By a 16-2 vote, an FDA advisory panel rejected President Biden’s plan to offer boosters to the general public as soon as next week.
By a 16-2 vote, an FDA advisory panel rejected President Biden’s plan to offer boosters to the general public as soon as next week. Putting aside for a moment the arguments for or against booster shots at this stage of the pandemic, the sequence of events on booster shots has revealed a White House in complete dysfunction.
On August 18, Biden announced a plan to start giving booster shots to every American adult starting the week of September 30. “Just remember, as a simple rule — rule: Eight months after your second shot, get a booster shot,” Biden said.
CDC director Rochelle Walensky signed onto the plan, arguing of the vaccines, “We’re starting to see waning in infection. We think that may result soon in waning in severe disease and outcome. We certainly don’t want to see that here. That’s why we’re planning now to get ahead of it before that happens.”
A little more than a week later, on August 27, Biden, speaking with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, indicated that the U.S. could actually follow Israel’s lead and speed up the timeline. “We’re considering the advice you’ve given that we should start earlier,” Biden said. “Should it be as little as five months, and that’s being discussed.”
Yet Anthony Fauci had to do damage control two days later, reiterating that, “We’re still planning on eight months.”
But — whether it was five months or eight months — at no point did Biden manage to make sure that his administration was on the same page as the FDA.
A few days later, two of the FDA’s top vaccine experts resigned over the Biden booster shot plan. Jim Geraghty walked through some of the reasons for their skepticism, which they spelled out in a Lancet article.
And today came the vote, which, while not binding, is highly influential in the ultimate FDA decision on boosters.
To be clear, the panel did not uniformly say boosters were a bad idea in all cases, for all time — it recommended the boosters for the elderly, for instance. “It’s likely beneficial, in my opinion, for the elderly, and may eventually be indicated for the general population,” Ofer Levy, a vaccine and infectious disease specialist at Boston Children’s Hospital, said before voting against the Biden plan. “I just don’t think we’re there yet in terms of the data.”
There are arguments both in favor of and against booster shots at this time. But by putting the cart before the horse, Biden guaranteed that any booster strategy that is ultimately pursued will be met by a higher degree of skepticism than it otherwise would have. And it isn’t clear at this point, even if Americans want to diligently follow the science, who they should trust.
Should they trust Fauci, the CDC, and Biden, who are making the case for boosters? FDA experts who are skeptical? Do we think that the usefulness of vaccines erodes within eight months, or do we think that protection is longer lasting?
Is there a neutral party in this? Because there is good reason to distrust everybody. Biden is clearly eager to show he is being aggressive on COVID-19 during the Delta surge, but the FDA has a long history of being overly cautious. There is every reason why pharmaceutical companies would have an interest in promoting boosters. But also, plenty of public health officials are in bed with the global health community, which is concerned about wealthy countries giving booster shots to their populations while poorer countries still haven’t had much access to initial doses.
Even though the question of the necessity of boosters is distinct from the question of whether the vaccines themselves are safe and effective, one can’t help but worry that Biden’s bungled handling of the booster campaign is going to sow further doubt about the vaccine itself among skeptical populations.