TRACKING EMERGING VIRUSES – August 24, 2025 – COVID
That member, Retsef Levi, is a management and health analytics expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and was appointed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to serve on the larger advisory committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On the social media site X, Dr. Levi pinned a video from 2023 in which he called for the Covid vaccines to be removed from the market.
The task force was announced by Dr. Robert Malone, an advisory committee member, vaccinologist and outspoken vaccine skeptic. He pointed to the mandate outlined on the C.D.C. website indicating the review team would look into questions about immunization injury reports and other concerns related to the shots. Some of those issues have long been debunked by experts.
The creation of the review team, a subgroup of the C.D.C. Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, is the latest twist in an escalating series of changes in vaccine policy by Mr. Kennedy.” (1)
“The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists on Friday reaffirmed support for Covid-19 vaccination during pregnancy, becoming the second major professional medical association to break from current US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations this week.
“While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently removed its recommendation that pregnant and lactating individuals receive updated COVID-19 vaccines, ACOG’s recommendations have not changed,” according to the updated practice advisory. “The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists continues to recommend the use of updated COVID-19 vaccines in individuals contemplating pregnancy and in pregnant, recently pregnant, and lactating individuals.”
In May, US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that Covid-19 vaccines will no longer be among the recommended vaccines for pregnant women and healthy children in CDC immunization schedules. The abrupt decision bypassed the government’s normal process for evaluating and recommending vaccines, and Kennedy did not offer scientific evidence to justify the change to the recommendations.” (2)
“The millions of Americans who are used to getting their Covid-19 vaccines at a local pharmacy may face new hurdles this fall depending on where they live and whether federal health officials have decided they qualify.”
“This usual chain of decisions … has been disrupted. And without clarity and coordination, millions may not be able to have clear access to Covid vaccines, and that could potentially impact hospitalizations and deaths,” said Katelyn Jetelina, an epidemiologist and public health communicator. “It’s as simple as that.””
“At least 18 states and Washington, D.C., tie their pharmacists’ vaccination authority to the official recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, whose membership Kennedy overhauled in June to include several skeptics. The panel usually votes in June to recommend who should get the updated Covid shot in the fall, but months later there’s still not a firm date for the vote.” (3)
“Who will be able to get an updated COVID vaccine?
“It’s a little bit challenging to fully predict the vaccine landscape, even in the next few months,” Harris says.
In previous years, the COVID-19 vaccine has been available to most people ages 6 months and older. However, CDC guidelines were adjusted in May and currently say that the 2024-2025 COVID-19 vaccine is recommended for most adults ages 18 and older, and that children and their parents can get one after a discussion with their health care provider, a process known as shared clinical decision-making.
While nothing is official yet, recommendations for the 2025-2026 COVID vaccine may be limited to older adults and individuals with underlying health conditions that put them at higher risk for severe illness from a coronavirus infection. In May, FDA vaccines chief Vinay Prasad, M.D., and FDA Commissioner Martin Makary, M.D., published an article in The New England Journal of Medicine proposing this new change.
It’s possible that professional medical groups will develop their own vaccine recommendations that cast a wider net than government recommendations. On Aug. 19, for example, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released its immunization guidance for routine vaccines, including the COVID-19 vaccine. The group is recommending the 2025-2026 COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 6 months to 2 years and older children whose parents want them vaccinated.
A recent AAP analysis found that children ages 0 to 4 accounted for 58 percent of the confirmed COVID-19 hospital admissions from January 2022 to April 2024.
How differing recommendations will affect insurance coverage is not yet known.” (5)
“Pandemic revisionism has gone mainstream. More than five years after COVID-19 began spreading in the United States, a new conventional wisdom has taken hold in some quarters: Public-health officials knew or should have known from the start that pandemic restrictions would do more harm than good, forced them on the public anyway, and then doubled down even as the evidence piled up against them. When challenged, these officials stifled dissent in order to create an illusion of consensus around obviously flawed policies. In the end, America’s 2020 pandemic response undermined years of learning in schools, destroyed countless businesses, and led to any number of other harms—all without actually saving any lives in the process.
These sorts of claims were once largely confined to the political right. No longer. Two recent books by respectable left-of-center authors—In Covid’s Wake, by the Princeton political scientists Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee, and An Abundance of Caution, by the journalist David Zweig—take up versions of this skeptical narrative, each with its own twists. Both have received rave reviews in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, and even the overtly progressive Guardian. The flagship New York Times podcast, The Daily, devoted an episode to an interview with Macedo and Lee. The pair and their work were also featured on PBS NewsHour and CNN.” (4)
Covid-19 sent the world mad, The pandemic polarised voters and undermined trust in institutions, https://www.economist.com/culture/2025/08/21/covid-19-sent-the-world-mad
COVID tied to faster blood vessel aging, especially in women, https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/covid-tied-to-faster-blood-vessel-aging-especially-in-women
1.Covid Vaccine Opponent Tapped to Lead Federal Review Team, By Christina Jewett, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/22/health/covid-vaccines-rfk.html
2.Another major medical association breaks from CDC as ob/gyn group recommends Covid-19 vaccines during pregnancy, By Deidre McPhillips, https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/22/health/covid-vaccine-pregnancy-acog-recommendations
3.Getting a Covid shot this fall could be a lot more complicated, By Lauren Gardner, https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/22/covid-shot-hhs-recommendations-fall-00519315
4.COVID Revisionism Has Gone Too Far, By Rogé Karma, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/08/covid-pandemic-revisionism-books/683954/
5.When Can We Expect New COVID Vaccines?, By Rachel Nania, https://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/updated-seasonal-covid-vaccines.html
curated by Jonathan M. Metsch, Dr.P.H.
Clinical Professor of Environmental Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai