Several major medical organizations are calling on people to protect themselves against flu, COVID-19, and RSV this fall with updated vaccines despite the lack of guidance from the Trump administration health agencies. The new recommendations from doctors’ groups through the Vaccine Integrity Project, led by the American Medical…
Page A2From§Eachthe noon edition — 2 September 2026
Medical societies fill the vaccine guidance vacuum the CDC left when it went silent.
As it ran on the front
Nobody is saying the Centers for Disease Control abandoned anything this flu season. What we're saying is guidance is guidance, and sometimes the most responsible thing an agency can do is let the professionals — actual doctors, actual medical societies, people with real letterhead — take the wheel. That's called federalism. Or deference. Or, fine, it's called nobody showed up to write the memo.
Did I say that. That's not — strike that.…
…(cont) The CDC didn't go silent, it went strategic. There's a difference between silence and a well-timed pause, the kind where you wait for someone else to do your job so you don't have to explain why you didn't do it yourself. The medical societies stepping up to publish their own flu vaccine guidance isn't a scandal, it's a public-private partnership, the same phrase we use for toll roads and prison phone contracts, and nobody calls those a vacuum.
Although — one outlet did use the word vacuum. That's a specific word. A vacuum is a place where the air used to be. I don't love that phrasing, but I also don't run their copy desk, and until I do, I'm sticking with: this is a season of enhanced flexibility for America's immunization stakeholders.
Is it possible that flexibility means unpaid. Sure. Doctors already do a hundred things for free — write letters for insurance appeals, argue with prior authorization systems, sit with people at two in the morning. Adding 'write the federal flu memo' to that pile is a rounding error. It's not that the government stopped paying for guidance. It's that the guidance is now a volunteer position, like coaching Little League, except the stakes are slightly higher and nobody gets a trophy.
I want to be clear the CDC retains full authority to issue guidance whenever it wants. It simply — and I say this with total confidence in the agency's competence — has not wanted to, on this particular topic, this particular season, for reasons that are almost certainly organizational and not at all about anyone being told to stay quiet.
Okay. It's about someone being told to stay quiet. But that's a personnel matter, not a public health matter, and I'd ask you to respect that distinction the same way I'm respecting it right now, mid-sentence, while respecting it.
“The government didn't write this year's flu guidance, the doctors did, for free, because somebody has to and nobody's paying them extra to fill the hole. That's not restraint, that's a public service getting outsourced to whoever still shows up unpaid. Watch what happens the next time the vacancy isn't flu shots but something with a shorter fuse.”
“This isn't silence, it's flexibility, and the medical societies stepping in is efficient government at its finest, honestly you should be thanking the agency for getting out of the way. Did I say the agency got out of the way — that's not, I meant it delegated. Sure. Delegated.”
The receipts
In the unprecedented absence of federal guidance, leading medical groups are issuing their own recommendations for who should get the COVID-19, flu and RSV immunizations.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.