If the adults are back in charge in Washington, someone should tell them the kids escaped the White House nursery and are presently running the show. In a move destined to go down as the pinnacle of President Biden’s chaotic and dysfunctional administration, some of his senior advisors are now calling for planned Covid-19 booster shots to be canceled despite the President’s continued and ardent support for the move since August.
Keep in mind these are health advisors pushing back against Biden and his political advisors because the “science” doesn’t seem to favor a strong need for Covid-19 booster shots among the general public. This is an issue we covered last month asking why Biden is pushing booster shots so hard against advice from his own FDA and CDC? The answer is based on purely political motives, it would seem.
Now reports are surfacing that the entire question of Covid booster shots has been so poorly handled that health advisors are ready to quietly scrap the entire plan:
A vocal contingent of prominent doctors and scientists is pressing the Biden administration to scrap its plans to provide booster shots to all previously vaccinated adults, according to five people familiar with the matter.
Several of these outside experts, including some who advised President Joe Biden’s transition team, objected to the administration’s approach during a private, off-the-record call last week with federal health officials. Current U.S. data on vaccine performance does not justify using boosters widely to reduce the risk of breakthrough infections and slow the virus’ spread, the experts said.
How could this rollout be going so badly? Why would the Biden administration push against the will of his own health experts and scientists to talk up booster shots so publicly back in August, only to be humiliated now by those same people calling for him to scrap the plan?
This administration is in dysfunctional chaos on so many things, but up until this point, their Covid-19 messaging was pretty straightforward and somewhat coherent. The vaccines in the Spring were supposed to be the answer and then everything changed with Delta. Since that time, when Biden was saluting our “hot vax summer” back in July, the administration’s approach has become disjointed and confusing.
Biden’s pledge to “follow the science” has become a joke since so much of the recent Covid messaging has been political, not scientific:
The growing split between Biden’s team and outside health experts on boosters threatens to disrupt a key source of support the administration has relied on to sell its vaccination drive to the American public. Biden, who took office pledging to “follow the science,” until recently enjoyed the enthusiastic backing of eminent physicians and researchers as he attempted to crush Covid-19 and revive the U.S. economy. But the White House’s sweeping vision for boosters has weakened those ties.
Now, even some experts who support the president’s broad booster strategy say the White House has fumbled its messaging on the topic, confusing the public as Biden’s team tries to limit new surges of infection through the winter.
The big question is why the administration would press forward with boosters knowing full well a large swath of his own health experts vehemently disagreed. They were bound to speak out eventually, either publicly or anonymously, and damage the administration’s reputation when it comes to public trust.
President Trump was often accused by his critics of skirting his health advisors in the name of politics. Here is President Biden openly doing the same thing with pushback from actual doctors saying his stated support for boosters has no scientific consensus and the public is so confused that it would be best to drop the entire plan.
Calling this a catastrophe isn’t overstating the terms considering Biden’s public approval on Covid-related matters has been dropping since July. Once the vaccination push was bungled with the Delta variant derailing those efforts, public opinion has started to sour on Biden’s handling of Covid-19, and many health experts are noticing:
“It undermines credibility not just for [federal health] agencies but for the administration overall,” said Irwin Redlener, director of the Pandemic Resource and Response Initiative at Columbia University. “Somebody needs a communication lesson. Maybe many people do.”
The entire public health bureaucracy needs a communication lesson and it has been needed for the past two years. Dr. Anthony Fauci’s advice has been confusing, and contradictory of himself on numerous occasions. The political advice has been all over the map. The Biden administration thought it was basically done with Covid thanks to the vaccines, but now we’re stuck in this weird in-between place where the politicians are still arguing with the scientists, and vice-versa. Then they wonder why the public has hesitancy at fully trusting health officials when they claim to know things definitively or make promises about returning to “normal.”
It’s hard to see how Biden comes out ahead if he continues pushing booster shots against the advice of his health experts. Why keep mentioning them if there is no consensus behind them? Perhaps it’s political, and Biden needs to keep beating the vaccination drum to shame the unvaccinated. In his mind, Americans getting booster shots are multiple laps ahead of the unvaccinated who will be further and further behind and finally shamed into getting the jab if Biden keeps pushing forward.
All of this is coming at a time when a slew of vaccine-related news stories will be breaking soon, especially when it comes to vaccine approval for children between ages 5 and 12. To say the federal government is an inefficient communicator is an understatement.
