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We are officially in summer as of last week, and it certainly feels like it. Barring a mid-day thunderstorm, I'm going to sweat my way through mowing the lawn after I finish this post.

An Almost Marathon ACIP Meeting

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices met June 21 through 23 and covered a lot of ground. I was neither able (nor highly motivated, given the number of hours involved) to tune in to everything, but I did review all the slides and attend most of the discussions dealing with pediatric issues. I came up with some take-home messages. Note that the slides are all posted at the web link, and the meeting recording should be available in a few days.

General Thoughts

For influenza next season, egg allergy is further clarified: "Egg allergy in and of itself necessitates no additional safety measures for influenza vaccination beyond those recommended for any recipient of any vaccine, regardless of severity of previous reaction to egg." Allergy to the vaccine itself is an important consideration, but mere egg allergy is not. This statement conforms to existing scientific data and will make things much easier for healthcare providers and vaccine recipients.

A general overview of vaccine safety was presented on Friday, and it might be worthwhile for all healthcare providers to review at least the first portion so that they can better explain this extensive safety network to vaccine recipients and providers. Also, the latter portion discussed data on a possible link between vaccine aluminum cumulative exposure and subsequent asthma diagnoses. At this point, the association using US data is very weak but is being studied further. A study from Denmark using much better data (the benefits of a national health system) showed absolutely no association, but of course that's a different population from the US and also different vaccine schedule. Providers who are questioned specifically about this could refer to those slides.

Remember my June 11 post when I was grumbling about a movement in Congress to ban use of QALY (Quality Adjusted Life Years) by CMS? If you removed QALY analysis from this meeting, the ACIP couldn't have moved forward on anything. I'm hoping this congressional movement will get ditched, but keep an eye on it.

Also in general, we are lacking information about co-administration of newer vaccines with existing vaccines. This isn't unusual, but in some instances it could be pertinent. Prominent among those is the RSV vaccine for older adults, of course not a pediatric issue, and also lacking is efficacy information in the 85 and older and frail groups. For those specific items we will have more information eventually.

Pneumococcal Vaccine

Most of this segment centered around Pfizer's 20-valent conjugate vaccine in children. Because there are already several versions of pneumococcal vaccines available, both polysaccharide and conjugate forms, the possibilities seem endless. The committee discussed various options for children who are in the midst of their vaccine series and included regimens and combinations that have not been studied. Probably we will see formal recommendations soon, but pneumococcal vaccination is clearly the most confusing set of guidance in all of vaccinology even before the 20-valent option surfaced. This is because recommendations vary with age and specific risk groups. I can't even keep it straight in my head what I'm supposed to do for myself. Fortunately, there's an app for that. CDC has a wonderful tool called PneumoRecs, available for use on a computer or for download for Apple and Android phones. It works for all ages and risk factors, you just input specifics about your patient's age, risk factors, and prior vaccine history and poof you know what to do.

Meningococcal Pentavalent Vaccine

Meningococcal vaccination guidelines are very confusing as well, but also it is by far the most expensive (based on cost-effectiveness) vaccine recommended for routine use. This is because meningococcal disease is actually pretty uncommon, so vaccination doesn't prevent much morbidity and mortality particularly for meningococcal B disease. Meningococcus group B protection is more important for certain types of immune compromise (e.g. asplenia or terminal complement component deficiency) but used commonly for the college student age group. Many years ago I accepted the fact that many colleges are requiring it for their incoming freshmen, it is now more of a legal liability protection and I guess a measure of reassurance to parents whenever a college dormitory mini-cluster occurs.

The pentavalent vaccine combines the groups A, C, W, and Y in the existing quadrivalent vaccine with group B which now exists as a separate vaccine. ACIP did not have a vote on the pentavalent vaccine, it is still a work in progress. I did find a few epidemiologic graphs very informative. The graph below shows that meningococcal disease was declining significantly before the introduction of any vaccines in the US, making it difficult to know how much vaccination contributed to any further decline.

Second, the current number of cases is very low, and the numbers of cases in the 11-15 year olds would suggest that we should revise current recommendations.

The problem is that meningococcal immunity likely wanes significantly within a couple years after vaccination. So, giving a first dose of quadrivalent (or potentially pentavalent) vaccine in that 11-12 year old group is providing protection at the time they need it the least. That first dose should come later.

Regardless of the current vaccine recommendations, it is very clear that active and passive smoking is a significant risk factor for invasive meningococcal disease. Smoking increases binding of meningococci to respiratory epithelial cells, a major initiating event for invasive infection. Smoking reduction, including vaping though no specific vaping studies are available, is the most effective preventive measure against meningococcal disease in healthy adolescents.

Also keep in mind that epidemiologic trends might be different post-covid, as we saw initially for influenza and RSV.

RSV Prevention for Infants

This was primarily a discussion of the Pfizer RSV vaccine for pregnant people, without a vote by the committee meaning more to come on this decision. A major question regarding maternal vaccination is a possible association with premature delivery in recipients. The forest plot below shows a slight increased risk of preterm births.

What is particularly tough is that another maternal RSV vaccine study with a different manufacturer was stopped because of an increase in preterm births in the vaccine recipients compared to placebo. It's still not clear what the potential biologic mechanism would be for such an association, but for now this is a significant concern. Thankfully we are likely to have the long-acting monoclonal antibody, nirsivemab, available for the upcoming RSV season.

What I'm not including in this post, because I'm not smart enough to summarize effectively for a nonstatisticians and similar geeks, is the very elegant and thorough discussion of costs of various scenarios for RSV prevention in young infants. These considerations included using maternal vaccine and infant monoclonal antibody treatment, both separately and in combination. The combination is likely not going to be clinically- or cost-effective. Separate use (e.g. nirsevimab for mothers who did not receive vaccine, or infants born prematurely prior to maternal antibody transfer across the placenta) is difficult because providers may have difficulty accessing accurate maternal vaccine records. It's a bit of a messy consideration. Still, I wanted to at least introduce one new concept of tornado diagrams. I had great trouble even finding a user-friendly explanation for the link, but keep in mind that it is a method to determine the major factors driving cost-effectiveness. As stated in the link, big bars are the big drivers, small bars aren't. (The name comes from the shape of the graph - imagination required, nothing to with the weather.) Here is a tornado graph for nirsevimab.

It sort of looks like a tornado shape? The biggest drivers, which translate to a sensitivity analysis of how accurate the cost-effectiveness analysis is, include cost of nirsevimab, costs of hospitalizations, and our old friend QALYs lost. As you can see from the Incremental Cost-Effectiveness Ratio (ICER, the ratio of differences in cost between 2 options divided by the difference in effects such as QALYs) scale at the top, these are big bucks. I'm certainly no expert in ICERs and tornado diagrams, but this type of analysis is critical in choosing among various healthcare interventions at the population level.

I'll continue to keep my eyes peeled for better explanations of ICERs and tornado diagrams.

'Demic Doldrums

Hooray, we are still in a covid lull, including most places around the world including southern hemisphere. You can look at the good news in detail on the WHO website.

ACIP did discuss covid vaccines, briefly, but no significant new data to report. We are likely on target for monovalent XBB.1.5 vaccines available from all 3 US manufacturers by September. Also, look for some dosing simplification for the 2-4 year olds.

Off to the mower, after I drench myself in DEET.

2

I'm putting this post together on Father's Day, and tomorrow is Juneteenth, a holiday increasingly recognized in the US. Today two of my 3 sons are farther away than usual, one in Berlin, Germany, at the Special Olympics World Games and another working in healthcare in Mekele, Ethiopia. The third member of the triumvirate remains in the eastern US time zone.

Can anyone guess which state was the first to make Juneteenth a permanent state holiday?

Influenza Rising in Southern Hemisphere

The most recent World Health Organization update on influenza, published on June 12 with data current as of May 14, not surprisingly shows an uptick in flu activity in sections of the southern hemisphere. The influenza AH1N1 2009 pandemic strain and B Victoria lineages predominate, meaning we are likely in good shape from a vaccine standpoint for next winter in the US.

RSV and covid haven't increased to the same extent as flu in the south, for the most part.

Polio Vaccine for Travelers

'Tis the season for world travel, but I'm thinking many folks aren't aware of newer polio risks around the world. Spurred by the pandemic and various war zones, polio vaccination has waned. Also, as I've noted in the past we're seeing vaccine-derived polio disease via transmission from recipients of the oral live polio vaccine. The CDC continues to update polio vaccine recommendations for travelers. Twenty-nine countries around the world have circulating poliovirus, but in addition to the "usual suspects" the list now includes both Canada and the United Kingdom.

Certainly the risk can vary in settings within these countries, but primary care providers should remember to discuss vacation plans with families, not just out of interest but to make sure they are informed of any risks and where to find resources. Make sure all children are up to date on immunizations, including polio, and some adults may wish to receive a one-time killed polio vaccine booster if traveling to a high risk country.

'Demic Doldrums

Here in the US we continue with our low levels of SARS-CoV-2 circulation in most jurisdictions; now we rely primarily on ED visits and hospitalization rates for any early warning given our lack of other good community monitoring tools. The FDA VRBPAC group met on June 15 to advise on composition of the next covid vaccine, and I was able to attend most of the meeting including the important parts of the discussion sessions. All 3 US vaccine manufacturers (Moderna, Pfizer, and Novavax) presented data.

As most providers know, the XBB sublineages (XBB represents a recombination of omicron strains) now predominate; the ancestral strain has virtually disappeared from circulation in humans, as have all subsequent strains except for the omicron lineage. Without going into perhaps agonizing detail, most authorities agree that covid vaccines for the near future should focus on the XBB sublineage. The vaccine manufacturers have a fair amount of preliminary data on immunogenicity of XBB-containing vaccines. Results suggest good safety signals and good neutralizing antibody activity against currently circulating XBB strains. Less data are available for memory B- and T-cell responses to these vaccines, and nothing substantial so far on XBB vaccination of children. Work continues, and we should see more about pediatric XBB vaccination in the next month or 2.

A very important part of the presentation has to do with cross-reactivity of antibody among the various XBB strains that were tested. Because of this, a monovalent vaccine with any XBB strain is likely to be effective against these closely related sublineages. Since among other reasons all 3 companies had the most experience with the XBB.1.5 vaccine and can readily ramp up vaccine production for this product, the VRBPAC members unanimously voted to go this route and the FDA officially signed off on this recommendation. Next up is a discussion at the ACIP meeting on June 23, but don't expect any vote or final recommendations at this session. That should come a bit later. In particular, we will need guidance on pediatric use, combined use with other vaccines such as for influenza and RSV, and whether to recommend for all or just for certain high-risk populations.

Last week I perhaps dissed the CDC's use of color in their depiction of variants, but now I need to acknowledge I was wrong. The most recent MMWR had some nice graphics. The graph below not only shows the colorful distribution of variants but also the relatively low numbers of cases recently (with the caveat that testing in general is less now than in 2022).

As can be seen, we have been in an omicron world for some time, with XBB now in charge.

Quickly, a few other covid notables from last week:

Juneteenth

Perhaps not what you would have guessed, but my home state of Texas was the first to make Juneteenth a permanent state holiday, in 1980, which was decades before most of the rest of the country. I left Texas in 1984 and parts of it now are unrecognizable to me, but it's easy to understand why that state was out in front on Juneteenth. The original event was June 19, 1865, in Galveston, TX, when Union troops arrived and finally enacted the January 1, 1863, Emancipation Proclamation and freed slaves in Texas. In my childhood, unless you kept yourself under a rock, if you lived in Texas you knew about Juneteenth.

Happy Father's Day to all fathers out there, and to everyone please use Juneteenth to reflect on its many lessons that continue to challenge us to do better.

Last week I was watching my new washing machine at work. This week it was our "airborne toxic event" as Canadian wildfire haze, fumes, and particulate matter settled over the DC area for a couple days. I'll pick the washing machine any time.

Nirsevimab - Likely a Big Change for Pediatric Practice

Last Thursday the FDA's AMDAC (Antimicrobial Drugs Advisory Committee, expert panel advisors to CDER, the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research), met to discuss potential approval of a long-acting monoclonal antibody injection to prevent and modify RSV infection in infants. The panel voted unanimously to approve nirsevimab for this purpose in infants experiencing their first RSV season and favorably (19 yes, 2 no) to approve it in a second season for high-risk infants. The FDA has yet to announce any action on the panel's votes. However, the Advisory Council on Immunization Practices (ACIP) of the CDC is scheduled on June 22 to discuss nirsevimab along with the recently approved RSV vaccine for pregnant individuals to protect their infants.

I could only attend part of the AMDAC meeting on Thursday, but it was the most important part involving the panel's discussions of the data presented. Virtually all the data have already been published and it is pretty clear that a single dose of IM nirsevimab is safe and effective during a child's first RSV season, including infants at high risk (e. g. prematurity with or without BPD or other chronic lung disease, significant cardiac disease) but also for normal healthy infants born at term. I am departing from my usual practice of avoiding any suggestion of bias by not displaying any slides presented by the pharmaceutical sponsor. In this case I felt the FDA slides weren't good visual summaries. The sponsor's slides (at least the ones I'm showing) didn't overhype the data. Here's how nirsevimab works:

(Of course there is a little hype here - the title sneaks in their hope that nirsevimab will be approved for all infants, not just those at high risk for RSV complications. The items in the slide have nothing to do with that comparison. A typical pharmaceutical company subtle advertising ploy.)

Note that these trials (essentially 3 separate ones) started before the pandemic and then hit some real bumps in the road, with shutdowns in enrollment and absence of RSV disease during a couple winter seasons. Finally the main randomized trials were completed and showed favorable results.

MA RSV LRTI = medically attended RSV lower respiratory tract infection

I'm showing this Trial 04 because all of the subjects were at least 35 weeks gestational age, so not our traditional high risk population. Thus we see relatively low rates of medically attended disease and hospitalization but still primarily favoring use of nirsevimab.

Two big questions remain. First, how could this product be used (or not) for infants born to mothers who received the RSV vaccine during pregnancy? No studies address this. Second, what about administering the medication to high risk infants before their second RSV season? Although neutralizing antibody levels weren't zero a year after one injection, it isn't clear how much protection would remain. Normal healthy infants have even less risk of serious RSV disease during a second season, so the question really is just for the high risk kids. Those studies are ongoing but antibody studies of a second dose do suggest it would be protective.

I'm very interested to hear the ACIP discussion on June 22. From a practical standpoint, nirsevimab could be administered at hospital discharge for newborns born during or just before RSV season, but for others born at other times it could be given in healthcare offices as an outpatient sometime in the fall. We have a few months before RSV may return, I think it is likely nirsevimab will be part of our armamentarium in the fall. Stay tuned.

Deciding When to Administer Post-Exposure Rabies Vaccine

This has always been a tough issue: the disease is basically 100% fatal, so one would need to be pretty certain there was no significant exposure in order to withhold the vaccine series. An article trying to quantify risk appeared last week and reminded me of a former patient of mine. I saw a very intelligent high school student with pre-existing anxiety and other neurobehavioral issues who had developed something of a pathologic fear of rabies. (S)he had a recent concern for rabies exposure, but in the discussion of the events it was very clear that there was no exposure at all and no vaccine was indicated. Complicating the picture, however, was that later on (s)he was awarded a chance to study abroad in a country that had a higher rate of rabies in dogs and other animals, particularly in rural settings. The posting was actually in a major city with essentially no increased risk of rabies compared to the US, but the student asked for pre-exposure prophylaxis. I exhaustively reviewed everything about rabies in that country and presented my data to him/her and parent, stating that pre-exposure prophylaxis wasn't indicated. I never had follow-up for what happened, it was a tough situation and I couldn't help thinking that this setting was not a great choice for this student's learning.

If this situation presented itself to me again, particularly with a patient with high numeracy skills, I'd try to incorporate this article. The researchers used 24 different clinical scenarios and 10-year rabies rates in animals in the US to obtain opinions from 50 local and state public health practitioners who regularly advise on rabies prophylaxis. It's an interesting but complicated read that provides some quantification for risk.

Looking just at the graph on the left for Number Needed to Treat, you can see that for a low risk event such as a single bite to the arm from a vaccinated cat in Michigan that was ill and provoked, the graph becomes asymptotic. Using even more complicated logistic regression methods, the researchers concluded the best cutoff for providing prophylaxis was at a risk threshold (probability that a person was exposed to a rabid animal) of 0.0004. This is an appropriately very low number.

The bottom line for healthcare providers still is that they should discuss all rabies prophylaxis questions with their local health department experts. These folks do this all the time and are our best resources.

Checked Your QALY Lately?

That's Quality Adjusted Life Years, a commonly used measurement to aid in assessing value of a particular intervention such as a medication or vaccine. It attempts to place a number on how much better a person's life would be with the intervention and how long the benefit would last. So, QALY for a 70-year old usually is lower than for the same intervention in a 7-year old, assuming the intervention has equal benefits at both ages and that they both die at age 80. Shame on me for not realizing, until I read this opinion piece, that Congress is trying to forbid use of QALY in government health programs like Medicaid and Medicare!. Usually I try to stay away from politics, but this move is so ridiculous that I couldn't control myself. QALY is just one of many tools to use in judging effectiveness of health interventions, and it was never intended to be used for individual decision-making anyway. Banning it would only hinder healthcare program decisions.

Remember Where You Were on July 16, 1969?

Most medical students I've interacted with over the past couple decades weren't born yet and don't recognize anything about that date. For many years, I had a monthly session with groups of third-year medical students during their pediatric rotation. It was a game of sorts, guessing the disease from a CDC graph or map liberally sprinkled with hints from me. I used it to demonstrate the effect of vaccines, the lack of public health services in the Deep South, and other public health principles. For extra credit, I had this photo:

Most had no idea. A few times someone would recognize President Nixon. What's pictured is the quarantine station where the Apollo 11 astronauts were kept after splashing down in the Pacific, in case they were carrying moon germs. My next question was, "What is the incubation period of moon germs?" That met with a lot of blank stares, but the answer is 21 days since that is how long the astronauts were kept in isolation.

I mention this date of the first humans landing on the moon now, rather than next month, due to publication of even more details about this moment in history. Apparently there were so many leaks and other problems with the quarantine systems put in place that, if there were pathogens on the moon, likely we'd all have been caught up in a Moonicus germii pandemic that would have changed things forever.

'Demic Doldrums

Speaking of pandemics, thankfully we continue in the covid doldrums, with a few updates. We have even more data about vaccine safety in the 6 month to 5 year old age groups, courtesy of post-marketing systems in place maintaining our pharmacovigilance. Side effects are very minor.

WHO continues to report little covid activity worldwide.

The southern hemisphere has begun flu and RSV seasons in many places; Australia and South Africa have yet to see much of a bump in covid.

I logged into a CDC/COCA call on June 6 that included how our post-pandemic disease monitoring should be viewed. Here is a nice summary slide:

Wastewater is still a nice tool, but in the US this is still a voluntary reporting system and leaves much of the US without any data, so it's less helpful. Emergency room visits and hospitalizations for covid likely are the most effective indicators to signal a new wave.

Variant modeling continues, albeit with less specimens to test since less disease is going on. I included the latest from the UK (I think it's prettier than the US graphs).

XBB sublineages continue to predominate and may drive vaccine selection for the fall. The FDA VRBPAC meets on this on June 15. Will it be a monovalent vaccine focused on just 1 XBB strain? More on that next week.

2

About 6 weeks ago, our washing machine's spin cycle started making noise and vibrations equivalent to the latest SpaceX rocket launch. After much hand-ringing and YouTube consulting, my wife and I decided it was time to move on from our elderly washer, initiating another round of internet searching. Our laundry space is very small. limiting our choice of washers. We ended up with a top-loading version equipped with a window in the top, making for some interesting entertainment better, than most of what's available on cable or streaming venues.

In the midst of all this upheaval, I somehow managed to keep an eye on infectious diseases.

Severe Neonatal Enteroviral Disease in France

In early May French authorities reported on several cases of severe enteroviral infections in neonates, summarized by the World Health Organization on May 31. Nine newborns developed late-onset sepsis syndromes with severe hepatitis and multi-organ involvement, resulting in 7 deaths. All had developed some symptoms by 7 days of age, typical of perinatal transmission from mothers. Cases were spread out since July 2022 and over 3 different regions but remarkably included 4 sets of twins.

ECHOvirus type 11 was detected in all 9 of the infants and in 4 of the 5 mothers tested. (A side note: I have capitalized ECHO because it is an acronym for Enteric Child Human Orphan. This came about because the original reports of ECHO viral isolation were from stool samples of human children; however, the children weren't orphans. Instead, it was the virus that was an orphan, because the children were asymptomatic. The virus was orphaned from any disease. This is a reminder that most enteroviral infections, even polio, are asymptomatic.)

Enteroviruses circulate worldwide all the time, with increases in the US usually in late summer. Enteroviral infection is always on the differential of neonatal sepsis syndromes.

Don't Work When You Are Sick

Easy to say, but in the past I've been guilty of toughing out a mild upper respiratory infection at work, trying to be diligent about hand washing, etc. Those days should be gone in our current covid era.

It's not surprising to see a new CDC report showing that a large number of foodborne illness outbreaks can be traced to sick restaurant workers. Almost 70% of 800 foodborne outbreaks reported to CDC from 2017-2019 had an identified etiology, and around 40% of those were traced to sick or infectious food workers. Norovirus was by far the most commonly identified at 47%, followed by Salmonella at 19%.

Handwashing, anyone?

Updated Hepatitis C Guidelines

We have updated hepatitis C management guidelines, including for children as young as 3 years of age. In pediatrics most of these cases will require subspecialty referral, but primary care providers should be aware of the key points. Thankfully, mother to child transmission of HCV is relatively uncommon, as I mentioned in my post last March 12.

Sonographic Testing in Febrile UTI

A group of investigators from Toronto and Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, performed a superb meta-analysis looking at the outcomes of obtaining renal ultrasound in children < 24 months of age at the time of first febrile UTI. I include it here because it demonstrates the most common outcome of a meta-analysis: no information that can be immediately incorporated into clinical practice.

The authors reviewed the varying guidance for when to obtain renal sonography in childhood UTI. The problem with sonography, in addition to the costs and inconvenience for families, primarily involve identification of trivial abnormalities that lead to unnecessary further tests and treatments, aka Ulysses Syndrome. I won't dwell at all on the complex statistical methods and only say that I was very impressed with the authors' thoughtfulness in constructing the approach.

Their initial literature search identified 2362 studies, culled down to 29 studies with an aggregate of 9170 subjects after applying predetermined study inclusion criteria. Nineteen of those studies were retrospective in design, with 10 involving prospective cohorts. None were randomized controlled trials or prospective comparisons of management strategies (e.g. comparing children who had sonogram after first febrile UTI versus obtaining after the second UTI). In this collection of studies, sonographic abnormalities were found in 22% of children. Most of these were clinically insignificant. In the 8 studies (2569 children total) that defined a population with clinically important abnormalities, the prevalence was 3.1% as seen in the forest plot below.

I include this figure to draw your attention to 2 things. First, look at the large variation in rates among the individual studies. Second, note the high numbers for heterogeneity. Heterogeneity refers to how different the designs of the individual studies were from one another, and high heterogeneity is a red flag for lower confidence in the results of a meta-analysis. It's sort of like a scale of comparing apples to apples (low heterogeneity) versus apples to oranges (high heterogeneity).

The end result of this study is a very clear roadmap for design of studies to decide if and when to perform renal ultrasonography in pediatric UTI. Most importantly, we must have prospective studies with comparison groups, to provide guidance to clinicians. The authors also highlighted the absence of any studies looking at parent-reported outcomes.

'Demic Doldrums

Last week saw a few noteworthy updates. CDC provided more information about covid transmission during the first in-person Epidemic Intelligence Service meeting since before the pandemic. In this meeting that occurred in late April, 1443 of 1800 in-person attendees responded to a CDC survey regarding covid infection. 181 (13%) tested positive, 49 received antiviral therapy, and thankfully none were hospitalized. 99.4% had received at least 1 vaccine dose prior to the conference.

An international group reported some success with a whole-blood transcriptional RNA "signature" to diagnose MIS-C. Using a discovery population of 38 children with MIS-C, 136 with Kawasaki Disease, 138 with viral infection, 188 with bacterial infection, and 134 healthy controls, they identified 5 genes to include in the signature. They then tested this in a validation study utilizing 37 MIS-C, 17 KD, 41 non-covid viral infections, 50 bacterial infections, and 24 healthy controls. They found reasonable correlations of the RNA signatures with the pre-established diagnoses, but of course the main problem is deciding whether the pre-established diagnoses were correct, i.e. we may not have a great gold standard for comparisons. I'll be watching closely for further studies on larger and more varied clinical populations.

The Washer Channel

Our laundry closet is microscopic, meaning we had few choices for what would fit in the space, not to mention our desire to have an ecologically sound machine. We ended up with an impeller model, new to us and therefore a source of curiosity. This week I finally finished watching the "Lucky Hank" series that I recorded and had mentioned in my April 23, 2023 post. It was interesting to see how Richard Ford's book was changed for the smallish screen. If you were thinking about watching "Lucky Hank," in my opinion you are better off reading the book, or even just watching your washing machine.