Joe Biden’s COVID strategy has always relied on the vaccines he inherited from President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed. But, unfortunately, instead of a measured approach to vaccinations that prioritizes the elderly and the vulnerable, he’s pursued a universal vaccination approach. According to Biden, everyone–the old and sick; the young and healthy–must be vaccinated. He even wants kids to be fully vaccinated and boostered, despite little reason justifying it.
Biden was so desperate to vaccinate kids that he purchased enough vaccine doses to get all American kids ages 5 to 11 vaccinated before the FDA had even approved the vaccines for that age group. While some would argue that it was preemptive, it was nevertheless presumptuous, considering that a month prior, the FDA rejected universal boosters.
But Biden’s vaccination evangelism has struck yet again, as Biden ignored the standard FDA approval process for COVID boosters for children by not having a panel of scientific advisors review the data first.
“Dear President Biden, FDA is bypassing it’s scientifitsdvisors to authorize boosters for all kids 12-15 next week. This is unconscionable — undermines the integrity of the FDA’s standard process! Please require FDA to put this authoriz [sic] before the VRBPAC advisory comm for a vote!” Dr. Marty Makary, chief of the Johns Hopkins Islet Transplant Center, tweeted Saturday.
Dear President Biden,
FDA is bypassing it's scientific advisors to authorize boosters for all kids 12-15 next week. This is unconscionable–undermines the integrity of the FDA's standard process! Please require FDA to put this authoriz before the VRBPAC advisory comm for a vote!— Marty Makary MD, MPH (@MartyMakary) January 2, 2022
Ironically, this is exactly what Biden accused Trump of potentially doing in 2020 regarding the COVID vaccines. “Scientific breakthroughs don’t care about calendars any more than the virus does. They certainly don’t adhere to election cycles,” Biden said. “And their timing, their approval and their distribution should never, ever be distorted by political considerations.”
“One thing is certain, we can’t allow politics to interfere with the vaccine in any way,” Biden said, before suggesting that Trump would interfere with the vaccine approval process, potentially rushing their approval before they were proven safe.
“Let me be clear: I trust vaccines, I trust scientists, but I don’t trust Donald Trump. And at this moment, the American people can’t either,” Biden said.
The worst thing about this is that there is no need to rush the approval of boosters for kids, save for political reasons. As I’ve noted several times before, COVID is less deadly to our kids than the seasonal flu. School-age children have a COVID recovery rate of 99.997%—better than their mortality risk from the seasonal flu. Based on the data, they don’t even need to be masked, let alone vaccinated, especially considering that unvaccinated kids are at a lower risk of death from COVID than fully vaccinated adults of any age. There is no justification for the universal vaccination of kids. Why bypass the usual approval for boosters for kids? The answer is obvious: The experts rejected universal boosters last time, and Biden didn’t want that to happen again. So instead, he wants Americans to vaccinate their kids when they’re already better protected from COVID than vaccinated adults.
Republican Sen. Rand Paul also criticized the Biden administration for “ignoring its own rules to push booster vaccines on kids for a disease is [sic] that is less deadly in children than the seasonal flu.”
As disturbing as this is, the bigger question is: why?
Related: Just When You Thought You Could Unmask Soon, Here Comes ‘Flurona’
