News: 🌽 Axios Vitals: Food fight

Monday, May 2, 2022

🌽 Axios Vitals: Food fight

Presented By PhRMA

Axios Vitals

By Tina Reed · May 02, 2022

Good morning, Vitals readers. I'm back from a quick trip to Austin, Texas, where I attended the Association of Health Care Journalists conference.

I'm already mentally planning a return trip to this awesome city (shameless plug: Axios has an Austin newsletter) where I somehow only just discovered attractions include watching a massive urban bat colony come out at night.

Today's newsletter is 826 words or a 3-minute read.

1 big thing: Pressure grows for COVID shots for the littlest Americans

Photo illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios; Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Moderna's request for authorization of its COVID-19 vaccine in children under six years is amping up pressure on the Food and Drug Administration to act quickly on the shots.

Why it matters: Thursday's request from the vaccine maker threw another wrinkle in the delicate regulatory dance over when kids under 5 can be vaccinated at a time when plenty of parents are expressing growing frustration with the wait.

Driving the news: Biden administration officials indicated they would prefer the FDA evaluate data and simultaneously make decisions about how Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech's vaccines work on small children, to give parents more of a comparison, the New York Times writes. That could take as long as June.

That prospect prompted Washington Post columnist Alyssa Rosenberg recently to call for the FDA to "stop treating parents like idiots."
"I hear from lots of parents every day, asking, 'Do you know, do you know? When's it going to be approved?'" Jessica Snowden, a doctor at Arkansas Children's Hospital, told the Times.
While this is entirely unscientific, my own email inbox of questions from parents would show they've been watching this news as closely as they've been watching the calendar days until their kid's fifth birthday — when they'd qualify for a shot.

What to watch: The FDA announced Friday it held the dates June 8, 21 and 22 for its key advisory committee to discuss the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech requests for emergency authorization for kids 5 and under. A top official told Congress last week that the FDA would not delay any shots and that at least one shot could be available by June.

What he's saying: "I know how concerned parents are," FDA commissioner Robert Califf said on Friday, telling reporters the agency was still waiting for all the data. 'We'll act as quickly as we possibly can," he said.

2. Booker picks food fight

Senator Cory Booker. Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) had a tense back-and-forth with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack during a closed-door Senate lunch last Thursday over the Biden administration's efforts to address nutrition in minority communities, people familiar with the matter tell Axios' Hans Nichols.

Zoom in: Booker, a passionate vegan, appeared to catch Vilsack off-guard when he questioned what the department was doing to reform agribusiness and help provide healthier food to poorer Americans, Nichols writes.

Zoom out: Booker, who chairs the Agriculture Subcommittee on Food and Nutrition, has been pushing for legislation to reform the U.S. farm system.

He's also been trying to get a White House nutrition summit off the ground. The idea is that it would be patterned after a landmark White House conference in 1969 which prompted policy changes to address hunger in America.

What he said: "Only about 2% of our ag subsidies are going to the things we tell Americans to eat: fresh fruits and vegetables," Booker told me in December.

"We see ourselves creating a reality where the abundant availability of very cheap, hyper-processed, empty nutrition food is everywhere and, as of now, it's about two-thirds of our children's diets are these foods that ultimately are making them overweight, obese, and very sick."

3. Connecticut passes "safe haven" bill

The Connecticut state Senate passed a bill late Friday night to protect abortion providers from bans in other states that are enforced via civil lawsuits, Axios' Oriana Gonzalez writes.

Driving the news: The unique legislation is a direct response to laws in Texas, Idaho and Oklahoma that ban abortions either entirely or as soon as six weeks into pregnancy and allow private parties to sue anyone who they suspect has helped a person obtain an abortion.

It could "serve as a blueprint for states across the country seeking to protect the right to choose" as red states continue to pass restrictive laws, according to Connecticut state Rep. Matt Blumenthal (D), one of the bill's authors.

Go deeper.

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Insured Americans face barriers to care

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4. Quote du jour

Trevor Noah. Photo: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images

"Fauci thought it was too dangerous to come tonight. Pete Davidson thinks it's OK. And we all went with Pete."

— Trevor Noah, host of "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central, speaking at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner in D.C. on Saturday.

5. While you were weekending...

Illustration of a desk on a beach under a palm tree.

Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

🗣 Amazon is no longer offering paid time off for its front-line workers who test positive for COVID, workers were told in a notice on Saturday, although a spokeswoman said they can still use sick time. (CNBC)

🧠 The same pandemic-driven boom in mental health and wellness apps that helped ease two years of COVID-driven discontents is now raising alarms over privacy, efficacy and a blurring of the line between formal medical treatment and general self-care. (Axios)

💊 Pfizer reported that a large trial found that its COVID-19 antiviral treatment Paxlovid wasn't effective at preventing infections in those living in the same household as someone else who had the virus. (Reuters)

👩‍🔬 "Authentic" Theranos company swag is apparently for sale on eBay, but it'll cost you. A set of five Theranos pens claimed to be from the scandal-ridden blood-testing company recently sold for $150 while a lab coat was listed for $11,000. (The Guardian)