933 - Fall Vaccine Confusion with Your Local Epidemiologist

Public Health On Call

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Novelcoronavirus, Health, Publichealth, Covid, Globalhealth, Coronavirus, News, Health & Fitness, Education, Medicine, Covid19, Science

4.8 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 15 August 2025

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

About this episode:

Fall vaccines for flu, RSV, and—more recently—COVID have long followed a uniform rollout schedule allowing clinics and pharmacies ample time to order and administer shots. But that process looks different this year, raising concerns about access. In this episode: Katelyn Jetelina, publisher of Your Local Epidemiologist, explains how changes to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and the FDA are pushing back the timeline and changing recommendations for routine vaccinations.

Guest:

Katelyn Jetelina, PhD, MPH, is an epidemiologist and scientific communicator. She is the co-founder of Health Trust Initiative, an adjunct professor at Yale School of Public Health, and a Senior Scientific Advisor to several government and non-profit agencies, including the CDC. In addition, Jetelina is the publisher of Your Local Epidemiologist.

Host:

Lindsay Smith Rogers, MA, is the producer of the Public Health On Call podcast, an editor for Expert Insights, and the director of content strategy for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Show links and related content:

What’s the plan for fall vaccines? If you're confused, you're not alone—Your Local Epidemiologist
Covid cases rising in US as officials plan to restrict booster vaccines—The Guardian
Will New Vaccine Recommendations Affect Your Fall Flu Shot?—AARP

Transcript information:

Looking for episode transcripts? Open our podcast on the Apple Podcasts app (desktop or mobile) or the Spotify mobile app to access an auto-generated transcript of any episode. Closed captioning is also available for every episode on our YouTube channel.

Contact us:

Have a question about something you heard? Looking for a transcript? Want to suggest a topic or guest? Contact us via email or visit our website.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,
0:05.9	where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges.
0:16.3	If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jh.
0:21.6	Jh.edu.
0:23.6	That's public health question at jh.u.edu for future podcast episodes.
0:29.6	Hi listeners, it's Lindsay Smith Rogers.
0:31.6	Today, confusion around COVID vaccines.
0:35.6	Caitlin Jettelina of your local epidemiologist returns to the podcast to talk with me about
0:40.5	why this fall may be anything but typical when it comes to COVID vaccines and how this
0:45.4	could be an indicator of other changes to come for routine vaccines.
0:49.5	Let's listen.
0:51.9	Caitlin Jedalina, thank you so much for joining us back on public health on call.
0:55.6	How are you doing? Loaded question, Lindsay. Hanging in there this hour. Thank you for having me. Excited to be here. All right. So you and I were trying to figure out what we're going to talk about for this episode. And there were so many like, well, this could happen and this could happen. And then I said, let's just press record and let's just get this out.
0:53.7	So what we're talking about today is fall. like, well, this could happen and this could happen. And then I said, let's just press record and
1:10.9	let's just get this out. So what we're talking about today is fall COVID and flu vaccines. Why don't
1:16.5	you start with laying the scene of where we would normally be in the middle of August, like last year or
1:21.6	something like that? Yeah, so a lot of people don't know that our annual respiratory vaccine rollout happens behind the scenes, very kind of bureaucratic,
1:32.4	but also usually very smooth and synchronized sequence. I like to imagine it as dominoes that are
1:39.7	set up. And when the first domino falls, which is usually in February, the rest just usually follow
1:45.4	in a very smooth and synchronized way. And then eventually we get shots in arms by fall.
1:52.1	And so if this was like last year or the past, I don't know, 20, 30 years, but what it would be
1:57.9	right now in mid-August is we would have clear guidelines from CDC through this organization called ASIP on who should be getting the flu vaccine, who should be getting like the RSA vaccine as well as COVID.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 16 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.