Thursday, November 21, 2002

Another pre-roll out meeting at the Department to prepare for the upcoming announcement by the President on the Smallpox vaccination policy. Meeting was with Kevin Keane, Bill Hall, Jerry Hauer, and on teleconference - Michael Osterholm, Julie Gerberding and an assortment of CDC public affairs people. I have convinced them that we should not recommend to the general public that they take the vaccine give the non-quantifiable risk. I am also convincing them that for the Stage 2 (10,000,000 first repsonders), we also should not make a blanket recommendation that they get vaccinated. Rather, we should say that as a group the vaccine should be offered to them, but since this is a heterogenous group, the actual recommendation to take it or not should rely on discussions between the CDC and the State and local public health officials in light of the particular needs and situation within a given jurisdiction. Clearly, the Stage 1 group (500,000 smallpox response teams) should have a recommendation to take the vaccine voluntarily.