Warding off vaccine rollback

 Yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy halted the rollback of federal vaccine schedules and other policy changes. Per NPR: 

The judge ruled that Kennedy and his committee had made arbitrary and capricious decisions, ignoring a long-used, well-regarded scientific process for developing vaccine policies. He wrote in his ruling, "the government has disregarded those methods and thereby undermined the integrity of its actions."

The Washington Post: 

 “History is littered with once-universal truths that have since come under scrutiny,” the judge wrote. He added that even though science is not perfect, “nevertheless, science is still ‘the best we have.’”

The U.S. District Court judge from Massachusetts, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Joe Biden, wrote that the government bypassed the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel — which is how vaccine recommendations have been made for decades — to change the immunization schedule. He called it a “technical, procedural failure” and a “strong indication of something more fundamentally problematic: an abandonment of the technical knowledge and expertise embodied by that committee.”

and:

 The judge wrote that HHS cannot circumvent the long-standing practice of getting advice from the federal panel without offering an explanation “simply because they are following the President’s orders.”

He also wrote the government removed every member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and replaced them without undertaking the “rigorous screening” traditionally used to select members. The judge noted that “even under the most generous reading,” only six of the 15 members on the panel “have any meaningful experience in vaccines.”

The advisory panel was scheduled to meet Wednesday and Thursday, but that meeting has now been postponed, according to an HHS official. The judge temporarily suspended the appointment of 13 of the 15 panel members, finding they were not appointed properly. Therefore, he noted, that this week’s meeting could not take place. “For how can a committee meet without nearly the entirety of its membership?”

The federal government is expected to appeal. But every halt is more vaccines in more people.