9/2/25 - More COVID vaccine updates

Good afternoon!

Here are some more updates on COVID in the US, following on from the one link in last Thursday's edition of Disability Thinking Weekday ...

These are the conditions that make you eligible for an updated Covid-19 vaccine

Jacqueline Howard, CNN - August 31, 2025

"Determining whether someone is eligible for Covid-19 vaccination may be part of the process of making the appointment ... But it’s unclear whether a simple self-report of a condition will be sufficient to justify vaccination, said Dr. Kelly Moore, president and CEO of immunize.org, a nonprofit organization focused on vaccine access."

The Covid revenge policy

Sean Rameswaram and Avishay Artsy, Vox.com - August 31, 2025

"Trump himself used that phrase, medical miracle. And there’s no scientific reason that he should have stopped believing that. The data on these vaccines has not changed. They’re very safe, very effective. They went through all the normal channels of vetting that get us safe, effective vaccines. But right now in his second term, Trump is leading an administration that is mostly pushing out information that these vaccines are dubious. They don’t work. And largely, this whole system is corrupt. All the people that recommended these vaccines have conflicts of interest and they’re in the pocket of industry, and basically the government is working to restrict access to these vaccines so they don’t hurt as many Americans as they could. He said they don’t work against respiratory viruses, which is not true."

On RFK Jr.’s mitochondrial malaise

Rachel Bedard, MD, The Argument - August 29, 2025

"This is also probably as much as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. knows about mitochondria, but he certainly thinks about them much more than you do. He sees evidence of their dysfunction everywhere ... 'I’m looking at kids while I walk through the airports today, as I walk down the street, and I see these kids that are just overburdened with mitochondrial challenges, inflammation, you can tell it from their faces, from their body movement, and from their lack of social connection,' Kennedy said Wednesday during a press briefing ... This quote reads to many as batshit crazy, and has now gone viral. People are understandably confused: What is the secretary of health and human services talking about? Is this a thing? Did he make it up? Are American children afflicted with mitochondrial malaise? ... Like so much that Kennedy says, it was a statement both bizarre to the average person and entirely intelligible to his base; it was a signal to his more ardent followers that he lives in their alternate reality and a signal to everyone else that he isn’t living in ours."

It looks like access to updated COVID vaccines might be about the same this year as in previous years, only a little bit more difficult and uncertain than necessary. For disabled and chronically ill people, a lot will depend on how strictly doctors and pharmacists interpret the FDA's new guidelines. For instance, will the oddly phrased criterion "Disabilities, including Down syndrome" be applied broadly or narrowly? I myself will probably qualify based on at least two of the criteria. And because my disabilities are visible, I can't see any of my local pharmacies refusing me, especially if its the same people I've been going to for COVID and flu shots for the last several years. But what about people who don't fit so neatly into the new framework? What about people who aren't on Medicare or Medicaid and aren't sure whether a vaccine will be paid for? What about people with disabilities or health conditions who don't have longstanding, personal connections with doctors and local pharmacists – who aren't recognized when they come through the door and aren't trusted by default. What about people who don't look disabled or chronically ill? And how many people who could pose an indirect risk to disabled people – relatives and home care workers for example – will fail to qualify, assume they won't fail to qualify, or take the government's latest moves as a signal that COVID vaccines aren't good after all?

All this uncertainty is totally unnecessary. And it's heavily influenced by a handful of oddballs who have their own unproven and bizarre theories about ... well everything to do with health, apparently ... and have been given unprecedented political power. If you still think politics don't matter to the everyday lives of people with disabilities, I suspect we will all soon be learning otherwise.

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