2022

January April July October
February May August November
March June September December

January 12, 2022
Virtual VLC

Focus: Clinical Science
Attendance: 716

Malaria and Mosquirix:
The History of History's First Ever Vaccine Against a Parasite

Starring

Nelli Westercamp, PhD, MPH

Division of Parasitic Diseases & Malaria
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention


Clubhouse Location:
A Zoom screen near you
Agenda: (all times Eastern time zone)
6:25pm — Grab a beer, a glass of wine, or a soda from the fridge and get online
6:30pm — Meeting called to order in the usual way (ear muffs optional)
6:40pm — This is the part where some really excellent science is presented
7:30pm — Q & A
7:45pm — Adjourn, already dreaming of next month's program



Dear Vacciners,
Here's to a Happy, Healthy, and Hopeful 2022!

According to OnThisDay.com, the date of our first VDC meeting of the new year turns out to be a big day in history. For example, on ...

1/12/1528: Gustav I was formally dubbed King and "Father of our Country." Which, in his case, was Sweden.

261 years later his title was officially changed to "The Great Great Great Great Great Great Grandfather of our Country" in order to prevent 4th graders in Colonial America from confusing Gustav with George Washington.

1/12/1583: Holland began using the Gregorian calendar ... and permanently misplaced 10 days in the process (the calendar jumped from 1/1/1583 to 1/12/1583 overnight).

And you think YOU have a hard time keeping track of what day it is anymore.

1/12/1913: After trying out other pseudonyms, Josef Dzhugashvili settles on "Stalin" (from the Russian for 'Man of Steel') and signed himself that way for the first time in a letter to the newspaper Social Democrat.

Although this would strongly seem to suggest otherwise, extensive historical research has failed to find any definitive proof that Superman actually moonlighted as Stalin.

1/12/1966: "Batman," starring Adam West and Burt Ward, debuted on ABC.

"Holy Birthday Cake, Batman!"

1/12/1967: Dr. James Bedford became the first person in history to be cryonically preserved with intent of future resuscitation.

Having neglected to predict the need to be vaccinated against Covid prior to cryopreservation, Dr. Bedford remains in isolation at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation.

And finally ....

1/12/2022: Members and guests of the Vaccine Dinner Club meet online to discuss History. Specifically, the history of the recently licensed first ever vaccine against a parasite. One that, in 2020 alone, sickened 241 million people and killed 627,000 (including more than 501,000 children under the age of 5).

Register Now for the Wednesday, January 12 meeting or miss out on your shot at History.

Warmly,
Kimbi Hagen
(Your friendly neighborhood VDC goddess)

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February 2, 2022
Virtual VDC

Focus: Basic Science
Attendance: 564

Does Anybody Remember Flu?
Progress in the Development of Broadly Protective Influenza Virus Vaccines

Starring

Florian Krammer, PhD

Mount Sinai Professor of Vaccinology Icahn School of Medicine


Clubhouse Location:
A Zoom screen near you
Agenda: (all times Eastern time zone)
6:25pm — Grab a beer, a glass of wine, or a soda from the fridge and get online
6:30pm — Meeting called to order in the usual way (ear muffs optional)
6:40pm — This is the part where some really excellent science is presented
7:30pm — Q & A
7:45pm — Adjourn, already dreaming of next month's program



Dear Vaccineers,
My friends who work in influenza like to remind me that, while the 1918 Flu pandemic itself is long over, progeny of the virus that killed 10 times as many people as Covid has to date* are still circulating today as a seasonal flu. Fortunately, our current flu vaccines provide some protection against it.

In fact seasonal flu vaccines provide some protection against multiple different strains of the flu. Why? Because they have to! We have a tendency to talk about "the flu" as if it is a single disease but there are actually four different influenza viruses that have risen to the top of the Bad Guy list for their ability to make people -- on a global scale -- sick/dead. What's more, each one has a habit of doing just enough shape shifting every year to require constant tweaks to the vaccines we build and deploy to defend against them.

As you can learn more HERE , the process of crystal balling the composition of the next flu vaccine is a complex, all year in / all year out process that involves continual surveillance on the part of 114 countries; viral samples flying pell-mell all around the world to be analyzed in Atlanta, Memphis, London, Melbourne, Tokyo, and Beijing; high-level meetings every February (to look at what's going on flu-wise in the Southern hemisphere) and September (when the process is reversed and the Southern hemisphere looks North…), and, at the end of the day, more than a fair amount of fingers-crossed, best guesses based on the opposite hemisphere's most recent past reality.

Sometimes those guesses are spot on and the flu vaccine that is deployed in a given year turns out to be a fabulous match for the variety of influenza that ended up circulating in Your Town that year. When that happens, it is sort of analogous to a fully vaccinated and boosted person running across Omicron -- they might still end up infected but, if they do, they will probably have milder symptoms and a shorter disease course.

Other years … the match isn't so great, with icky awful results. (Think: more like an unvaccinated person running across Delta).

But what if it didn't have to be like that? What if, instead, we had a vaccine that was effective enough against a broad variety of flu viruses to take most of the nail biting guess work out of the annual choose-a-vaccine lottery. Wouldn't THAT be great!

So … Realistic Goal or Don Quixote Windmill?

Come to the February meeting of the Vaccine Dinner Club and find out for yourself when Dr. Krammer takes us for a deep dive into the basic science undergirding current efforts to build a better flu vaccine.

And, in the meantime, wash your hands and don't touch your face! (Ironically, the fact that we pretty much didn't have a flu season at all last year -- there's one upside to masks and sheltering in place! -- has the potential for setting us up for a worse flu season than usual this year).

Warmly (but not in a fluey-feverish way)
-Kimbi Hagen, EdD
VDC Director / Goddess

*Here is a (partial) list of things we have today that we didn't have in 1918:

• Bottled oxygen
• An effective vaccine for the disease
• Anti-virals
• Ventilators
• Intubation
• Treatments for co-morbidities
• The CDC
• The WHO

So comparing 1918-1920 and 2020-2022 is apples and oranges. If we HAD had a better medical, clinical, and public health arsenal back in 1918, pandemic mortality would still have been horrifically high, but probably not as high.

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March 2, 2022

Focus:Policies & Controversies
Attendance: 777

Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda:
COVID-19 (C19) Vaccine Mandates




Shoulda? Coulda, Woulda ...

Ethical issues
that come into play with C19 vaccine mandates ...
as perceived population health experts

Arthur L. Caplan, PhD

Drs. William F. and Virginia Connolly Mitty Professor of Bioethics, Department of Population Health
NYU Grossman School of Medicine



Shoulda, Coulda? Woulda ...

Legal issues
that come into play with C19 vaccine mandates ...
as perceived by the Feds, the States, and recent Supreme Court deliberations

Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, PhD, LLB

Professor of Law
UC Hastings College of the Law
Member
Vaccine Working Group on Ethics and Policy



Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda? ...

Community issues
that come into play with C19 vaccine mandates ...
as perceived by the Association of Immunization Managers (AIM)

Claire Hannan, MPH

Executive Director
Association of Immunization Managers



Q&A

Pre-submitted and real-time questions for the panelists

Walter A. Orenstein, MD

Professor and Associate Director
Emory Vaccine Center

Professor, Medicine/Infectious Diseases
Emory University School of Medicine

Director
Emory-UGA Center of Excellence for Influenza Research and Surveillance (CEIRS)


Clubhouse Location:
A Zoom screen near you
Agenda: (all times Eastern time zone)
6:25pm — Grab a beer, a glass of wine, or a soda from the fridge and get online
6:30pm — Meeting called to order in the usual way (ear muffs optional)
6:40pm — This is the part where some really excellent science is presented
7:45pm — Q & A
8:00pm — Adjourn, already dreaming of next month's program



Dear Vacineers,
The U.S. Congressional Budget Office maintains a list of laws that contains mandates. Here is a sample of them:

The Congressional Budget Office's list of laws that have mandates goes on for six pages, so it is pretty clear that mandates are an accepted thing in US government.

Should we, could we, would we add Covid-19 vaccine mandates to that list?

Come to the March 2 meeting of the Vaccine Dinner Club and add your voice to the debate!!!

-Kimbi

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April 6, 2022
Virtual VDC

Focus: Policies & Controversies
Attendance: 813

COVID-19 Vaccines:
Science vs Antiscience

Peter Jay Hotez, MD, PhD

Dean, National School of Tropical Medicine
Baylor School of Medicine


Clubhouse Location:
A Zoom screen near you
Agenda: (all times Eastern time zone)
6:25pm — Grab a beer, a glass of wine, or a soda from the fridge and get online
6:30pm — Meeting called to order in the usual way (ear muffs optional)
6:40pm — This is the part where some really excellent science is presented
7:10pm — Q & A
7:25pm — Adjourn, already dreaming of next month's program



Dear Vacineers,
This month TV star and internet sensation Dr. Peter Jay Hotez will anchor our very own Vaccine Dinner Club (Yay!).

When I asked Dr. Hotez to summarize his talk for y'all he wrote back:

"Globally we are seeing a mixed picture vaccinating the world against COVID-19, with a failure to control widespread transmission in Africa and Latin America. I will explore how we advance vaccinations globally and new options for accelerating a low-cost "people's vaccine" for COVID-19. Also the impact of a rising and shifting antivaccine movement, which is now also globalizing. I will discuss how we both address vaccine equity and a rising an aggressive globalizing anti-science empire."

Cool beans!
-Kimbi

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Virtual VDC VLC*
*Vaccine LUNCH Club
Monday, May 4, 2022

Focus: Global Concerns
Attendance: 819

Tick, Tick, Tick
Covid Vaccines and Their (Waning?) Effectiveness
As We Enter Year 3

Minal Patel, MD

Global Immunology Division
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Co-Lead, Global Vaccine Effectiveness and Impact Workstream
World Health Organization


Clubhouse Location:
A Zoom screen near you
Agenda: (all times Eastern time zone)
NOTE ATYPICAL MEETING TIME
11:50am — Grab a sandwich and get online
NOON — Meeting called to order in the usual way (ear muffs optional)
12:10pm — This is the part where some really excellent science is presented
1:00pm — Q & A
1:15pm — Adjourn, already dreaming of next Fall's VDC season opener



Dear Vacineers,
Our speaker this month -- VDC member-in-good-standing Minal Patel -- will be Zooming in from Geneva, Switzerland and, to accomodate the time zone difference between me and she, it was either move the time of our meeting from dinner to lunch or ship a VDC speaker's mug to her, prefilled with hightest expresso, to keep Dr. Patel awake until cowbell time.

Given supply chain concerns it seemed safest to just move the meeting time, so set a calendar reminder NOW to attend this month's meeting of the Vaccine LUNCH Club.



A lot of things are waning these days:

What about Covid? Is the pandemic waning or is just political interest in the pandemic? What about Vaccine Effectiveness? Is that waning too as the number of new variants and sub-variants outpaces new vaccine design?

Or ARE new Variants of Concern still nipping at our heels? Inquiring minds want to know!

Here are some of the way cool topics Dr. Patel will be covering in her talk on May 4th:

I know that you are not going to want to miss the FINAL VDC of the 2021-2022 Season so REGISTER NOW!

-Kimbi

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June - August, 2022

Summer Vacation
starring
The VDC Membership

Focus: Staying Healthy / Staying Sane
Attendance: 4,816
Clubhouse du jour: Probably an airport, because all the flights have been cancelled

Vacciners and their families will spend their summer home testing, decoding the changing Covid guidelines, and watching in horror as vesicles, pustules, and scabs crash the party and come back into vogue.

 

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September 7, 2022
Virtual VDC

Focus:
Attendance:

Monkeypox:
The Next Big Thing?




Monkeypox: Little Misnomer, Big Surprises

Capt Jennifer McQuiston, DVM, MS

Incident Manager, CDC Multi-National Monkeypox Response 2022
Deputy Director, Division of High Consequence Pathogens and Pathology
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention



Love in the Time of Monkeypox

Rachel Kachur, MPH

Division of STD Prevention
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)




Clubhouse Location:
A Zoom screen near you
Agenda: (all times Eastern time zone)
6:25pm — Grab a beer, a glass of wine, or a soda from the fridge and get online
6:30pm — Meeting called to order in the usual way (ear muffs optional)
6:40pm — This is the part where some really excellent science is presented
7:45pm — Q & A
8:00pm — Adjourn, braced to face the Fall semester

Sigh… Yet ANOTHER year in which you will need to put the 'Dinner' in the Vaccine Dinner Club because Emory University is still not excited about having multi-hundreds of people crowded into the same room, masks off and eating. Go figure. Plus, the alternative -- having dinner individually delivered to everyone's house -- turns out to be logistically complicated and cost-prohibitive for us to. Which is not to say that you can't make an occasion out of the event and arrange to have GrubHub or DoorDash deliver ….



Dear Vacineers,
One of the questions on the registration form for this month's opening of the 2022-2023 season of the Vaccine Dinner Club is "In other news … What did you do with your summer vacation this year?"

No matter how you plan to answer that question I can pretty much guarantee that your July was less misadventure-filled than the Italian man who ended up in the news last week (August 25, 2022) after being written up in the Journal of Infection.

Specifically, nine days after coming home from a vacation in Spain the 36-year-old developed a fever, sore throat, and fatigue. Within hours he ALSO began to develop a rash on one arm which, by the next day, had covered his entire body (face, chest, arms, hands, legs, glutes) in painful vesicles. Quite sensibly he promptly headed to a hospital in his hometown of Catania, Italy (hopefully NOT using public transportation) where he was admitted for work up on the Infectious Disease service. Four days later he endured what was surely one of the worser days of his life when, in rapid fire order, a seemingly endless stream of health care providers trooped through his room to tell him that he had: a) swabbed positive for monkeypox virus, b) PCRed positive for SARS-CoV-2, Omicron variant BA.5.1, and c) Western Blotted positive for HIV-1.

Wowser. That has got to be THE worst matched set of vacation souvenirs in the history of ever.

So what's the deal with monkeypox anyway? Is it the Next Big Thing or a flash in the pan? The first U.S. case of monkeypox was diagnosed in Boston, MA on May 19, 2022. Three months later, monkeypox has spread to all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and Washington DC and the US has the highest number of cases in the world with 36% of total (16,926/46,724 as of August 22nd). And the morning paper the other day brought news of pediatric (elementary school aged) cases that had been diagnosed in the Metro area, acquired from family members. Sigh.

Want to spend an evening not thinking about Covid for a change? We can help!

Register for the Season opener of the Vaccine Dinner Club and learn more about the latest entry in the Bestiary of Badness.* Invite your friends to join you!

*Bestiary of Badness:
Bats: Histoplasmosis
Beavers: Giardia
Birds: Pandemic influenza
Cats: Cat scratch fever, Toxoplasmosis
Cows: Listeria
Dogs: Rabies, Roundworm
Fish: Fish Tank Granuloma
Fleas: Bubonic Plague
Monkeys: Herpes B
Mosquitoes: West Nile, Zika
Pangolins: SARS-CoV-2
Pretty much every animal everywhere: Salmonella
Rabbits: Tularemia
Rodents: Hantavirus, Monkeypox
Ticks: Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever

See you for (virtual) dinner at the Club soon

-Kimbi
Your friendly neighborhood Vaccine Dinner Club Goddess

 


Dear People Who Had This Message Forwarded to Them,

POP TEST!

The Vaccine Dinner Club:

If you picked "e: All of the above" – Congratulations, you have what it takes to be a VDC member or guest! Read more about the VDC and consider joining us online September 7.

Kimbi Hagen, EdD
VDC Director/Goddess

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October 5, 2022
Virtual VDC

Focus:
Attendance:

TBA

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November 2, 2022
Virtual VDC

Focus:
Attendance:

TBA

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December 7, 2022
Virtual VDC

Focus:
Attendance:

TBA

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