I’ll break down what this all means, why it’s likely very bad news, and what to watch for when the panel meets next week. And by the way, if you've been meaning to get any vaccines, I’d recommend scheduling those sooner rather than later, while we know they’re still covered, because there's no telling what will happen.
It was ACIP that decided that healthcare workers should be the first people to get COVID shots. It’s ACIP that puts various vaccines on the routine childhood vaccine schedule. Vaccines recommended by ACIP must, by law, be covered by nearly all insurance plans with no copay or out-of-pocket cost for people for whom they are recommended.
I've watched quite a few ACIP meetings (they are always livestreamed) to report on COVID vaccines and others. The meetings and the members were always professional, focused on facts and on making good judgments that encompassed the big picture effects of any decisions they ended up making. ACIP was widely respected by healthcare professionals and researchers. That’s not to say everybody always agreed with their decisions, but it was widely viewed as a system that was working well, and resulted in millions of Americans having access to vaccines that they needed.
What the hell is going on with ACIP now?
That’s all, perhaps, in the past. The current secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., founded an anti-vaccine advocacy group before he became HHS secretary. He said in his confirmation hearings that he didn’t plan to take anyone’s vaccines away, and on occasion has grudgingly admitted that vaccines work—usually alongside spreading or alluding to misinformation about vaccines.
Votes on several vaccines are coming up
ACIP’s meetings are announced to the public, and you can see the agenda for the next meeting here. It is a two-day meeting on June 25 and 26, 2025. Some of the agenda items look pretty typical, like presentations that give updates on the current COVID situation, the better to inform any decisions that might be made later about new COVID vaccines.
The scheduled votes relate to maternal and pediatric RSV vaccines; RSV vaccines and the Vaccines for Children program; influenza vaccines (that is, flu shots); and “Thimerosal containing influenza vaccine recommendations.”
Influenza vaccines are also currently recommended, and an influenza vaccine vote seems to be a routine part of ACIP’s agenda (it was on last year’s June meeting agenda, for example). Normally the decisions are about which flu shots to recommend, since the vaccines on offer can change from year to year. Let’s hope this year’s vote is just as straightforward.
We can hope that the votes will be conducted appropriately and in keeping with the actual science surrounding these vaccines. But given that this meeting follows a sketchy-sounding shakeup of ACIP’s membership, I’m not very hopeful.
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