This isn't entirely cynical, I do assume there are some pragmatists who might think this way.
I can't find anything about this being related to a flu vaccine.
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.
If by "the flu" you're referring to the disease rather than a specific pathogen, a vaccine can cause the flu. Its common for vaccines to cause symptoms similar to the pathogen, though those symptoms are usually more mild.
Think about it for a second. A vaccine is meant to induce an immune response to allow the body to learn the pathogen before a natural infection. Symptoms are little more than the physical effects of your immune system doing its job and responding to a pathogen. Why wouldn't a good vaccine induce similar, though likely less severe, symptoms?
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.
There is an alternative here - a population left to fight an outbreak through natural immunity will be stronger in the end. That's definitely not a popular opinion, and it may not be worth the cost, but it does align with large drops in death rates of past outbreaks which generally happened before a vaccine was even available.
> There is no steel man here
That's not how steel manning an argument works. The whole point is to make the most generous version of the argument, usually assuming the best intent. There is always a most generous explanation that would lead to the argument made, you just may not like it or may not think its likely.
> 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
I don't know RFK's stance particularly well, but I would guess that he wouldn't expect a noticeable increase in health over a short timeline and without improving peoples' health in general. I'm pretty sure I've seen him argue for removing toxins from our food and water, reducing dependence on pharmaceuticals, etc. All of those are important factors and it isn't realistic to assume that removing only one factor would magically fix everything.
Our current approach isn't working.
At least that's what this forum has taught me.
Without the effects known for months, it sounds a lot like gambling to me.
Whoops, gave away my political leanings.
So despite US shenanigans rest of world may still be OK
China has seemed to play a larger role in novel viruses with zoological origins. The average flu season isn't driven by novel viruses, if they were every year would progress more similarly to CoV2.
I've never seen a study comparing the relative efficacy of culling vs. not culling chicken flocks. Unless you have sources for that, you're assuming culling is always best. One consideration there is that culling entire flocks ensures that we are never able to select breeding animals based on those with natural immunity. Maybe that is the right choice, but I don't think we have ever studied that.
Egg prices haven't yet seemed to play an impact in flock culling rates. We have murdered 166 million birds based on a recent article [1] - extremely few of those were ever tested, they just happened to be in a house with a bird either confirmed or suspected of infection. At least based on that article, culling hasn't helped contain the outbreak.
[1] https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2025-02-26/poultry...
I guess we're going to relearn this lesson the hard way. Especially with businesses also demanding people come back to the office to work.
A big part of the problem is a lot of people don't understand this. How often do you hear people say, "I got the flu vaccine and still got the flu".
However, most people who say they have "the flu" are using the term colloquially and it is unlikely that they actually had influenza.
Further, as we saw with the COVID vaccines, people are incapable of understanding that vaccines don't create an impenetrable barrier. Instead it lowers risk of infection and increases likelihood of a milder case.
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.
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).
Are we not going to get a flu vaccine? Companies that make the vaccines can't do this on their own anyway?
Normally it's around this time period that decisions around which strains to target are discussed, because it takes around six months to incubate the vaccine. Then once a decision is made, that information is passed to manufacturers.
Without this meeting, there's no guidance around which strains to target. Without guidance, manufacturers have no clue what to do. So the odds are it either highly delays the vaccine if not promptly rescheduled or we simply just don't get one this season.
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.
There is so much breathless hysteria in the media predicting or implying a prediction, and when 99% of it fails to materialize there is never a follow up.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/26/us/politics/fda-flu-vacci...
> The F.D.A. sent an email to members of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee on Monday afternoon informing them of the cancellation, according to a senior official familiar with the decision. There was no reason given. The panel was to meet March 13.
> One committee member, Dr. Paul Offit of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, an outspoken critic of Mr. Kennedy, confirmed the cancellation and warned that it could interfere with or delay production of flu vaccines.
> “It’s a six-month production cycle,” Dr. Offit said. “So one can only assume that we’re not picking flu strains this year.”
Considering the flu kills tens of thousands every year and hospitalized hundreds of thousands more, with the potential of evolving to be more lethal - yes this is important.
If the Trump, GOP and Musk fucked up staffing by firing people who have the expertise to make these decisions, yes they are at fault. If RFK Jr is interfering with this for his anti-vax and anti-science crusade, he is also at vault.
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.
