FDA meeting to pick next winter's flu shot is canceled, in ominous sign for US (opens in new tab)

They are the establishment. The goal is destruction of government for tax breaks.

Nuts, crims, and greedy billionaires out to blow up all of government because they don't understand it, privatize everything, and slash Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security while lying about the tax breaks they're going to get out of it.

He was actually injured by the flu vaccine. That’s why his voice sounds the way it does

> They may even go one step deeper and believe the vaccines aren't proven properly to know whether they work well enough.

They may even go further still and claim that the shot causes the flu—like RFK recently did with measles:

> Kennedy claimed the outbreak was likely caused by vaccines — contrary to evidence that showed low vaccination rates as the culprit. The false theory seems to stem from a misreading of a California Department of Public Health report that mentioned cases of a vaccine-induced rash, not vaccine-induced measles.

* https://www.nbcnews.com/news/texas-measles-outbreak-anti-vac...

Measles used to not be a thing:

> The US declared that measles had been "eliminated" in 2000, but the country has seen outbreaks in recent years amid a rise in anti-vaccine sentiment. The last US measles death was in 2015, according to the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

* https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyderx4v8go

It seems like the results will be somewhat predictable: the impact flu has every year is variable, with some years being incredibly bad and some being not that bad. Part of that is attributed to the vaccine rate, and how effective the vaccine is (this meeting is key to decision making about our expectations and how to make an effective vaccine), and part is simply random (based on too many correlated values, preventing good estimates of causation).

If this meeting is cancelled, we would expect the vaccine to be less effective and would see greater impact (simply because it wasn't tailored to the be the most likely effective vaccine), but due to all the variables I mentioned it could even appear that "things got better after we did this" (post hoc ergo propter hoc).

There is no steel man here, RFK just wants to demonstrate that his beliefs about viruses are true. We may or may not get enough unambiguous data to make conclusions about his beliefs in a year or two, but given the concomitant reduction in the effectiveness of the CDC due to Trump policies, and the sycophantic nature of the people being placed into leadership roles, we may simply never know because the data would not be collected, or the research not funded, or the publications retracted.

Or RFK could somehow be right and we see a huge magic increase in public health across the country (not seen in other countries that keep vaccination). I am not aware of very many scientists who believe this will happen.

Peter principle meets Idiocracy. People will die unnecessarily because of incompetency and failure of leadership.

For people who get the flu? I thought that was just for mental health problems.

I hope there's a slightly different timeline where people with hopelessness or depression have a place in nature to pursue purpose, community, diet, exercise, and meaningful labour. I think we all know in our gut that this would be of incredible benefit to most of these people. And I hope the public in this world are horrified by the idea that anyone could instead pump them full of addictive or unknown drugs and leave them to fester in their obesity, drug dependency, poverty, loneliness, emptiness and misery.

Our current approach isn't working.

> This will spur competition and bring prices down.

Without the effects known for months, it sounds a lot like gambling to me.

That’s an interesting comment. I often see this repeated - that HN as a whole leans libertarian - but I don’t see it personally. Just as many people will jump in to point out that market failures are common for reasons of monopolistic behaviour, regulatory capture, etc, as will people regurgitating Reagan, Thatcher and Thiel.

Whoops, gave away my political leanings.

Flu strains usually originate from Asia (usually China), where flu is more likely to jump from chicken to human. But that was in the past, it is completely possible that the USA could move backwards in health and become the new spot where flu jumps to humans (eg by not culling flocks where infections are found because of rising egg prices). Trump could do a lot of damage in four years, we might end up completely flipped from where were a decade ago by the end of it (China as the preeminent respected world power, the USA as a big nation of unvaxed people where bird flu jumps to humans, Fujian Type N flu is replaced with Tenesee type M flu)

I got a really bad flu last year because I delayed my shots. At 48, it was nothing like I experienced when I was younger, just mucus filling my chest for a week, uncomfortable to breathe with a scratchy wheeze. I don’t mind getting the flu I got when I was younger, but I will get my vaccinations on time to avoid going through that again.

I get how flu vaccines become more important as you age, COVID also (lest you win a Herman Caine award). Younger people getting vaccinated also helps limit transmission to older people who are more likely to die from it, but doing so requires a bit more empathy than just pure self interest.

> ... "because they don't know anything about anything."

And because like Trump and Musk, many (most?) of them truly believe they know more about everything than anyone else (more than even the experts).

> manufacturers have no clue what to do.

Sounds like bad news. But can the manufacturers meet among themselves to hash it out? Would they? And if they did, would they make a worse or different decision than if the FDA were involved?

Just trying to see a way this could turn out ok.

This is absolutely idiotic behavior on the part of the government. However, I wouldn’t be surprised to see an announcement within the week that the manufacturers are having their own meeting. They aren’t going to destroy years of goodwill and a thriving vaccine business just because a total flake got put in charge of the FDA for what is hopefully a limited time.

> “So one can only assume”

They are “assuming” a major unannounced policy change based on… a single meeting cancelation. By this cause/effect protocol, I have personally witnessed dozens of multi billion dollar project cancellations, or so I assume.

RFK Jr has never proposed canning the vaccine program. He wants certain studies performed, which presumably would run in parallel with the existing program.

The constant hysteria really makes me want to quit the internet. It seems to get worse every year.