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Ryan McCormick, M.D.'s avatar

Thanks for this! Your reputation for prudent caution makes this endorsement even more meaningful for primary care docs like me who are reading and filtering, then educating and recommending.

I am troubled slightly by the GBS potential and I’m sure you’ll be watching this closely too. Helen Branswell wrote a good piece recently about these RSV vaccines:

“The background rate of GBS — the rate at which it occurs in the general population — is about 1 case per 100,000 people per year. Three cases in less than half that number — the people vaccinated in the adult RSV trials — gave pause to the members of ACIP’s adult RSV work group…”

https://www.statnews.com/2023/05/26/rsv-vaccines-will-older-adults-care/

I have at least 3 patients who experienced GBS within a suspicious time frame after flu shots, which seems like more than I should see based on the probability. Nonetheless I know experts and advisory committees do the tough and thankless job of weighing risks and benefits, so once again, thanks! I get a flu shot every year of course.

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Teri Peters's avatar

I'm a layperson but know enough to know this is great news and a vaccine I will get not too many years from now. I do have a question for anyone who knows and would be so kind as to answer. With the COVID vaccine, much of the medical establishment repeatedly said that "vaccines are not expected to prevent infection. Rather they are meant to prevent serious illness." And that was indeed news to me. I knew that they were not 100 percent effective, but I never knew that vaccines in general were not developed and intended to prevent infection with whatever virus they were developed to prevent. And what jumps out at me with this RSV Vax is that it too prevents infection. My question is, do most vaccines actually prevent infection despite what the public was told after discovering that the COVID vaccines did not prevent infection? Pertinent quotation here: "Participants were studied for one year. Those who received the vaccine reduced their risk of RSV acute respiratory infection by 72 percent, of RSV pneumonia by 83 percent, and of severe RSV disease requiring supplemental oxygen or hospitalization by 94 percent." I don't know that Dr. Offit said this and don't mean this to be anything but a sincere question. My feeling is that the medical establishment sort of bent the truth on how vaccines work in order to avoid further public anger in general which was already prevalent with the COVID vax. Thanks.

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