(Headline USA) The Biden administration once again ignored the advice of vaccine experts to approve a fourth booster shot for elderly Americans this month.
The Food and Drug Administration announced that older adults and young children with certain immune deficiencies can now get another booster shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, but it did so without convening a meeting of its advisory panel of vaccine experts first.
“When last asked about boosters, the FDA’s advisory committee on vaccines voted 16-2 against authorizing a third COVID-19 shot for people under 65,” Heritage Foundation senior fellow Doug Badger told the Washington Examiner. “The FDA hasn’t sought their advice ever since.”
Several scientific experts openly questioned Pfizer and Moderna’s push for another booster shot, arguing that there is no evidence a fourth jab is necessary.
“The issue of a fourth dose is not on the current agenda because two doses and a booster are working very well,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center and one of the advisers on the FDA’s panel.
Another expert, Monica Gandhi, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said the Biden administration’s decision to ignore the advice of its experts has “led to distrust and confusion in the American public.”
President Joe Biden made a public appearance last week to get his fourth shot, using the moment as an opportunity to demand more COVID-19 funding from Congress.
President Biden receives his 2nd Covid-19 booster shot, one day after the CDC recommended 4th Pfizer and Moderna Covid vaccine doses for people ages 50 and older. https://t.co/8lCNWQtj13 pic.twitter.com/nXfVBUdVbl
— CNBC (@CNBC) March 30, 2022
“This isn’t partisan, it’s medicine,” he claimed. “If we fail to invest, we leave ourselves vulnerable if another wave of the virus hits.”
