Why do we boost???

Last update: Monday 10/17/22 

"This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper."

T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men, 1925

Eliot published those words almost one hundred years ago, but they still make us queasy because we still meet complex, existential challenges, not by resolving them, but by muddling through them, one clumsy foot after another. Thus we blunder our way to a confused ending to a grossly mismanaged pandemic wherein a million people died in this country at a far higher rate than in any other so-called advanced nation. 

This note's specific blunder is our failed booster campaign, a campaign that has been a failure from its dubious inception in the summer of 2021 when the nation's newest expert on infectious diseases, a/k/a President Joe Biden, suddenly announced his administration's intention to provide booster shots for everyone, even though the data that justified universal boosting was not available.

• "Biden Ramps Up Virus Strategy for Nursing Homes and Schools, and Urges Booster Shots", Sharon LaFraniere, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Erica L. Green, NY Times, 8/18/21 
• "Two Top F.D.A. Vaccine Regulators Are Set to Depart During a Crucial Period", Noah Weiland and Sharon LaFraniere, NY Times, 8/31/21
•  "Health Officials Advise White House to Scale Back Booster Plan for Now", Sharon LaFraniere and Noah Weilan, NY Times, 9/3/21
• "U.S. Booster Policy Is in Flux as Studies Add to Dissent", Sharon LaFraniere and Noah Weiland, NY Times, 9/17/21

To be sure, there was lots of data back then (as well as now) that supported boosters for members of the oldest, most vulnerable age groups and for younger persons afflicted with health conditions that make them especially vulnerable to COVID. But there was little data back then (or now) to support boosters for anyone else. Some of this data is showcased on this blog's COVID FAQs page.

President Biden's ham-handed intervention was the same kind of political interference that caused liberal/progressive mainstream media to slam President Trump for our failed pandemic management while he was in office. President Biden's political overreach set the stage for the subsequent failure of our booster efforts. In their craving to return to normal living, most Americans, including millions of the oldest and/or health compromised, ignored his administration's subsequent pleas for incessant boosting.

The following snippets from this blog's COVID FAQs page document the outcome of our failed booster campaigns between October 2021 and September 2022:

• Only 69 percent of the 52 million members of the 65+ age group have received one booster
• Only 32 percent of the 52 million members of the 65+ age group have received two boosters 
  
  
• Only 47 percent of the 63 million members of the 50-64 age group have received one booster
• Only 14 percent of the 63 million members of the 50-64 age group have received two boosters

This failure to provide booster shots to millions of the oldest residents of our nation's communities has left them at risk for severe illness and/or death.  As noted on the COVID FAQs page, there is still time to follow the data, i.e., to refocus our campaign for the new bivalent boosters on those who have the greatest need for any kind of booster, i.e., on persons made vulnerable by age and/or by underlying health conditions.

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Links to related notes on this blog:  

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