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FDA Calls Off Meeting to Select Flu Strains for Next Season’s Flu Vaccine

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | February 27, 2025

The committee that advises the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on which flu strains to target for the upcoming flu season will not meet as scheduled next month, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.

In a statement provided to CNN, the FDA said:

“A planned March 13 meeting of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee [VRBPAC] on the influenza vaccine strains for the 2025-2026 influenza season in the northern hemisphere has been cancelled. …

“The FDA will make public its recommendations to manufacturers in time for updated vaccines to be available for the 2025-2026 influenza season.”

The FDA sent VRBPAC members an email on Monday informing them of the cancellation, the Times reported. No reason was given for its cancellation.

According to CNBC, the VRBPAC meets each March to select the strains for the upcoming season’s flu shots.

Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and member of the committee, told CNBC he wasn’t sure why the meeting was cancelled.

“Who canceled this meeting? Why did they cancel the meeting? Will manufacturers now turn to the World Health Organization to determine strains for this year’s influenza vaccines?” Offit asked.

According to the FDA, VRBPAC “reviews and evaluates data concerning the safety, effectiveness, and appropriate use of vaccines and related biological products which are intended for use in the prevention, treatment, or diagnosis of human diseases.” The committee is composed of 15 voting members.

The Times tied the meeting’s cancellation to the recent confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., former chairman of Children’s Health Defense, as secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). HHS oversees federal health agencies, including the FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“The cancellation plays into fears among scientists who worry that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will use his position as health secretary to sow doubts about vaccines,” the Times reported.

Offit, in an interview with Inside Medicine, also connected the meeting’s cancellation to Kennedy’s recent confirmation.

“Is it part of RFK Jr.’s cleansing project of removing anyone whom he presumes to have a conflict of interest related to vaccines? I don’t know. But I feel like the world is upside down. We aren’t doing the things we need to do to protect ourselves,” Offit said.

On Monday, Offit told MedPage Today that VRBPAC members were asked to fill out conflict-of-interest forms in advance — a routine process before every meeting — “and we weren’t told the meeting was canceled.” He said members were told to set time aside for the meeting.

But late Wednesday, Offit phoned Medpage and said, “If we are not going to have the meeting, I guess it means we will be looking to the WHO [World Health Organization] for a flu shot formulation.”

Last week, a meeting of another key public health committee — the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices — was postponed. The meeting was supposed to take place Feb. 26-28.

Valerie Borek, associate director and policy analyst for Stand for Health Freedom, said, “it’s not unreasonable” for an incoming HHS secretary to place advisory meetings on hold.

“We have a new HHS Secretary who has promised to expose and eliminate conflicts of interest that tend to lurk in groups like these,” Borek said. FDA and CDC advisory committees do not have final decision-making power; however, the agencies typically rubber-stamp their recommendations.

‘Time to stop pretending the flu vaccine is effective’

Offit said cancellation of the meeting could delay production of next season’s flu vaccines.

“It’s a six-month production cycle,” Offit told the Times. “So one can only assume that we’re not picking flu strains this year.”

Another VRBPAC member, Dr. Stanley Perlman, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, told Reuters that “we don’t have much time” to produce the next season’s flu vaccines.

Perlman said a separate meeting of a VRBPAC subcommittee scheduled for March was also canceled.

Door to Freedom founder Dr. Meryl Nass, who follows FDA and CDC vaccine advisory meetings and often blogs about them, welcomed the meeting’s cancellation and expressed skepticism about flu vaccines.

“The purpose for the U.S. flu vaccine program is shrouded in mystery,” Nass said. “The CDC creates models of influenza mortality and then tells us how many deaths occur from flu each year by citing its own models.”

Nass described the VRBPAC’s annual meetings to select strains for the following season’s flu vaccines as “a crapshoot.”

“The VRBPAC are there to give cover to U.S. government officials who do not want to pick the wrong strains,” Nass said.

Nass referred to a 2005 study published in JAMA Internal Medicine that could “not correlate increasing [flu] vaccination coverage after 1980 with declining mortality rates in any age group” and that “observational studies substantially overestimate vaccination benefit.”

A CDC report issued today found the flu shot less effective for some children this year. According to CBS News, “Effectiveness was 32% for children and adolescents, from the CDC’s U.S. Flu VE network of health care systems. That’s down from 67% in last year’s estimates.”

Biologist Christina Parks, Ph.D., said it is “time to stop pretending the flu vaccine is effective.” She added:

“The extremely low efficacy of flu vaccines call into question whether they should keep being offered at all. Studies have shown that receipt of flu vaccines over multiple years actually increases your risk of contracting a severe case of the flu and ending up in [an intensive care unit].

“The cancellation of the VRBPAC meeting suggests to me that the new Secretary for Health and Human Services understands that flu vaccines exist to line the pockets of vaccine manufacturers, not to actually protect people from getting the flu.”

According to CNBC, the cancellation comes during a “particularly brutal flu season in the U.S.” that, according to CDC data, has resulted in up to 910,000 hospitalizations since October 2024.

But Nass said those claims are overstated. She said that contrary to CDC claims of up to 52,000 flu deaths annually in the U.S., data from death certificates indicate “only about 2,000 Americans per year die from influenza.”

“I worked for many years as a hospitalist and yet it is hard for me to think of anyone who died of influenza in the hospital. They may have died of a secondary bacterial infection,” Nass said.

Discussion of flu vaccine-related deaths missing from mainstream narrative

Albert Benavides, founder of VAERSAware.com and an expert on the U.S. government-run Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), said a discussion of deaths caused by the flu vaccines has been missing from the mainstream narrative.

“There are currently 2,652 deaths associated with flu vaccines in VAERS back to 1990,” Benavides said. He noted that 697 of these deaths have been received and published in the VAERS database since January 2021, calling this development “concerning.”

Benavides said the data showed that “many elderly flu deaths are comingled with COVID-19, Pneumovax, Shingrix, Zostavax and now even some RSV and Monkeypox vaccines and in every combination,” suggesting that interactions between the vaccines may be deadly for some people.

A study published in October 2024 in the journal Scientific Reports found that 17 vaccines, including flu vaccines, were associated with Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare condition that attacks the peripheral nervous system.

Nass questioned the U.S. spending of “billions of dollars” yearly. “Other countries don’t do this,” she said.

VRBPAC members ‘often team up with industry’

According to the Times, Kennedy has “repeatedly warned of ‘regulatory capture’ — the idea that federal regulators are captive to industry.”

In an interview with Fox News earlier this month, Kennedy said several public health agency panels that develop policies such as vaccine guidelines are composed of “outside experts,” almost all of whom “have severe … conflicts of interest.”

The Times acknowledged that the members of committees like VRBPAC “often team up with industry,” citing the example of Offit, “an inventor of a rotavirus vaccine that was later developed by the pharmaceutical giant Merck.”

Parks said she thinks it’s “good that VRBPAC meetings have been put on ice until the members of these advisory committees are actually properly vetted and determined not to have conflicts of interest. Currently, it appears that many members are there to rubber-stamp the agenda of vaccine manufacturers.”

The cancellation of the VRBPAC meeting came just days after HHS announced the end of the CDC’s “Wild to Mild” advertising campaign promoting flu vaccines. HHS called on the CDC to instead develop “advertisements that promote the idea of ‘informed consent’ in vaccine decision-making.”

“I am hopeful that better data on the flu and flu vaccines will help Americans make truly informed choices about whether to get flu vaccines,” Nass said.

Related articles in The Defender

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

February 28, 2025 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | 1 Comment

What to Know Before Deciding to Take The Novavax Injection

Accepting an injection of spike protein hoping it is safe or effective is absurd. Yet, many are again forced to make a decision threatening their health and ability to support their family.

By Pierre Kory, MD, MPA | August 17, 2022

A subscriber asked me to write a post about my thoughts on Novavax because she “really trusts my judgement.” Flattered, I felt like I should share what they are. So here goes.

Before any medical intervention, but especially in the case of a novel or barely tested one, a long standing practice of medical ethics is that informed consent must be obtained. The emphasis should be on the informed part and not the consent part. Note that informed consent has been one of the foundations of medical ethics, essentially an inviolable standard, or at least it used to be before this “emergency” came along where now you have pharmacists injecting children with barely a mention of the risks, “because they might be too scared to take the shot.”

Informed consent discussions are simple in structure but often complex and time-consuming to conduct. It relies on providing the patient with as detailed and comprehensive a knowledge of the risks, benefits, and alternatives to the intervention.

So, should we go through an informed consent discussion with the novel Novavax injection? Actually, I would not. Why? Because I don’t hold informed consent discussions for interventions I do not recommend or would not want my patient to consider. I instead tell them not to consider and give them my reasons for that recommendation. Thus, I only conduct informed consent discussion for interventions that I feel would bring about greater benefits than risks (generally much greater), and I would only do so for patients with active illness in order to get them better. A vaccine is a much different proposition as they are given to patients without disease.

Why would I not even consider Novavax as a reasonable option? Simple:

  • There has never been a successful or safe coronavirus vaccine. The last 18 months have shown that COVID vaccines lead to increased chances of getting ill, equal or increased chances of transmitting, and higher likelihood of entering hospital and dying. And that is leaving unmentioned the lethality and toxicity of the mRNA platform ones. See my “Vaccine Exemption Letter” post for the data to support these statements. The coronavirus is a rapidly mutating virus, thus vaccines will always be non-neutralizing because by the time they are manufactured and ready for injection, the virus has mutated into forms poorly responsive to older, narrower antibodies.
  • Novavax is still formulated with a two and a half year-old protein for this rapidly mutagenic coronavirus, so it would be like giving a two and a half year old flu shot for this years flu (worse actually). Yet our health system, including every single academic medical center in the country is still mandating and eager to adopt use of an outdated viral protein. I would love to say this is beyond belief, but this is the world we live in now.
  • We now have the omicron variant circulating, which is generally well tolerated by most, particularly those who are healthy or young (and even the old), and especially those with natural immunity.
  • The country now has abundant natural immunity, which even the CDC now admits offers equal protection (actually, natural immunity offers better protection but let’s give the CDC some credit for telling at least a partial truth). So why are we still vaccinating and/or mandating in those who have recovered from COVID?
  • Vaccinating against respiratory viruses works very poorly as the antibodies do not reach high concentrations in the nasal and respiratory mucosa which is where the virus enters. The flu vaccine is almost completely ineffective, even when you get this years flu shot. Not known by most.
  • Vaccinating against respiratory viruses with non-neutralizing vaccines actually weakens and warps the immune system such that you are more likely to get other respiratory viruses or illnesses as well (this has been well reported after flu vaccinations given that those vaccinated against the flu are more susceptible to other respiratory viral infections).
  • Proposing a novel and barely tested product coming out of the pharmaceutical industry to a patient is a wicked proposition in modern times. Note the pharmaceutical industry is a documented criminal industry which has repeatedly put out unsafe and ineffective products (even deadly, i.e opioids, Avandia, Vioxx, Bextra, the list goes on), followed by burying the adverse event data while pushing their wares through control of professional societies, federal/state legislation, and captured agencies. They have paid over $12 billion in criminal fines and over $16 billion in civil fines, just in the last 20 years across the 20 largest settlements. Their history of these actions stretches even longer.
  • The history of criminality around the COVID vaccines dwarfs any actions the industry has done in the past. The Pfizer documents that the PFDA (the P is not a typo) tried to hide for 75 years reveal insane amounts of manipulations to try to show they work and are safe. They didn’t and weren’t. Further the testimony from the Ventavia/Pfizer whistleblower Brook Jackson reveals that the studies were so poorly done with such little follow-up of patients that they are simply not credible. Remember, Pharma. Does. Not. Care. About. Your. Health. Just your wallet (actually the government’s wallet, which I suppose is also your wallet).

So, conceptually, I think the idea of getting any coronavirus vaccine at this point is preposterous. However, let’s try to do a more traditional informed consent using the structure of risks/benefits/alternatives. The following is what I think other providers (or pharmacists egads) should be telling people prior to offering them Novavax, or more accurately, in order to get them to avoid it.

Yes, Novavax is a “non-mRNA” vaccine and is designed more along the line of a traditional vaccine in that an amount of viral protein is injected into the arm, it is then recognized as a “foreign” protein by our immune system which then makes antibodies against it. These antibodies are then thought (“hoped” remember) to help clear the virus rapidly and efficiently after exposure such that we avoid illness. Sounds good on paper. Not. Just ask Geert Vanden Bossche, one of the worlds top immunologists and vaccine experts.

RISKS

Novavax delivers the spike protein. As a self-described clinical expert in spike-protein induced disease, the spike protein is a pathogen. A pathogen is a substance or organism that is capable of inducing illness. Note that I call myself an expert because there are very few of us out here studying it’s pathogenicity, however I would argue Professor Paul Marik has taken the lead across the globe in amassing all the basic science and clinical research underlying the knowledge of the mechanisms and treatments of spike-protein induced diseases. That scholarly document is in evolution, and has over 300 scientific references at this point, with rapid evolutions and additions each week. Note that it appears to be the world’s sole “comprehensive” scholarly work on spike protein pathogenicity and empirically proposed treatments.

Another great sadness about the US COVID response is that almost the entire health system and all of academia have yet to recognize the spike as a pathogen or formulate any approach to treating Long-Haul or Post-Vaccine Injury. Until they do, they will continue to fail to recognize the causes or mechanisms of these syndromes as well as to offer effective treatments. And, it goes without saying, they will not be able to discuss this in thier ill-informed consent discussions. Their deplorable failure at treating these disabling diseases is astounding and will continue for the foreseeable future. Remember, the system docs won’t treat because they are all members of the Church of RCT Fundamentalism (a.k.a “evidence based medicine.”) You know, where they will sit there paralyzed until some massive randomized controlled trial is published in a high-impact medical journal and then is recommended by a federal agency or national medical society. You know what that system produces by now if you read my Substack. Not only will it leave patients untreated for months to years, but while the docs sit around waiting, Pharma, via the agencies and media, will suppress or attack any generic medicines or supplements that front-line doctors and patients have found effective. They will do this with ferocity and depravity until such a time they can “save the day” with the massive promotion of a novel, pricey Big Pharma pill which they will get our government to pay for at a price they set. Think about what happened to ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine until Pharma saved the day with the pathetic and poisonous Paxlovid using our government coffers. Rinse repeat here.

The two major and complex diseases unleashed by the spike are what we call “long haul” and “post-vaccine injury” syndromes. I probably should differentiate post-vaccine into two subtypes, with one being an acute, sudden death syndrome caused by massive heart attacks, myocarditis (which can cause lethal arrhythmias or pump failure), and/or massive strokes. Excess mortality amongst the vaccinated in 2021 skyrocketed and is showing up in Life Insurance industry data in both the U.S and other countries. However I don’t see those events in my practice because they are sudden deaths occurring in asymptomatic patients (who are often swimming or running or doing something else fun until they suddenly drop dead). My practice instead sees patients who suffer with the more chronic subtype consisting of myriad, disabling symptoms across multiple organ systems. Now, whether there is enough spike in Novavax to produce similar deadly events or chronic syndromes in the future, who knows. More on that below.

SHORT TERM RISK DATA

Not looking good here folks. Let’s take a look at the actual published trial of Novavax, and their chart detailing the “side effects.” Then let’s compare it to Pfizers mRNA “vaccine” trial published in December 2020. Look carefully. I will interpret these charts below.

Click for full size

Here is how I interpret the data:

  1. The “local” and “systemic” adverse events are absurdly high in both. I remember thinking back in December 2020 when I was reading the Pfizer trial, I said to myself, “Wow, that does NOT look friendly!” Not just the wickedly high frequency of really sore arms with redness and swelling, but the very high rates of “systemic symptoms” of fatigue, headache, chills, vomiting, muscle pain. Very high rates of those. Ouch.
  2. Next, look at the “dose response,” meaning look at the incidence of adverse events after the 2nd shot compared to the 1st shot. If it is higher after the 2nd, it indicates a “dose-response relationship,” which, when we are talking about a therapeutic, is a pillar of evidence to support the efficacy of the drug. For instance, ivermectin in COVID has a strong dose response relationship, meaning the higher the dose, the more effective it is (that is why all the high impact trials tried as much as they could to limit the dose of ivermectin, in particular during history’s most fraudulent trial called the TOGETHER trial).

Conversely, a dose-response in terms of side effects is a pillar of the measure of toxicity. The more you give, the sicker you get. Not cool. Now take a look at Pfizers published chart above, keeping in mind, these are only the short term systemic side effects.

  1. Pfizer: fatigue goes from 47% after the 1st to 59% after the 2nd in young folks and 34% up to 51% in older folks. Chills: 14% to 35% in young, 6% to 23% in old. Same pattern and increases with muscle pains and also joint pains and use of anti-pyretic medications.
  2. Now, take a look at Novavax. Note how they don’t give you the numeral percentages and instead make you crane your neck and use a ruler to estimate the actual incidences and increases. But just looking at the height of the bars from shot 1 to shot 2 and the increases in the yellow at the tops of the bars (yellow = “Grade 3” reactions – i.e. more severe), you see again what looks like a scary shot to me with some of the local and systemic events reported even higher than with Pfizer’s mRNA shot! So, is Novavax safer?

LONG TERM SIDE EFFECTS. Unknown. Remember the famous, “I guess we will just have to give it to see how safe it is” by one of the nations top vaccine experts. I swear, again, and I say this often, you just cannot make this stuff up. So, an informed consent discussion should relate that long term side effects are unknown. Remember as well, we are not in a supposed “emergency” anymore, despite the fact our government keeps renewing its emergency powers. If the person conducting this discussion tries to argue that in terms of long term effects, it is safe and effective because the mRNA vaccines were safe and effective, that is so categorically ridiculous it does not even bare addressing. Again, read my “Vaccine Exemption Letter” post for the data on toxicity and lethality of those vaccines. Do not proceed. My caution would be that spike protein is a pathogen with sequences that we know generate antibodies that then are capable of attacking many tissues (what are called autoantibodies which cause a category of diseases called “auto-immune” diseases). Also, spike protein, when broken down by the body is known to generate amyloid like fragments which are highly thrombogenic (i.e. cause clotting). Spike protein also stimulates immune cells called monocytes and macrophages which disturb numerous organ functions. Spike protein is also toxic to mitochondria which are the energy producing parts of each cell. In summary, don’t sign up for any more spike protein than is already circulating in the world.

Also, Novavax, like the mRNA vaccines uses “nanoparticles” in a “saponin-based adjuvant” solution which is novel and proprietary, patented only in 2020. Well, thats reassuring no? Their published paper states that the adjuvant and the vaccine was found to be “safe and immunogenic” in Phase 1 and 2 trials. Then I found this in the supplementary appendix from one of the earlier trials, ”the mechanism of Matrix-M1 (the adjuvant) is not well defined, but it has been associated with a potent induction of leukocyte activation and migration into the draining lymph nodes in their previous study.” Not reassuring.

EFFICACY

Unknown, but likely ineffective as it has not been tested against Omicron, or any of its sub-variants or whatever future variant will be circulating when it rolls out. Plus, as we know now, all the predicted efficacy reported from COVID-19 vaccine trials were never observed in the real-world, again likely due to trial shenanigans and data manipulations and removal and/or miscategorization of those who fell ill during the trial or simply due to the fact the virus is rapidly mutating. Even if it were effective, we know from the past two years, it would be short lived. I again have to mention natural immunity. It already protects against severe disease and reasonably well from re-infection, and there is no credible data to suggest adding an even older spike protein vaccine using a newly patented adjuvant will better protect you or make you healthier.

ALTERNATIVES TO VACCINATION

For readers of my Substack, you all know that you can always just skip the vaccine and instead just rely on early treatment which has been shown to be near perfectly effective in achieving rapid recovery and avoidance of hospitalization and death, especially when given in synergistic combinations like the FLCCC’s or the AAPS’s protocols. In fact, as you know, no vaccine would ever get an EUA or approval if effective treatments were available. Further, there are now over three dozen effective treatments supported by controlled trials, with many of them repurposed and/or over the counter. I suppose you could also just rely on Paxlovid given its demonstration of such incredible efficacy in treating President Biden and Dr. Fauci.

Hope this helps.

P.S. I opened a tele-health clinic providing care not only in the prevention and treatment of acute COVID, but with a specialized focus on the study and treatment of both Long-Haul and Post-Vaccination injury syndromes. If anyone needs our help, feel free to visit our website at www.drpierrekory.com.

P.P.S. I am getting professional help (hah!) to write a book about what I have personally witnessed and learned during Pharma’s historic Disinformation war on ivermectin. Pre-order here for:

August 17, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment