It’s like clockwork: first comes a brisk fall breeze, then comes the public health push to get a flu shot. But the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s messaging this year might look a little different from previous vaccination seasons. The agency has launched a messaging campaign dubbed “Wild to Mild” that uses adorable critters to illustrate how a vaccine can tame a bout with the flu by reducing its strength from that of an elephant or a lion to that of a mouse or a kitten.

The framing might come as a surprise to those used to a blunter way of talking about vaccines: get vaccinated or get sick. But Wild to Mild is designed to be a more honest, nuanced portrayal of the benefits of the influenza vaccine, which scientists have long recognized is better at reducing serious infections than at preventing infection altogether.

Read more at Scientific American.

A new study has an encouraging message for Americans who shy away from Covid shots because of worries about side effects: The chills, fatigue, headache and malaise that can follow vaccination may be signs of a vigorous immune response.

People who had those side effects after the second dose of a Covid vaccine had more antibodies against the coronavirus at one month and six months after the shot, compared with those who did not have symptoms, according to the new study. Increases in skin temperature and heart rate also signaled higher antibody levels.

Read more at The New York Times.

State health officials are urging Coloradans to protect themselves, their loved ones, and our communities this fall and winter by getting lifesaving seasonal vaccines. It appears the flu season is arriving early this year and between that, a COVID-19 virus continuing to mutate, and  Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) — we could be sneezing and coughing very soon.

Anyone aged six months and older can get an annual flu vaccine, as well as an updated 2023-2024 COVID-19 vaccine. The best time to get both vaccines is now, ideally before the end of October.

Read more at Ark Valley Voice.

Peter Hotez is no stranger to scientific backlash. The esteemed pediatrician and vaccinologist has been working to develop vaccines for neglected tropical diseases for decades and has encountered fierce opposition to his work. But in recent years the backlash has gained momentum and spread beyond vaccines to science and scientists in general.

Hotez, who is dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, chronicles this movement in his new book The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science. The book traces Hotez’s experiences battling the false belief that vaccines cause autism (a condition that his daughter has), the highly partisan backlash to the COVID vaccines (a low-cost version of which Hotez and his colleagues helped develop) and the authoritarian roots of the antiscience movement.

Read more at Scientific American.

It’s the end of an era for a once-critical pandemic document: The ubiquitous white COVID-19 vaccination cards are being phased out.

Now that COVID-19 vaccines are not being distributed by the federal government, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stopped printing new cards.

The federal government shipped more than 980 million cards between late 2020, when the first vaccines came out, through May 10, according to the latest available data from the CDC.

Read more at ABC.

The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday authorized Novavax’s updated Covid-19 vaccine, giving Americans seeking to update their protection against the SARS-CoV-2 virus another option.

Though the FDA’s green light came three weeks after the approvals for the updated Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech shots, it contained some welcome news for the Gaithersburg, Md.-based company, which has struggled to claim a share of the now dwindling Covid vaccine market — globally and within the United States.

Read more at STAT.

In just three short years, mRNA vaccines have saved millions of lives, achieved household recognition and, as of this week, become the subject of a Nobel prize. Yet the field shows no signs of slowing down.

In the wake of the technology’s dramatic success in generating quick-turnaround COVID-19 vaccines, investors have poured billions of dollars into expanding mRNA’s therapeutic reach.

This influx of cash promises to fuel the research and infrastructure needed to deploy mRNA medicines in ways that could transform public health by tackling hard-to-treat infectious diseases, cancers and rare genetic disorders.

Read more at Nature.

A biochemist born in Hungary and an American immunologist have won the 2023 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for research that led to the development of the two most important COVID-19 vaccines.

Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman met at copy machine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and collaborated for decades to try to find ways to use genetic material called messenger RNA, or mRNA, to make vaccines.

The scientists discovered that modifying a chemical building block of mRNA kept the immune system from destroying the material and enabled it to instead stimulate protection against viruses. They published a seminal paper describing their work in 2005.

Read more at NPR.

Public health experts are urging people to take advantage of the fact that this year, for the first time, vaccines are available for three major respiratory viruses: flu, COVID and RSV.

As winter approaches, public health authorities are worried that too few Americans are planning to get vaccinated against three major respiratory viruses. That’s according to a new report released yesterday. NPR health correspondent Rob Stein has more.

ROB STEIN, BYLINE: For years, everyone could get a flu shot every fall. And the COVID vaccines have helped protect millions during the pandemic. Now, for the first time, anyone age 60 and older can also get vaccinated against RSV, which can also be life threatening. So CDC Director Mandy Cohen is urging everyone who’s eligible to take advantage of this trio of vaccines.

Read more at NPR.

Getting a shot of the COVID-19 vaccine during pregnancy works to pass on protection against the virus to newborns during their most vulnerable early months of life, a new study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

Maternal vaccination was 54% effective against COVID-19 hospitalization in infants younger than 3 months old over the past season. 

The findings from the CDC-backed Overcoming COVID-19 Network were published Thursday in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. They drew from data on hospitalizations from 26 pediatric hospitals around the country through May 2023.

Read more at CBS.