized controlled trials.
“I think a lot of people who want to see randomized controlled trials from this panel share their desire to minimize these types of bias,” Hoag said.
CDC experts say the study design was chosen to produce timely results in a cost-effective way to better understand the impact of vaccinations on emergency department visits, hospitalizations and deaths in real time. The CDC will work with the research site to ensure that cases and controls are in good agreement and minimize bias, they said.
“Any questions about clinical trials are actually going to be postponing it all to you by the FDA,” Link-Gelles said.
“Yeah, we’re working on that,” Hoag said.
The antivaccine group has long criticised thimeromonal for causing neurodevelopmental problems, such as autism in children, but it shows that it is not related to those conditions.
Thursday’s presentation on topics will be made by Lynredwood, a nurse practitioner who was president of the World Mercury Project. This is a group that will later “expand” the mission and become a child health defense, listing Kennedy as founder and former chairman. Kennedy described Redwood as one of the original “Mercury Mamas” who recruited him to take part in the fight against Timeromonkeys vaccine.
Redwood’s presentation highlights data she says shows that thimeromonkeys are not effective and not safe at preventing the growth of the bacteria in the vaccine. She then proposes a recommendation that pregnant women, infants and children in the United States only get thimeromonkey-free vaccines.
It appears that at least one of the studies referenced in the Redwood slides originally posted for the conference did not exist. These slides were later replaced with a version that does not include quotations.
The CDC briefing document noted that since 2001, all pediatric vaccines approved and recommended in the United States are free of thimeromonkeys, except for some influenza vaccines drawn from multi-dose vials. It is rarely used. During the 2024-25 flu season, 96% of influenza vaccines administered in the US and 98% of influenza vaccines given through the CDC’s Children’s Vaccine Program were free of thimeromonkeys, the CDC said in a document.
Dr. Peter Hotes, a pediatrician who directs the vaccine development center at Texas Children’s Hospital, said Redwood’s proposed recommendations may seem relatively teeth free, but most influenza vaccines given to children already contain thimeromonkeys – the foundations of that are troubling.
“I’m worried that putting thimerosal on the agenda when it’s no longer in use in most pediatric vaccines will not serve any purpose other than eroding our trust in our national vaccine and vaccination program,” Hotez said in an email to CNN. “It was a consistent pursuit by Mr. Kennedy and his peers.”
Additionally, some low- and middle-income countries have to rely on multi-dose vaccine vials, and these formulations rely on the use of antibacterial preservatives such as thimerosal. If the US is questioning its safety, it could have ripple effects on vaccination programs around the world.
CDC evidence reviews say science shows that thimeromonkeys do not injure children’s brains.
“Given the breadth and consistency of the results of multiple population-based studies conducted in several countries with different study designs, this evidence does not support the association between vaccines containing thimerosal and autism spectrum disorders or other neurodevelopmental disorders,” the manual states.
Another presentation on the agenda, given by Dr. Martin Kulldorff, on MMRV vaccine combinations for children under the age of 5, had not been posted on the ACIP website as of Wednesday night.
The CDC briefing document explains that since 2009, ACIP’s vaccine schedule recommends that children aged 1-2 years olds receive separate measles, mumps, and Levela (MMR) vaccines and water cell vaccines.
Offering shots is very small additional risk of fever from seizures that can occur when all vaccine ingredients are combined. The added risk is one case of a fever attack for every 2,300-2,600 vaccinated children. Avoid giving vaccines individually.
This review points out that even if these attacks occur, they can be resolved without long-term consequences.
“Rare cases of encephalitis and death have been reported after MMRV vaccination, but no direct link has been established between these events and the vaccine.
Kulldorff announced Wednesday that a new CDC workgroup will look into vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox or water cell. It could potentially reevaluate potential alternatives such as one-year-old vaccine recommendations, optimal timing for vaccines, and those used in Japan.
CNN’s Meg Tirrell contributed to this report.
