A new COVID subvariant spreads rapidly as Trump pivots away from vaccines

Los Angeles Times ^ | May 30, 2025 3 AM PT | Rong-Gong Lin II

[E. Pluribus Unum]

A new, highly transmissible COVID subvariant has been detected in California — heightening the risk of a potential summer wave as recent moves by the Trump administration threaten to make vaccines harder to get, and more expensive, for many Americans, some health experts warn.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced this week that he was rescinding the federal government’s recommendation that pregnant women and healthy children get immunized against COVID, effective immediately.

Dr. Marty Makary, commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, also said the agency will no longer routinely approve annually formulated COVID-19 vaccinations for healthy people under age 65.

“We simply don’t know whether a healthy 52-year-old woman with a normal BMI who has had COVID-19 three times and has received six previous doses of a COVID-19 vaccine will benefit from the seventh dose,” Makary, along with another FDA official, Dr. Vinay Prasad, wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine this month. “This policy will compel much-needed evidence generation.”

However, some experts say mandating more extensive testing could delay vaccine access for many, as those efforts may not even be complete until after the end of the upcoming winter flu-and-COVID season.

“Pregnant women, infants and young children are at higher risk of hospitalization from COVID, and the safety of the COVID vaccine has been widely demonstrated,” Dr. Sean O’Leary, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Infectious Diseases, said in a statement.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that, in general, getting an updated vaccine provides children and adults additional protection from COVID-related emergency room and urgent care visits.

The recent federal changes, according to some experts, could also prompt private insurance companies and government insurers to stop paying for...

[cableguymn]

Just like the last time.. This time it’s just in time for the midterms.

[cableguymn]

seems very clear she didn’t benifit from the first 6

[Kleon]

I’m taking Ivermectin, zinc and metformin daily. I’m good.

[eyeamok]

I heard it was being spread by printing press ink and newspapers, is it true?

[metmom]

The timing is such a coincidence, just like his first term.

[Cobra64]

Here ‘s an idea… Trump should issue an Executive Order stating that anyone who mentions the word, “Covid” will be arrested and sentenced to 90 days in a federal prison.

[Veto!]

Sad.

My big, strong, healthy son-in-law had one Novavax shot.
He died four months later at 62 from liver cancer that spread to his kidney. I saw him a few weeks before he died. Almost unrecognizable, it had eaten away at everything. At least I got to tell him how much I loved him. My daughter is, of course, devastated but she carries on like the brave soul she is.

[Third Person]

Bang a Rong-Gong, get it on

[Auntie Mame]

Was there any recognition by him or your daughter that the injection caused it?

[MacNaughton]

By the time they develop a vaccine for one variant, that variant has already faded and there’s a new variant and the vaccine is useless on the new variant.

Isn't that the way it works with the annual conventional (made with weakened/dead flu virus strains) flu shots? Seems I read somewhere that those vaccines only have ~40% success because the different strains are constantly mutating.