Trusting AMA Over CDC

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.    Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.  A top antivaxxer is HHS Secretary RFK Jr. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

He has now hijacked the CDC website -- and the CDC itself.

A December release from the Annenberg Public Policy Center:

In late November 2025, for example, when the CDC website legitimized the discredited link between vaccination and autism, mainstream professional health organizations condemned the changes. Fueling the outcry were two additions to the CDC website, under the leadership of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The first declared that “the claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.” The second alleged that “studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.” These claims now appear as the first two key points in a box at the beginning of the CDC’s Autism and Vaccines page.

“Despite recent changes to the CDC website, an abundance of evidence from decades of scientific studies shows no link between vaccines and autism,” declared an AMA statement. Casting the changes as “reckless and harmful,” the Infectious Diseases Society of America argued that “this change is not driven by science but by politics and will only serve to increase mistrust in science and medicine.” The president of the American Academy of Pediatrics called on the CDC to remove the false information and “stop wasting government resources to amplify false claims …”

To determine what the public is making of the controversy, the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania engaged SSRS to survey a nationally representative sample of 1,006 adults online from November 21-24, 2025. The survey has a margin of error of ±3.4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. The survey, created by APPC’s Annenberg Health and Risk Communication Institute (AHRCI), asks about the public’s confidence that the CDC is providing trustworthy information about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, how people react to conflicting cues about vaccine safety from the AMA and the CDC, and public views about whether vaccines and autism are linked.

The Annenberg survey finds that:

• By a 2-1 margin, the public would be more likely to accept the AMA’s recommendation (35%) on vaccine safety than the CDC’s (16%) if the two bodies issue conflicting recommendations;
• Regardless of party, Americans would accept the AMA’s recommendations on vaccine safety over the CDC’s;
• Half of older Americans age 65+ (50%) would be more likely to accept the AMA’s recommendations on vaccine safety over the CDC’s (13%); the only age group more likely to accept the CDC over the AMA are 18- to 29-year-olds, by 24% to 19%.

A Bit of Good NIH News

 In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.    Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.

A number of posts discussed Trump's support for the discredited notion. The Monday White House news conference with RFK Jr.  was a firehose of lies.

Benjamin Mueller at NYT:

In late May, when the Trump administration issued a call for new research investigating the causes of autism, many scientists feared that anti-vaccine politics would decide which projects received funding.

The call for proposals seemingly gave health officials greater control than usual over the vetting process. Researchers had only weeks to propose studies.

And with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spreading the debunked theory that vaccines caused autism, potential applicants worried openly that the Trump administration might bless only those research projects that would prop up its favored conclusions.

So scientists were cautiously optimistic this week to find that the 13 projects chosen to receive funding from the National Institutes of Health were nothing of the sort.

The projects, which were awarded a combined $50 million, drew on diverse sets of patient data. They were grounded in decades of credible autism science. And they planned to examine how strong genetic explanations for the disease interacted with environmental influences to determine someone’s risk of developing autism.

They represented, in short, the very opposite approach to one that came into focus this week in an explosive news briefing at the White House: unproven claims that Tylenol caused autism, along with a barrage of disproved theories that childhood vaccines were dangerous and had driven up rates of the disease, too.

“We’re very enthusiastic and very optimistic that these projects will lead to important answers, no matter what question they’re looking at,” said Alycia Halladay, the chief science officer at the Autism Science Foundation.

 

Vaccination and Measles

 In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.    Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.  A top antivaxxer is HHS Secretary RFK Jr. He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

From CDC:

As of August 5, 2025, a total of 1,356 confirmed* measles cases were reported by 41 jurisdictions: Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York City, New York State, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

There have been 32 outbreaks** reported in 2025, and 87% of confirmed cases (1,177 of 1,356) are outbreak-associated. For comparison, 16 outbreaks were reported during 2024 and 69% of cases (198 of 285) were outbreak-associated.

*CDC is aware of probable measles cases being reported by jurisdictions. However, the data on this page only includes confirmed cases.

**CDC reports the cumulative number of measles outbreaks (defined as 3 or more related cases) that have occurred this year in the U.S.; states have the most up-to-date information about cases and outbreaks in their jurisdictions....

 

Age

• Under 5 years: 386 (28%)
• 5-19 years: 501 (37%)
• 20+ years: 462 (34%)
• Age unknown: 7 (1%)

Vaccination Status

• Unvaccinated or Unknown: 92%
• One MMR dose: 4%
• Two MMR doses: 4%

U.S. Hospitalizations in 2025  13% of cases hospitalized (171 of 1356).

Percent of Age Group Hospitalized

• Under 5 years: 21% (82 of 386)
• 5-19 years: 8% (40 of 501)
• 20+ years: 11% (49 of 462)
• Age unknown: 0% (0 of 7)

U.S. Deaths in 2025 There have been 3 confirmed deaths from measles.

Elizabeth Williams, Jennifer Kates, and Josh Michaud at KFF:

Routine vaccination rates for kindergarten children continue to decline in the U.S., while exemptions from school vaccination requirements, particularly non-medical exemptions, have increased. These trends began during the COVID-19 pandemic and have continued over time (Figure 1). Recent trends appear to be related to increasing vaccine hesitancy, fueled in part by vaccine misinformation. The past few years have seen more skepticism among the public about the safety and effectiveness of measles vaccines, a decline in trust of health authorities in general, and increasingly partisan views on vaccine requirements. 

MAHA AI BS

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the myth that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.    Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio.

A number of posts discussed Trump's support for the discredited notion.

 Another leading anti-vaxxer is presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  He has repeatedly compared vaccine mandates to the Holocaust.  Rolling Stone and Salon retracted an RFK article linking vaccines to autism.  He is part of the "Disinformation Dozen." He helped cause a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

He is now Trump's Secretary of HHS.

Caitlin Gilbert, Emily Wright, Fenit Nirappil and Lauren Weber at WP:

The White House’s “Make America Healthy Again” report, which issued a dire warning about the forces responsible for Americans’ declining life expectancy, bears hallmarks of the use of artificial intelligence in its citations. That appears to have garbled citations and invented studies that underpin the report’s conclusions.

Trump administration officials have been repeatedly revising and updating the report since Thursday as news outlets, beginning with NOTUS, have highlighted the discrepancies and evidence of nonexistent research.

Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon said that “minor citation and formatting errors have been corrected, but the substance of the MAHA report remains the same — a historic and transformative assessment by the federal government to understand the chronic disease epidemic afflicting our nation’s children.” .

...

• The referenced report is real. But the inclusion of "oaicite," a marker of the use of OpenAI, in the URL offers a definitive sign that artificial intelligence was used to collect research.
•  This dead URL was live as recently as 2017, according to archived versions of the site. AI experts said chatbots can produce outdated links in response to queries because they were trained using older material.

  Margaret Manto and Emily Kennard at NOTUS:

The Trump administration’s clean up of the “Make America Healthy Again” Commission’s hallmark and error-riddled report is opening new questions about how the report’s authors drew some of its sweeping conclusions about the state of Americans’ health.

At least 18 of the original report’s citations have been edited or completely swapped out for new references since NOTUS first revealed the errors Thursday morning. While some of the original report’s inconsistencies have been changed, a few of the new updated citations continue to misinterpret scientific studies.

RFK Jr. Officially Announces

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.   And among those diseases could be COVID-19.

Antivaxxers are sometimes violent, often abusive, and always wrong.  

A leading anti-vaxxer is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. 

He has repeatedly compared vaccine mandates to the Holocaust.  Rolling Stone and Salon retracted an RFK article linking vaccines to autism.

Trip Gabriel at NYT:

More than half a century after his father sought the White House to end a calamitous war in Vietnam and to salve the country’s racial wounds, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a presidential campaign on Wednesday built on re-litigating Covid-19 shutdowns and shaking Americans’ faith in science.

,,,

While polls show that up to half of Democrats want someone besides Mr. Biden as their 2024 nominee, no party leader has stepped up with a challenge, and past opponents have rallied to the president’s side. Mr. Kennedy is the latest in a history of fringe presidential aspirants from both parties who run to bring attention to a cause, or to themselves.

For Mr. Kennedy, that cause is vaccine skepticism, which he cloaked in terms of truth-seeking and free speech, a crusade that in the past led him to falsely link childhood vaccines to autism. At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, he sought to undermine public trust in vaccines, comparing government efforts to impose mandates in some places to “Hitler’s Germany.” Both Facebook and Instagram took down accounts of a group he runs for spreading medical misinformation.

"Weaponized Autism"

 In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the issue's role in campaign politics.   In the 2016 campaign, a number of posts discussed Trump's bad record on disability issues more generally.   As his actions as president indicate, he has little use for Americans with disabilities. Nevertheless, some pro-Trump extremists think that they can mobilize autistic people to support him.

Christie Welch and colleagues have an article at The Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders titled"  Understanding the Use of the Term “Weaponized Autism” in An Alt-Right Social Media Platform."

Abstract

Background

The term “weaponized autism” is frequently used on extremist platforms. To better understand this, we conducted a discourse analysis of posts on Gab, an alt-right social media platform.

Methods

We analyzed 711 posts spanning 2018–2019 and filtered for variations on the term “weaponized autism”.

Results

This term is used mainly by non-autistic Gab users. It refers to exploitation of perceived talents and vulnerabilities of “Weaponized autists”, described as all-powerful masters-of-technology who are devoid of social skills.

Conclusions

The term “weaponized autism” is simultaneously glorified and derogatory. For some autistic people, the partial acceptance offered within this community may be preferable to lack of acceptance offered in society, which speaks to improving societal acceptance as a prevention effort.

From the article:

While not well studied or documented in academic literature (our search of available literature uncovered only one source exploring this - see Lovett (2019) for an exploration of alt-right recruitment tactics), journalistic reports have indicated that hate groups are working online to actively seek and engage autistic people for recruitment (Borrell, 2020; DEO, 2017; Schroeder 2019). Autism advocacy groups and community service organizations have begun to voice similar concerns and are calling for an organized response that is based on evidence and informed by autistic people (Autism Against Fascism, (no date); Braune 2020).

...

For these posters, autism is a readily exploitable resource that can be channelled in pursuit of their agenda, and especially as a means for lashing out at those who are considered “the enemy.” Indeed, Gab posters within our data discuss how autistic people can be deployed to advance the interests of the alt-right. The comments reveal a sometimes implicit, other times explicit assumption that autistic people are ripe for manipulation.

The greatest weapon on Earth is the weaponization of the depressed and emotionally vulnerable. Is Weaponized Autism not a piratical suicide delivery device? Can Social Media be used to find and manipulate useful idiots? Sadly yes

Back in the day (2016) we on the very hard right, the white nationalist alt-right, used these people as a force multiplier because at the time we desperately needed their weaponized autism to elect Trump.

 

Making Federally Funded Research Freely Available

In The Politics of Autism, I describe the difficulties of finding reliable information:

One problem is that a good deal of the solid research about autism lies in academic journals behind an Internet paywall, open only to people who have a university library card or can afford the journals’ exorbitant prices ($35 or more per article). Says neuroscientist Sophia Colamarino: “In today’s information age, where essentially anything said by anyone can be made accessible within a matter of moments, it is unfortunate that families have easy access to all BUT the most scientifically valid information, that which can be found in scientifically reviewed research literature.” NIH and Autism Speaks have tried to remedy this situation by requiring its research grant recipients to put any resulting peer-reviewed research papers on the PubMed Central online archive, but this policy affects only a fraction of the literature on autism.

An August 25 release from the White House:

Today, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) updated U.S. policy guidance to make the results of taxpayer-supported research immediately available to the American public at no cost. In a memorandum to federal departments and agencies, Dr. Alondra Nelson, the head of OSTP, delivered guidance for agencies to update their public access policies as soon as possible to make publications and research funded by taxpayers publicly accessible, without an embargo or cost. All agencies will fully implement updated policies, including ending the optional 12-month embargo, no later than December 31, 2025.

This policy will likely yield significant benefits on a number of key priorities for the American people, from environmental justice to cancer breakthroughs, and from game-changing clean energy technologies to protecting civil liberties in an automated world.

For years, President Biden has been committed to delivering policy based on the best available science, and to working to ensure the American people have access to the findings of that research. “Right now, you work for years to come up with a significant breakthrough, and if you do, you get to publish a paper in one of the top journals,” said then-Vice President Biden in remarks to the American Association for Cancer Research in 2016. “For anyone to get access to that publication, they have to pay hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars to subscribe to a single journal. And here’s the kicker — the journal owns the data for a year. The taxpayers fund $5 billion a year in cancer research every year, but once it’s published, nearly all of that taxpayer-funded research sits behind walls. Tell me how this is moving the process along more rapidly.” The new public access guidance was developed with the input of multiple federal agencies over the course of this year, to enable progress on a number of Biden-Harris Administration priorities.

“When research is widely available to other researchers and the public, it can save lives, provide policymakers with the tools to make critical decisions, and drive more equitable outcomes across every sector of society,” said Dr. Alondra Nelson, head of OSTP. “The American people fund tens of billions of dollars of cutting-edge research annually. There should be no delay or barrier between the American public and the returns on their investments in research.”

This policy update builds on the Biden-Harris Administration’s broader efforts to broaden the potential of the American innovation ecosystem by leveling the playing field for all American innovators, which can help ensure that the U.S. remains a world leader in science and technology. This policy guidance will end the current optional embargo that allows scientific publishers to put taxpayer-funded research behind a subscription-based paywall – which may block access for innovators for whom the paywall is a barrier, even barring scientists and their academic institutions from access to their own research findings. In addition, agencies will develop plans to improve transparency, including clearly disclosing authorship, funding, affiliations, and the development status of federally funded research – and will coordinate with OSTP to help ensure equitable delivery of federally funded research results and data.

Advocates, researchers, academic libraries, Congressional leaders, and others have long called for greater public access to federally funded research results. This policy update reflects extensive public engagement with stakeholders across the research publication ecosystem on ways to strengthen equitable access to federally funded research results. OSTP’s consultations have included large and small science and academic publishers, for-profit and not-for-profit organizations, libraries and universities, scholarly societies, and members of the general public.

In the short-term, agencies will work with OSTP to update their public access and data sharing plans by mid-2023. OSTP expects all agencies to have updated public access policies fully implemented by the end of 2025. This timeline gives agencies, researchers, publishers, and scholarly societies some flexibility on when to adapt to the new policies. Over the long term, OSTP will continue to coordinate with federal agencies to ensure that government public access policies adapt to new technologies and emerging needs.

Vaccines and Social Amplification of Risk

 In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.   And among those diseases could be COVID-19.

Antivaxxers are sometimes violent, often abusive, and always wrong.  

At Risk Analysis, Heidi J. Larson, Leesa Lin, and Rob Goble have an article titled "Vaccines and the social amplification of risk." The abstract:

In 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) named “Vaccine Hesitancy” one of the top 10 threats to global health. Shortly afterward, the COVID-19 pandemic emerged as the world's predominant health concern. COVID-19 vaccines of several types have been developed, tested, and partially deployed with remarkable speed; vaccines are now the primary control measure and hope for a return to normalcy. However, hesitancy concerning these vaccines, along with resistance to masking and other control measures, remains a substantial obstacle. The previous waves of vaccine hesitancy that led to the WHO threat designation, together with recent COVID-19 experience, provide a window for viewing new forms of social amplification of risk (SAR). Not surprisingly, vaccines provide fertile ground for questions, anxieties, concerns, and rumors. These appear in new globalized hyperconnected communications landscapes and in the context of complex human (social, economic, and political) systems that exhibit evolving concerns about vaccines and authorities. We look at drivers, impacts, and implications for vaccine initiatives in several recent historical examples and in the current efforts with COVID-19 vaccination. Findings and insights were drawn from the Vaccine Confidence Project's decade long monitoring of media and social media and its related research efforts. The trends in vaccine confidence and resistance have implications for updating the social amplification of risk framework (SARF); in turn, SARF has practical implications for guiding efforts to alleviate vaccine hesitancy and to mitigate harms from intentional and unintentional vaccine scares.

From the article:

The initial appearance of the Wakefield report linking the MMR vaccine with autism can serve as an illustration of such an application:

Stage 1: Triggering event: a research article is published in Lancet (Wakefield et al., 1998), suggesting a link between the MMR vaccine to the development of autism: stories followed in various news media, popular magazines, tv shows, professional journals, and official recommendations: these describe in various ways the study, the vaccine, its expected efficacy, the possible side effects, with particular focus on the possibility of autism, the nature of autism and what is known and not known, the prevalence and nature of measles, mumps, and rubella, and the trustworthiness of information about entities recommending the vaccine; multiple conversations occurred among individuals and groups in an effort to interpret this barrage of information; perceptions form about the risks of the vaccine and perceptions of the risk of the disease are adjusted; and perceptions on various related issues, including other vaccines and the institutions that manufacture, regulate, and recommend vaccines are reconsidered.

Stage 2: Based on their recently formed perceptions, individuals choose to respond by following or not following recommendations to have their children vaccinated. They may also choose to engage in further communication about the possible issues or even to join groups concerned to promote or debunk the claims. Feedback from these responses may encourage further communication about the study. Institutions consider whether to respond with further studies or with recommendations to the public.

Stage 3: The choices to vaccinate or not directly affect the risks that the children experience from the diseases the vaccine aimed to prevent. Other choices may be about other health decisions—for example due to loss of trust—and provoke risks of other types.

Feedback: Parents who already had anxieties about autism as well as some parents with autistic children embraced the findings as it gave an explanation for the seemingly growing phenomena of autism. Some organized groups and individuals communicated messages against the MMR vaccine, while others joined campaigns to debunk the proposed autism link and promote the MMR vaccine. Health institutions responded with their own communication efforts; these were intensified as further studies contradicted Wakefield's and his article was retracted by Lancet (Taylor et al., 2014).

Grimpact and the Continued Virality of the Wakefield Article

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread.   And among those diseases could be COVID-19.

Antivaxxers are sometimes violent, often abusive, and always wrong.  The ur-antivaxxer of our time is the disgraced Andrew Wakefield.

 Jacqueline Leta, Kizi Araujo & Stephanie Treiber  have an article at Scientometrics titled Citing documents of Wakefield’s retracted article: the domino effect of authors and journals."  The abstract: 

The present study aims to find out the origin of authors and the main sources in which citing documents of Wakefield’s 1998 retracted article are published in order to understand whether they act as promoters of a negative domino effect, there is, keeping alive a retracted article due to fraudulent data and analysis on the relationship between MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine and autism. The metadata of the 1577 citing documents of Wakefield’s article were downloaded from Scopus in three files according to the year of publication: 1998–2004 (partial retraction), 2005–2010 (in between partial and full retraction) and 2011–2020 (post full retraction). The number of citing documents in each period is 329, 411 and 837, respectively. A comparison between first and last periods indicates an impressive growth of language, authors, countries as well as journals from broader field coverage. Also, recent citing articles are highly cited and, even in a negative context, they contribute to the diffusion of a fraudulent article in the science context. The findings reinforce the urgency to create internal strategies in the scientific communication process, mainly inside the editorial flow, in order to reduce the dissemination of a retracted article that, in this case, is still harmful to society. At the end, the creation of an automatic mechanism to detect retracted articles included in the reference list of accepted articles is suggested.

From the article:

 Despite the initial retraction made by most of the authors in 2004 and the full retraction made by The Lancet in 2010, which indicate ethical violations and deliberate scientific misconduct, the article signed Wakefield and collaborators in 1998 has impacted negatively different social segments, which still continue supporting and sharing the idea of vaccines causing autism. In fact, a quick look at the platform PlumX Metrics, owned by Elsevier, revealed that up to January 2021 there were more than 9200 shares, likes or comments of Wakefield’s retracted article on Facebook and almost 2000 on Twitter. Similarly, in Google Scholar, an academic search engine, there were more than 3600 documents citing it, whereas one third of these documents were published in 2015 or later.

The continuing citations in scientific literature as well the continuing shares in social media of Wakefield’s fraudulent article turns on the warning lights if we consider that measures of impact or visibility based in traditional indicators as well as in social media play a central role in science evaluation processes. This concern is the basis of the discussion conducted by Derrick et al. (2018), where the concept Grimpact is introduced. According to the authors, Wakefield’s retracted article is an example of a Grimpact, that is, a scientific work with a strong impact in society but under grim foundations, including scientific fraud and other misconduct. Derrick et al. (2018) also affirm that Grimpact may change public assessment of research and scientists. In Wakefield's case, for instance, its impact in society has led to a reduction in the vaccination rates as well as an increase in science distrust and the resurgence and strengthening of the global anti-vaccine movement (Thomas et al., 1998).

Autistic People and the Justice System

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss interactions between police and autistic people.  Police officers need training to respond appropriately.  When they do not, things get out of hand. 

From Dogwood:

According to experts in the field, existing intervention programs across the country are already improve the results of interactions between police and people with autism.

Harvey Rosenthal, chief executive officer of the New York Association of Psychiatric and Rehabilitation Services, Inc. (NYAPRS), says Oregon’s crisis response program CAHOOTS is the example that should be followed in every state.

The program allows peers with behavioral health disorders to be part of the crisis response team in order to ensure people with these conditions receive appropriate treatment and support.

Rosenthal says there are three prongs that make up the CAHOOTS program. The first is diversion, or efforts to try to keep individuals with behavioral health disorders out of the prison system. If diversion isn’t possible, they offer rehabilitation and re-entry services.

Rosenthal said the key to re-entry is to ensure the individual has access to appropriate health care.

“It is crucial that each incarcerated individual who needs it has immediate access to Medicaid when they are released. This is to ensure they can continue their medications and care uninterrupted. This is not always the case. Very often they must wait for a month or more,” Rosenthal said.

Autism Groups Unite Behind Vaccination

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the day-to-day challenges facing autistic people and their families. Those challenges get far more intense during disasters.  And coronavirus is proving to be the biggest disaster of all. 

Some groups that are often in conflict with one another have united around a call for vaccination.

From the Autism Society:

The Autism Society of America applauds the global scientific and medical community for developing 95% effective COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, where Pfizer/BioNTech has already received approval for emergency use authorization (EUA) by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The Autism Society enlisted the support of other national disability organizations to unite and urge the autism community to be vaccinated as distribution becomes possible. Individuals with autism and other developmental disabilities are at a greater risk for severe complications and death from COVID-19, especially if they have underlying health conditions or are living in congregate settings. On behalf of signatory groups to this statement, which represent and/or are affiliated with hundreds of thousands of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD), we collectively agree that people with autism and I/DD should be included in the group of high-risk diagnoses and prioritized for vaccination.

Ending the pandemic requires a multipronged application of evidence-based strategies while improving health equity: universal face mask use, physical distancing, avoiding nonessential indoor spaces, increasing testing, prompt quarantine of exposed persons, safeguarding those at increased risk for severe illness or death, protecting essential workers, postponing travel, enhancing ventilation and hand hygiene, and achieving widespread COVID-19 vaccination coverage.

The scientific and medical community at large has concluded that the COVID-19 vaccination development process has been conducted with routine processes and procedures in place to maintain sound science and ensure the safety of the global community. Vaccines will be provided in a phased approach, with those at risk of exposure or vulnerable receiving the vaccine first. Children are expected to be the last to be vaccinated, which will allow time for the vaccine clinical trials involving children to provide safety data and confidence in their efficacy in younger populations. As with any medical decision, the Autism Society of America encourages parents, caregivers and autistic individuals to discuss the COVID-19 vaccines with their physicians.

The autism community appreciates the statement from the FDA regarding the safety of the vaccine development, “We are committed to expediting the development of COVID-19 vaccines, but not at the expense of sound science and decision making. We will not jeopardize the public’s trust in our science-based, independent review of these or any vaccines. There’s too much at stake.”

Early testing and research have concluded that the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines worked to about the same degree across all different groups, ethnicities, and genders – including variations in age and underlying conditions. In addition to these two vaccines, several other vaccines are currently being tested and look promising.

We encourage our stakeholders to receive the COVID-19 vaccine because:

• Anticipated approved vaccines make it significantly less likely you’ll get COVID-19.
• Getting vaccinated may keep you from getting severely ill if you were to contract COVID-19.
• Getting vaccinated will help protect vulnerable people around you, including the elderly, people with disabilities, and those with underlying health conditions.

Vaccines work to save millions of lives each year. In addition to receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, being up to date with general vaccinations protects the general health of individuals with autism. Mass COVID-19 vaccination would allow our global community to recover and help stop the pandemic. For the autism community, this means:

• Individuals in group homes and congregate settings would be able to be reunited with family, friends, and a support network.
• Educational routines will not require remote learning.
• Transition to adulthood programs can fully operate to promote independence and supports.
• Therapies and support services would be able to resume.
• Respite services for caregivers would be possible.
• Suffering industries would recover, creating more job opportunities for autistic adults to find gainful employment.

The Autism Society enlisted the help of medical leaders from our Panel of Professional Advisors and Panel of People on the Autism Spectrum to develop and review this statement. In addition, the following organizations signed on in agreement that the autism community should be prioritized for COVID-19 vaccination, and attempt to get vaccinated as soon as possible.

Autism Society of America

Autism Society Panel of Professional Advisors

Autism Society Panel of People on the Spectrum of Autism

Autism Science Foundation

American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

Autistic Reality

Autistic Self Advocacy Network

Autism Speaks

Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network

CommunicationFIRST

Jefferson University Hospitals

Easter Seals

National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities

National Association of State Directors of Developmental Disabilities Services

National Council on Severe Autism

National Down Syndrome Congress

National Down Syndrome Society

National Respite Coalition

The Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies

Tuberous Sclerosis Alliance
Resources:

FDA: https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19/covid-19-vaccines#basics and https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19/pfizer-biontech-covid-19-vaccine

Who: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/covid-19-vaccines

CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/recommendations-process.html and https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6949e2.htm?s_cid=mm6949e2_w

Pfizer: https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-and-biontech-conclude-phase-3-study-covid-19-vaccine

Moderna: https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-details/moderna-announces-primary-efficacy-analysis-phase-3-cove-study

ScienceMag: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/absolutely-remarkable-no-one-who-got-modernas-vaccine-trial-developed-severe-covid-19

California Republicans Side with Anti-Vaxxers

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing disease to spread.  Unfortunately, Republican legislators in some states are opposed to vaccine mandates.

In California, every Republican state senator voted no.

Mariel Garza at LAT:

[I]t was dismaying to see state Senate Minority Leader Sen. Shannon Grove of Bakersfield and other Republican legislators side with the opponents on the bills to close a loophole that was allowing people to get around the state’s vaccination laws.
...
If this is a ploy to turn the so-called “anti-vaxxers” into GOP voters, they may not have great luck. Those opposed to mandatory vaccines don’t split along party lines. In fact, some of the places that have seen the lowest vaccination rates are solidly liberal communities, like Marin County and Santa Cruz.