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Vaccine Skepticism Comes for Pet Owners, Too
In the four years since she opened her own veterinary practice, Dr. Kelly McGuire has seen her fair share of heartbreaking cases. There was the dog whose kidneys shut down after it contracted leptospirosis, a bacterial disease often carried by rodents.
Several of her canine patients had come down with such severe cases of parvovirus that they died after “sloughing their guts to the point of dehydration and malnutrition,” said Dr. McGuire, who owns Wildflower Veterinary Hospital in Brighton, Colo. And, after she was unable to rule out rabies, she had been forced to euthanize a 20-week-old puppy that was having seizures. The deaths were wrenching, especially because they were preventable: Those pets would likely have survived had they received all their recommended vaccines.
For most of her career, vaccination was a routine, unremarkable part of Dr. McGuire’s work as a small animal veterinarian. But after the COVID-19 pandemic hit, she found herself having long, sometimes adversarial discussions with pet owners about the safety and necessity of vaccines. Clients accused her of pushing the vaccines to line her own pockets. And, increasingly, pet owners insisted on spacing out shots or refused vaccines altogether, including for deadly and incurable viruses like rabies.
Truckload of ‘Aggressive’ Research Monkeys Escape After Truck Crash in Mississippi; 1 Still on the Loose
A truck hauling monkeys from Tulane University in New Orleans flipped on a Mississippi highway, freeing several large, “aggressive” monkeys. After the wreck, which happened north of Heidelberg, multiple rhesus monkeys escaped into the community, according to the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office.
“The monkeys are approximately 40lbs, they are aggressive to humans, and they require PPE [personal protective equipment] to handle,” the sheriff’s office wrote in a Facebook post. The animals carry hepatitis C, herpes and COVID-19, deputies said.
As of 4:30 p.m. ET, all but one of the escaped monkeys were “destroyed,” according to deputies.
“We are continuing to look for the one monkey that is still on the loose,” the sheriff’s office wrote in a Facebook post. “Do not approach the monkeys if you see one. Call 911.”
Flu Vaccination Decline Raises Fears of a Deadlier US Winter
Americans are heading into winter less protected against one of the season’s deadliest viruses, with flu vaccination rates forecast to fall more than 10% this year, according to CSL Ltd., the world’s second-biggest maker of the shots.
CSL expects U.S. vaccination rates for the 2025-2026 season to drop 12% overall and 14% among people ages 65 and older compared with last year, Chief Executive Officer Paul McKenzie told the company’s annual meeting in Melbourne on Tuesday, citing insurance-claims data.
Threat to US Vaccines as CDC Staff Supporting Key Advisory Panel Laid Off
The staff supporting the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) were let go earlier this month in a sweeping round of layoffs that gutted entire departments of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Most of the committee’s working groups, which pore over data and help set the agendas, haven’t met for months, and there was little communication from the staff even before they received reduction in force notices during the U.S. government shutdown. The ACIP meeting planned for Oct. 22-23 has been indefinitely postponed.
The changes mean the U.S. government may not make routine vaccine recommendations for more than half of children in 2026, and they will likely affect the development and recommendation of new vaccines in the pipeline.
New COVID Vaccine Says It’s for the ‘Senior Class’ — Does It Reduce Side Effects?
The San Francisco Chronicle reported:
You may have seen ads for a new, lower-dose Moderna COVID-19 vaccine marketed to “the senior class” — adults 65 and older. The new vaccine, which goes by mRNA-1283 or mNexspike, was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in May, so this is the first fall respiratory virus season that it’s available for.
It is approved for adults 65 and older and people 12 to 64 with an underlying medical condition that puts them at higher risk for severe COVID-19. The new Moderna vaccine is 10 micrograms, one-fifth the dose of the old Moderna vaccine (mRNA-1273 or Spikevax), which is 50 micrograms. Both are mRNA vaccines that target the LP.8.1 variant.
Overall, all three mRNA COVID-19 shots — both Moderna products and the Pfizer vaccine — are roughly 40% to 60% effective at preventing COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths. But the new Moderna vaccine elicited slightly higher antibody responses in adults 65 and older compared to the old vaccine after one month, three months and six months, according to data that Moderna presented to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in April.
Resistant Bacteria Are Advancing Faster Than Antibiotics
The proliferation of difficult-to-treat bacterial diseases represents a growing threat, according to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Global Antibiotic Resistance Surveillance Report. The report reveals that, between 2018 and 2023, antibiotic resistance increased by more than 40% in monitored pathogen-drug combinations, with an average annual increase of 5-15%.
According to data reported by more than 100 countries to WHO’s Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System, one in six laboratory-confirmed bacteria in 2023 proved resistant to antibiotic treatment, all related to various common diseases globally.
For the first time, this edition of the report includes prevalence estimates of resistance to 22 antibiotics used to treat urinary tract, gastrointestinal, bloodstream, and gonorrheal conditions. The analysis focused on eight common pathogens: Acinetobacter spp, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, non-typhoidal Salmonella spp, Shigella spp, Staphylococcus aureus, and Streptococcus pneumoniae.
Urgent Warning Over Rise in Deadlier Mpox Cases in Europe and US as UK Officials Fear Virus May Be Spreading Undetected
U.K. health chiefs have sounded the alarm over a surge in mpox cases across Europe and the U.S. The clade 1b mutation kills up to one in 100 of those infected and is believed to be behind a wave of miscarriages in Africa, where it emerged.
U.K. Health Security Agency (UKHSA) officials said it was aware of small numbers of cases of the strain in Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and the U.S. But none of the cases had a connection to countries with known clade 1b transmission, suggesting the rash-causing virus may be spreading undetected around the world.
Most of the cases identified have also been in gay and bisexual men, UKHSA officials said — which transmission of the strain hadn’t previously been observed in. They have now urged all those eligible in the U.K. to get the mpox vaccine to thwart any potential spread of the virus across the country.
