With the news coming at such a fast and furious pace, I sincerely appreciate your articles that I know I can rely on for accurate and timely information. I have to say, I’m impressed with all you accomplish on a daily basis and although it’s none of my business, I hope you actually sleep! Please keep up the important work.
“Sec Kennedy is either not thinking clearly or this is an end-around to end seasonal vaccines.” Both are true. What he’s doing to public health is frightening.
"Senator Collins is concerned about deep research cuts in the proposed budget" - how can you post this basically positive item without mentioning the Collins is one of the main reasons the cuts (and much else) were enabled in the first place?
I'd like to think so, but it doesn't come across to me that way. One problem with irony/snark/satire is how hard it is to strike a balance. Regular/long-time readers will have
Sorry - hit the wrong key. Continuing: Regular/long-time readers will have the background to read it as possibly satire, but not someone coming fresh to the post. -- I don't mean to undermine Dr. Faust with this, just clarifying. His regular information and insight is invaluable.
I just read that they scheduled a VRBPAC meeting on 5/22 to discuss Covid strains (not confirmed)--and yesterday Senator Cassidy made a statement about the lack of needing placebo controlled trials for seasonal updates.
A NYT article on this (and WaPo and STAT have been way ahead of them) quoted an ACIP member as saying there have been 23,000 COVID deaths since 9/24 and to deny boosters to high risk people is unacceptable.
I hope someone somewhere is keeping a list of all of these things so a hopefully more sane administration will know what to reverse as quickly as possible. It's dizzying to try to keep up with it, which is, of course, part of the plan. If we want to be optimistic and look to the day when these moves are reversed, that would be a great time to consider how they can be improved. In fact, not that I would wish this kind of pause in any way, but since it's happening, I hope experts in each of these areas can use this as an opportunity to write up a comprehensive proposal for how each of these programs can be made more efficient from an insiders point of view. Then, when someone sane returns to the white house, that well thought out and careful plan can be presented and acted upon.
I’m hoping that the three grants that provide me with summer salary as a STEM education provider and evaluator received this years funds so those programs can happen - one involves international collaboration for training highly diverse groups of students from marginalized communities. It is an overseas program and I worry that students and staff may be left with no funds to get back to their home country!
Dr. Faust, can you please explain what Makary and Bhattacharya are talking about in their plan to develop a universal vaccine platform based on a so-called beta-propiolactone-inactivated (BPL-inactivated) whole-virus approach? What are the dangers of this?
Interested in Dr. Faust’s reply, but one of the dangers is that they’ve taken hundreds of millions of dollars previously designated for other projects and rerouted the funds into their own pet project (which has significant conflicts of interest).
With the news coming at such a fast and furious pace, I sincerely appreciate your articles that I know I can rely on for accurate and timely information. I have to say, I’m impressed with all you accomplish on a daily basis and although it’s none of my business, I hope you actually sleep! Please keep up the important work.
How worried should we be about a Covid vaccine this fall?
A simple thank you
“Sec Kennedy is either not thinking clearly or this is an end-around to end seasonal vaccines.” Both are true. What he’s doing to public health is frightening.
"Senator Collins is concerned about deep research cuts in the proposed budget" - how can you post this basically positive item without mentioning the Collins is one of the main reasons the cuts (and much else) were enabled in the first place?
I think he was being snarky - Susan Collins being concerned (but doing nothing or something terrible) is a feature of her behavior, not a bug.
I'd like to think so, but it doesn't come across to me that way. One problem with irony/snark/satire is how hard it is to strike a balance. Regular/long-time readers will have
Sorry - hit the wrong key. Continuing: Regular/long-time readers will have the background to read it as possibly satire, but not someone coming fresh to the post. -- I don't mean to undermine Dr. Faust with this, just clarifying. His regular information and insight is invaluable.
I just read that they scheduled a VRBPAC meeting on 5/22 to discuss Covid strains (not confirmed)--and yesterday Senator Cassidy made a statement about the lack of needing placebo controlled trials for seasonal updates.
A NYT article on this (and WaPo and STAT have been way ahead of them) quoted an ACIP member as saying there have been 23,000 COVID deaths since 9/24 and to deny boosters to high risk people is unacceptable.
This entire issue is shocking.
My source for potential VRBAC: https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/01/health/hhs-universal-flu-coronavirus-vaccine-initiative
I hope someone somewhere is keeping a list of all of these things so a hopefully more sane administration will know what to reverse as quickly as possible. It's dizzying to try to keep up with it, which is, of course, part of the plan. If we want to be optimistic and look to the day when these moves are reversed, that would be a great time to consider how they can be improved. In fact, not that I would wish this kind of pause in any way, but since it's happening, I hope experts in each of these areas can use this as an opportunity to write up a comprehensive proposal for how each of these programs can be made more efficient from an insiders point of view. Then, when someone sane returns to the white house, that well thought out and careful plan can be presented and acted upon.
I’m hoping that the three grants that provide me with summer salary as a STEM education provider and evaluator received this years funds so those programs can happen - one involves international collaboration for training highly diverse groups of students from marginalized communities. It is an overseas program and I worry that students and staff may be left with no funds to get back to their home country!
Dr. Faust, can you please explain what Makary and Bhattacharya are talking about in their plan to develop a universal vaccine platform based on a so-called beta-propiolactone-inactivated (BPL-inactivated) whole-virus approach? What are the dangers of this?
Interested in Dr. Faust’s reply, but one of the dangers is that they’ve taken hundreds of millions of dollars previously designated for other projects and rerouted the funds into their own pet project (which has significant conflicts of interest).