Infectious Disease Roundup - December 6, 2025

The death knell for the ACIP was loud and clear this week, thanks to RFK Jr’s anti-vaxx brigade. I go over that train wreck and do a quick fact check on some air quality misinformation hitting the media. I’ve also got infectious disease updates for you as we enter the holidays and bundle up for the winter.

ACIP normally reviews scientific evidence to create recommendations for the CDC and HHS. RFK Jr replaced everyone on the ACIP earlier this year with his own cronies. They met this week on Thursday and Friday. I was planning to tune in, but I couldn’t stomach it. I followed along with public health experts posting live updates on Bluesky to preserve my sanity (thanks, Dr. Jacobs!).

Well… How bad was it?

It was racist and homophobic! They delayed the vote on the recommendation from confusion for a third time! They presented nonsensical PowerPoint slides! They say our vaccine schedule should match a country with a population lower than New York City! They voted to remove the recommendation that newborns get the hep B vaccine! Ahhhhhh!

Hepatitis B is incurable. Most people that have hepatitis B don’t know they have it. Even if they don’t have symptoms, they can spread it to others, including infants and children. Hepatitis B causes serious liver disease and death. Up to 25% of children that get hepatitis B will die because of hepatitis B.

The hep B vaccine recommended after birth has lowered hep B infections in newborns and children by 99%. To stop recommending such an effective intervention is unethical and against everything public health stands for. Make no mistake, more children will get hepatitis B because of this nasty work by the ACIP. The healthcare system is strained as-is. Adding more chronic hepatitis B cases on top of that will only further strain the healthcare system.

The ACIP vote doesn’t mean that the hep B vaccine is no longer available, thankfully. Many other medical organizations continue to recommend the vaccine for newborns. Vaccines are also cost effective for insurance providers. The hep B vaccine isn’t going anywhere, but fewer people may get the vaccine as a result of the confusion and distrust this ACIP is sowing. I’m seeing experts left and right calling it quits on the ACIP after this disgraceful performance. Here’s hoping we can collectively ignore them going forward and vaccination will continue as normal as it possibly can in this current political climate.

I knew this would happen sooner or later with this newsletter. I finished this draft around 8:40PM on Friday and here I am at 11:04 PM because the Trump administration has released something super bad and terrible and I can’t believe how bad this is and I just now saw it and I’m freaking out a little bit!!!

I know I just said the hep B vaccine isn’t going anywhere, but it’s clear the Trump administration is laying the foundation to reducing access to vaccines in the US across the board, using a line of logic introduced in the ACIP meetings. I didn’t go into detail initially, but ACIP members discussed how Denmark specifically has fewer vaccines on their child vaccine schedule. Denmark is the country with fewer citizens than the population of NYC I mentioned before. They don’t routinely vaccinate children for hep B.

Trump signed a memo Friday evening saying that RFK Jr and RFK Jr’s CDC director need to look at the entire vaccine schedule and compare it to the schedules in other countries, like Denmark, Japan, and Germany (all which have fewer vaccines in their schedule than the US). If these two dudes who are not doctors review the vaccine schedules in those other countries and like them better, they are to update the US vaccine schedule to match the schedules with fewer vaccines.

Japan, Denmark, and Germany are very different from the US. They all have some form of universal health coverage, firstly. Secondly, they face different infectious disease risks because of their different population sizes, climates, and access to quality medical care. This is why they each have their own vaccine schedule, which differ from the US and from each other.

RFK Jr will obviously move toward any action that reduces vaccinations in the US. This is a tremendous escalation toward cutting needed routine vaccinations in the US. If you think measles is bad now, just wait until chickenpox comes roaring back. Denmark doesn’t include chickenpox in the childhood vaccine schedule. We have a super low chickenpox rate these days in the US, thanks to the freaking vaccine!

This memo lays out which vaccines are currently in the crosshairs: hep B and annual flu shots. I am legitimately fearful about what will come from this. Knowing this administration loves to waffle on things like tariffs doesn’t inspire much hope when the lives of children are at stake. I seriously hope the medical and public health departments in Japan, Denmark, and Germany all condemn this move.

If this makes you really angry or afraid, you can call the man responsible for this (who has some power to do something about it, too): Senator Bill Cassidy.

Here’s a link to his online contact form. Here’s his senate phone number, too: (202) 224-5824. I’ll certainly be telling him how I feel when I can become verbally calm and coherent.

I came across a story this week that reeks of a classic form of media misinformation that is pretty common in science reporting. These reports are about a study that was published in the journal Microbiome on December 4th.

The stories in the media are claiming that this study shows there are few infectious microbes in the air on airplanes and in hospitals—the air there is clean, essentially. That really got my attention, especially regarding the hospitals. Reducing infections caused while visiting a hospital has been a major concern of hospitals for a while. I would wager every hospital in the nation has some sort of goal to reduce or eliminate this kind of infection. So I set out to read the study. The study itself is open access, so I took a look and you can too!

The researchers looked at one air filter from an airplane and a whopping 22 surgical masks for their sample (10 from travelers and 12 from healthcare workers). They then looked for DNA of bacteria on the filter and masks. Where do I even begin with this? I guess I’ll start with a quick one - they didn’t look for viral DNA.¹ So they are missing out on rhinoviruses, COVID-19, norovirus, RSV, measles, etc. in their study. Any media report that the findings of this study says this means it’s air is clean on planes and hospitals is thus incorrect. We would need a similar study looking at viruses and much stronger evidence to make that conclusion.

My second concern is the type and number of masks. They state that they tested surgical masks, which are not as effective as N95 masks. Surgical masks don’t filter the air the way an N95 mask does. They also don’t disclose if the clinicians wearing the masks worked around any patients with infectious disease. I would expect a pulmonologist to see more patients with respiratory illness than say a podiatrist. Either way, a sample size of 22 is very low. For the conclusions being made in the media, I would have expected them to have tested thousands of masks, not less than two dozen.

But the media is running with the story that this study shows air in planes and hospitals is, like, totally clean. Check out these headlines:

All of these stories are parroting the press releases provided by Northwestern University. The lead researcher of the study is a professor at Northwestern, and it seems to me this whole story is just promo material for the university.

So… What is noteworthy in this study?

There is something I found very noteworthy in the study. A majority of the bacteria species the researchers identified are not infectious. They were mostly bacteria that are commonly on our skin. Even so, they found antibiotic resistance genes in their samples. This is an important finding, as it means antibiotic resistance is spreading beyond infectious bacteria. Antibiotic resistance is a growing problem, so I hope this study can lead to more research in resistance in non-infectious species.

But don’t let the headlines fool you - there’s no study out there that says hospital air and airplane air are are free of infectious disease. If you are visiting a hospital or traveling by air, wash your hands thoroughly and wear a high quality N95 mask to reduce your chance of infection.

It’s influenza A. There has been a bad influenza A outbreak in China this November. If you see any headlines about a “mystery virus” or “horror virus” in China, it’s just clickbait. These media outlets want you to click out of fear of a repeat novel pandemic. Influenza A is dangerous, but this is not COVID 2.0.

The CDC updated their measles report this week. As of last week, cases continue to trend down. It’s possible we will see an increase in cases due to the Thanksgiving holiday on the next report, but only time will tell. This is the worst year for measles we’ve had since 1992. Unvaccinated people are at the highest risk. I recommend wearing a high quality face mask in large crowds or on planes, trains, buses, and other transit where you are in contact with lots of people. N95 masks offer you the most protection. Masks protect you from all kinds of viruses, not just measles!

The Fresh & Ready Foods, LLC listeria outbreak in the US was declared over on Friday. There were 10 recorded illnesses and one death caused by this outbreak. Unfortunately, the other listeria outbreak from prepared pasta is ongoing. This outbreak has 27 recorded illnesses and 6 deaths. Most people that have become ill from these outbreaks have required hospitalization. You can check the list of recalled products for the continued outbreak here.

The ByHeart Inc. infant formula recall has been expanded to all ByHeart products. If you have any from of infant formula from ByHeart, check this CDC page and read the section “What you should do.” There have been two new cases of botulism because of this formula, both of which required hospitalization. There have been no deaths linked to this outbreak, so far.

Norovirus is spreading this fall. There were a lot of cases last December. The increased prevalence of positive norovirus tests this fall makes me think we will see even higher norovirus numbers this December. I had norovirus last winter and boy, do I hope I’m wrong about this! It’s truly horrible, and you can still spread the virus for up to two weeks after you recover. Here’s the CDC’s page on preventing norovirus. If you or someone you live with gets norovirus, here’s how you can help stop the spread to others.

As we enter the winter, remember to wash your hands, wash and fully cook your food to temperature, and mask up with a high quality N95! It’s much better to enjoy the holidays illness-free. Just because the ACIP, CDC, and Trump administration want to give up on preventative medicine doesn’t mean we all have to join them!

I’ll have more to say on the vaccine schedule as things develop from here. Thanks for tuning in to a weird edition of The Public’s Health. For now, I have to go to sleep!

See y’all next week,

Professor Batty

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