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.
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).
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.
1/12/1966: "Batman," starring Adam West and Burt Ward, debuted on ABC.
1/12/1967: Dr. James Bedford became the first person in history to be cryonically preserved with intent of future resuscitation.
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)
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.
March 2, 2022
Focus:Policies & Controversies
Attendance: 777
Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda:
COVID-19 (C19) Vaccine Mandates
Shoulda? Coulda, Woulda ...
that come into play with C19 vaccine mandates ...
as perceived population health experts
Arthur L. Caplan, PhD
NYU Grossman School of Medicine
Shoulda, Coulda? Woulda ...
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
UC Hastings College of the Law
Member
Vaccine Working Group on Ethics and Policy
Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda? ...
that come into play with C19 vaccine mandates ...
as perceived by the Association of Immunization Managers (AIM)
Claire Hannan, MPH
Association of Immunization Managers
Q&A
Pre-submitted and real-time questions for the panelists
Walter A. Orenstein, MD
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:
- Policyholders of property and casualty insurance are mandated to pay surcharges for terrorism insurance in the event of a certified terrorist attack
- States that have laws governing the slaughter of dogs and cats for human consumption are mandated to ensure that their state laws are not less strict than federal law
- State and Local governments are prevented by mandate from impeding the ability of the National Law Enforcement Museum to acquire, possess, transport, import, or display firearms
- Drawbridge owners are mandated to record drawbridge movements in a logbook
- Individuals whose property was damaged during a search and rescue practice session / training exercise are prevented by mandate from seeking compensation for those damages
- All rights to legal actions related to the land held in trust for the Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians are extinguished, by mandate.
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
April 6, 2022
Virtual VDC
Focus: Policies & Controversies
Attendance: 813
COVID-19 Vaccines:
Science vs Antiscience
Peter Jay Hotez, MD, PhD
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
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
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:
- winter weather
- pine pollen season (at least in Georgia)
- general interest in resuming in-person work
- masking on airplanes
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:
- What are the different types of covid vaccines used globally?
- What are Variants of Concern (VOC) and how effective are our current crop of vaccines against them?
- Why do we need vaccine efficacy (VE) studies?
- Are there Policy questions that VE studies can answer?
- What do we know about omicron and Son of Omicron
- How good are the current vaccines at keeping people from getting infected? From being hospitalized? From dying?
- How good are the vaccines at protecting people who have had Covid?
- Where are the gaping holes in our policies?
I know that you are not going to want to miss the FINAL VDC of the 2021-2022 Season so REGISTER NOW!
-Kimbi
June - August, 2022
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.
September 7, 2022
Virtual VDC
Focus: Epidemiology
Attendance: 1,157
Monkeypox:
The Next Big Thing?
Monkeypox: Little Misnomer, Big Surprises
Capt Jennifer McQuiston, DVM, MS
Deputy Director, Division of High Consequence Pathogens and Pathology
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Love in the Time of Monkeypox
Rachel Kachur, MPH
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:
- Is a 4,800+ member organization now in its 24th year that exists to facilitate networking, dialogue, and collaboration between researchers, clinicians, policy makers, historian/journalists, and science-savvy members of the general public who are interested in vaccine need, history, policy, discovery, development, testing, deployment, use, and/or evaluation. Also in diseases that we WISH were vaccine preventable.
- Normally meets in person on the Emory campus for wine and cheese, a truly excellent science talk, and a casual buffet dinner but will – until administration is once again super excited about having several hundred people eating and mingling, unmasked, in a poorly ventilated indoor space – continue meeting online via Zoom (meetings will be recorded).
- Has two missions:
1) To advance the practice of vaccine science and
2) to have a really good time at our monthly meetings. - Is THE place for inquiring minds to [virtually] be on the first Wednesday evening (usually) of every month during the academic year.
- All of the above
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
October 5, 2022
Virtual VDC
Focus: Vaccine Uptake Issues
Attendance: 1,131
Doubling Down:
Boosting Our Way
Out of the Pandemic
(Or Not)
Paul Offit, MD
Maurice R. Hilleman Professor of Vaccinology
Perelman School of Medicine
University of Pennsylvania
- Clubhouse Location:
- A Zoom screen near you
- Agenda: (all times Eastern time zone)
-
6:25pm — Grab a beer, soda, or a glass of wine 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,
- Booster seats let you sit at the big kids' table
- Booster clubs help you root for your hometown sports team
- Booster rockets make it possible to escape Earth's rather tenacious gravity well
- Booster pumps deliver drinking water right to your kitchen sink
- Booster bags are used by the discerning shoplifter
- Booster cables fix things when you leave the dome light on too long inside your car
- Booster tanks make it possible to co-exist with teenage hot water hogs
- Booster zombies emit potent fumes that make nearby zekes harder to kill
- Booster vaccines are the way out of this pandemic… or are they?
Boosters have a lot of great uses! Want to hear more about them?
Come to the October meeting of the VDC when Dr. Paul Offit talks to us about booster somethings*….
See you for (virtual) dinner at the Club soon
-Kimbi
Your friendly neighborhood Vaccine Dinner Club Goddess
*Spoiler alert … sadly, Dr. Offit is probably not going to talk to us about booster zombies
November 2, 2022
Virtual VDC
Focus: Public Health
Attendance: 483
Getting Caught Up Before We Get Caught Out:
Recovering from the Pandemic's Impact on Routine Vaccinations
Sarah Meyer, MD MPH
National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- Clubhouse Location:
- A Zoom screen near you
- Agenda: (all times Eastern time zone)
-
6:25pm — Grab a beer, soda, or a glass of wine 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,
November 2 is a big day in history! Here is an annotated sample of events provided by Britannica:
- 11/2/1755: Marie Antoinette born. In celebration, her parents issue a proclamation to the populous: "Let them eat cake!," thereby accidentally setting an unfortunate precedent.
- 11/2/1889: European settlers in the Dakota Territory, who had earlier come to blows over the issue of whether the capital should be in Bismarck or Pierre, split the Territory into two pieces (North and South), which join the union as the 39th and 40th states on the same day. Absolutely no one pays attention when the indigenous Sioux people suggest that BOTH capitals be immediately re-located to 100 miles west of San Francisco, California.*
- 11/2/1936: Quite thoroughly ahead of their time, the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) launches history's first television channel, with a broadcasting radius of 25 miles, while there are still only about 2,000 television sets in the entire world. There is no credible basis to the rumors that Sir John Reith started BBC One in order to have a shot at playing Dr. Who.
- 11/2/1947: Howard Hughes takes his custom-built airplane, the Spruce Goose, out for its first, and only ever, flight. The eight-engine, all wood, 'flying boat' is 6 times larger than any other aircraft of this time and is intended to carry 750 passengers. The historic half-mile flight lasted 30 seconds and reached an elevation of 25 feet. At which point the ghosts of Orville and Wilbur Wright are clearly heard to chortle: "Neener, Neener, Neener!"
- 11/2/1957: Texans report sightings of unidentified flying objects with bright lights. Jim Lee, head of the Interplanetary Space Patrol, immediately predicts that UFOs "will soon come in large numbers for all to see and the skeptics will have no choice but to agree." Well, OK then.
- 11/2/1976: Jimmy Carter (Democrat) elected 39th president of the United States. His successful defense against an aquatic attack rabbit plays no discernable role in his election.
- 11/2/1988: In an unexpectedly successful experiment, computer science student Robert Morris designs and releases the first computer worm. It immediately brings some 6,000 computers (one-tenth of the entire Internet at that time) to a halt. Mr. Morris' class grade on the assignment is lost to history, but he was subsequently deified as the patron saint of spam bots.
- 11/2/2022: The Vaccine Dinner Club meets for the 209th time. Everyone in attendance learns something new about our efforts to recover from the pandemics impact on routine vaccinations.
Do YOU want to be a part of history and learn something new? See you for (virtual) dinner at the Club on November 2nd.
-Kimbi
Your friendly neighborhood Vaccine Dinner Club Goddess
*for those of you not familiar with the geography of the United States, 100 miles west of San Francisco, CA sits quite thoroughly in the midst of the Pacific Ocean.
December 7, 2022
Virtual VDC
Focus: Public Health
Attendance: 530
A Tale of Two Viruses:
It was the best of times,
it was the worst of times
...it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair……."
(with apologies to Charles Dickens).
Dennis Burton, PhD
Department of Immunology and Microbiology Diseases
Scripps Research Institute
- Clubhouse Location:
- A Zoom screen near you
- Agenda: (all times Eastern time zone)
-
6:25pm — Grab a beer, soda, or a glass of wine 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,
| A Tale of Two Viruses | ||
|---|---|---|
| Zoonotic disease | ||
| Took the globe by storm | ||
| Politically and socially controversial | ||
| STILL killing large numbers of people | ||
| Better at mutating than the X-men are* | ||
| Trigger broadly neutralizing antibodies | ||
| Vaccine Preventable |
*OK… this isn't actually a fair comparison since fewer Covid mutations have been generated collectively within everyone on the planet since 2019 than the number of mutations that can be generated daily in one single person with HIV.
But be that as it may, it has been 41 years since HIV first hit the scientific radar … shouldn't we have a vaccine for it by now? Well, it's all about the mutations.
If you remember that vaccines work by basically saying: "Yo, immune system! Here is a picture of the bad bug that you should be hunting for; when you see something that looks like this, build a battalion of antibodies against it and attack on sight!" -- so the whole thing quickly devolves into a biologic arms race wherein antibodies are constantly looking for a known weakness -- ala the viral version of a Star Wars Death Star thermal exhaust port – even as viruses are constantly changing up their architecture in order to eliminate the found flaws … thereby forcing us to update our vaccines.
But what if we were able to produce especially talented antibodies that are capable of more broadly neutralizing all the most crucial bits of a virus at once? Some fortunate few individuals seem to be able to do just that. Which suggests an intriguing route for vaccine development in BOTH the fields of Covid and HIV….
Join us at the December meeting of the Vaccine Dinner Club when Dr. Dennis Burton talks about approaches to making vaccines against the two viruses given their sequence diversity. In particular, isolating and characterizing broadly neutralizing antibodies to these viruses as a starting point for vaccine design.
Sound intriguing?
-Kimbi
Your friendly neighborhood Vaccine Dinner Club Goddess