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The U.S. Food and Drug Administrations decision to limit COVID vaccines to people 65 and older and others with underlying health conditions has alarmed some medical experts who worry the change will lead to more infections and more deaths.
Black Americans suffer at disproportionately high rates from underlying health conditions like obesity, diabetes and asthma that make COVID far more dangerous. People with those conditions will still be eligible for updated vaccines, but some health experts have argued that the decision to restrict access to them sends a message that COVID isnt that big of a deal anymore.
Any recommendations that regard who or when access is available to these vaccines are barriers for vulnerable people and discourage high risk people from getting needed vaccine boosters, The Peoples CDC, a coalition of healthcare practitioners, scientists and educators wrote in a letter to the FDAs Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee.
The FDA had recommended the vaccine for all people aged 6 months or older, and health insurance companies typically covered them. Now, though, its unclear if insurance companies will continue to cover a vaccine the FDA is no longer requiring for healthy people younger than 65. A COVID vaccine can cost up to $200 if it is not covered by insurance, a steep price that will dissuade many from getting it.
I think that changes like this will lead to more unnecessary deaths, Dr. Daniel Griffin, a New York physician who is board-certified in internal medicine and infectious disease told The New York Times.
Changes to vaccine protocols are usually handled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and are undertaken after an extensive period of study. But two recent Trump appointees, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary and Vinay Prasad, director of the FDAs Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, announced the change in an article they wrote for The New England Journal of Medicine.
Like Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Makary and Prasad were both staunch critics of the U.S. response to COVID. Prasad likened the response to the beginnings of the Third Reich in Germany, a position that was panned by other medical experts.
Makary wrote an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal in February 2021 predicting that COVID would be mostly gone in a month. It very much wasnt. COVID was the underlying or contributing cause of 460,513 deaths in 2021, according to figures from the CDC.
COVID deaths have dropped substantially in the U.S. since vaccines and more effective treatment became widely available. Deaths fell to 245,614 in 2022 and to 76,446 in 2023, CDC data show. The agency does not appear to have released figures for 2024.
The COVID vaccines have been updated regularly since they were first made available and were covered by health insurance for people 6 months old and older. Kennedy, however, has long been a vaccine skeptic, inaccurately and dangerously arguing that they create health problems. He called the COVID vaccine the deadliest vaccine ever made, a preposterous claim that has not been documented by any credible scientist.
As HHS secretary, Kennedy, who has degrees in law, history and literature but none in any scientific field, oversees the CDC, the National Institutes of Health and the FDA. His appointment led to fears that vaccine availability would be curtailed. Those fears are now being realized.
