Pfizer vaccines.
Photo:
Pfizer/Associated Press
The public-health bureaucracy is adopting yet another excessive vaccination policy. On Oct. 12 the Food and Drug Administration authorized bivalent Covid-19 boosters from
and
for use in children as young as 5 and 6, respectively. The same day, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended the vaccines for children 5 to 11. Neither shot is likely to find many takers, but that won’t stop the Biden administration from wasting billions of dollars buying them.
Since Covid shots first became available, the federal government has purchased and distributed them instead of relying on the market to match supply with demand. The result has been colossal waste. Between December 2020 and mid-May 2022, the U.S. wasted 82.1 million doses. Some expired on pharmacy shelves before they could be used; others were discarded after remaining unclaimed in opened multidose vials.
The FDA authorized bivalent vaccines at the end of August for people who had received their primary dose series or their most recent booster shot at least two months prior. The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices ratified the recommendation, despite concerns among some members that the vaccines didn’t have enough testing on human subjects and that two months wasn’t long enough between shots. The Biden administration announced on Sept. 8 that it had secured 170 million of the updated doses. It is still seeking an additional $22 billion from Congress to buy more.
Only 19.4 million Americans have received bivalent boosters to date—only 8.6% of the number who completed their primary two-dose vaccine series. The reason for low demand is simple. People respond to risk. Daily new Covid cases have been declining for three months. Daily deaths with Covid have been low and stable since May. Unsurprisingly, the number of vaccines administered daily has fallen from its…
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