Some scientists offer an important reminder about cause and effect.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted last week to recommend that the first doses of a coronavirus vaccine be given to an estimated 21 million health-care workers and 3 million residents and staff of nursing homes and other long-term-care facilities. Protecting health care workers makes sense since we want to make sure that our hospitals and physicians’ offices remain adequately staffed as the winter surge of COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations rises. In addition, the CDC ACIP panel voted to prioritize the vaccination of long-term care residents because their risk of serious medical complications and death from the coronavirus infections is vastly higher than it is for younger Americans. However, one panel member, Vanderbilt University infectious disease researcher Helen Keipp Talbot, dissented from that decision. Why? At an earlier ACIP meeting, Talbot warned, « There is such a high mortality rate in long-term-care facilities. There will be a number of patients who receive immunizations for Covid and will pass away.
