CDC panel grapples with who needs a COVID-19 booster
An influential panel of advisers to the Centers for the Disease Control and Prevention grappled Wednesday with the question of which Americans should get COVID-19 booster shots, with some members wondering if the decision should be put off for a month in hopes of more evidence.
The doubts and uncertainties suggested yet again that the matter of whether to dispense extra doses to shore up Americans’ protection against the coronavirus is more complicated scientifically than the Biden administration may have realized when it outlined plans a month ago for an across-theboard rollout of boosters.
Much of the discussion at the meeting of the CDC’S Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices focused on the possibility of a scaled-back booster program targeted to older people or perhaps health care workers. But even then, some of the experts said that the data on whether boosters are actually needed, precisely who should get them and when was not clear-cut.
The meeting came days after a different advisory group overwhelmingly rejected a sweeping White House plan to dispense third shots to nearly everyone. Instead, that panel endorsed booster doses of the Pfizer vaccine only for senior citizens and those at high risk from the virus.
Several panelists said another challenge is the public confusion that could result if they recommend a booster only for certain recipients of the Pfizer vaccine, leaving people vaccinated with Moderna or Johnson & Johnson shots wondering what to do.
Booster shots of the Pfizer vaccine were the question before the panel. Moderna more recently applied for authorization of a third dose, and a major U.S. study on whether mixing-and-matching booster doses is safe and effective isn’t finished.
Trump lawsuit: Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday sued his estranged niece and The New York Times over a 2018 story about his family’s wealth and tax practices that was partly based on confidential documents she provided to the newspaper’s reporters.
Trump’s lawsuit, filed in state court in New York, accuses Mary Trump of breaching a settlement agreement by disclosing tax records she received in a dispute over family patriarch Fred Trump’s estate.
The lawsuit accuses the Times and three of its investigative reporters, Susanne Craig, David Barstow and Russell Buettner, of relentlessly seeking out Mary Trump as a source of information and convincing her to turn over documents. The suit claims the reporters were aware the settlement agreement barred her from disclosing the documents.
The Times’ story challenged Trump’s claims of self-made wealth by documenting how his father, Fred, had given him at least $413millionoverthedecades, including through tax avoidance schemes.
Liz Cheney fundraiser:
Former President George W. Bush will headline a fundraiser next month for top Donald Trump critic Liz Cheney, turning her reelection race into a proxy war of sorts between the ex-presidents who represent two competing factions of the Republican Party.
Bush will be the featured
guest at an Oct. 18 event in Dallas supporting the Wyoming congresswoman’s reelection campaign, according to a person familiar with the plans who was not authorized to discuss the fundraiser by name and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Cheney, a daughter of Bush’s vice president, Dick Cheney, was the most prominent House Republican to vote to impeach Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol. She has since emerged as one of his most vocal antagonists, and Trump has vowed to exact his revenge.
US talks with Russia: The top American military officer held talks Wednesday with his Russian counterpart as the United States struggles to secure basing rights and other counterterrorism support in countries bordering Afghanistan — an effort Moscow has opposed.
The six-hour meeting in
Finland between Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian General Staff, came at a crucial time after the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Without troops on the ground, the U.S. needs to reach more basing, intelligence sharing and other agreements to help monitor al-qaida and Islamic State militants in Afghanistan.
Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, had said in July that Moscow warned the U.S. that any deployment of American troops in countries neighboring Afghanistan “is unacceptable.” He said Russia told the U.S. “in a direct and straightforward way that it would change a lot of things not only in our perceptions of what’s going on in that important region, but also in our relations with the United States.”
Ryabkov also said that Russia had a “frank talk” with the Central Asian countries to
warn them not to allow U.S. troops within their borders.
Afghanistan: The Taliban’s newly appointed envoy to the United Nations on Wednesday urged quick world recognition of Afghanistan’s new rulers even as the World Health Organization raised the alarm of an impending health care disaster in the war-wracked country.
The humanitarian crisis is one of the many challenges the Taliban face since their takeover of Afghanistan last month. In an emergency measure, the U.N. aid coordinator Martin Griffiths released $45 million in life-saving support Wednesday for Afghanistan from the world body’s emergency fund. The World Health Organization said Afghanistan’s health system is on the brink of collapse and that urgent action is needed.
Missing student cold case: The last person seen with Kristin Smart before she
vanished from a college campus 25 years ago on the California coast will stand trial on a murder charge in her suspected death and his father faces trial as an accomplice for allegedly helping bury her body, a judge ruled Wednesday.
San Luis Obispo Superior Court Judge Craig van Rooyen said there was probable cause Paul Flores, 44, killed Smart and that Ruben Flores, 80, helped dispose of her body, which has never been found.
Paul Flores was the last person seen with an intoxicated Smart on May 25, 1996, as he helped walk her to her dorm at California Polytechnic State University after a party, witnesses said. Prosecutors said he killed Smart while trying to rape her in his dorm room.
With a lack of DNA, “nothing links it definitively to Ms. Smart,” van Rooyen said, but it leads to “a strong suspicion it was Ms. Smart’s remains.”