The Bivalent Booster Boondoggle – WSJ

Since Covid shots first became available, the federal government has purchased and distributed them instead of relying on the market to match supply with demand. The result has been colossal waste. Between December 2020 and mid-May 2022, the U.S. wasted 82.1 million doses. Some expired on pharmacy shelves before they could be used; others were discarded after remaining unclaimed in opened multidose vials.

The FDA authorized bivalent vaccines at the end of August for people who had received their primary dose series or their most recent booster shot at least two months prior. The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices ratified the recommendation, despite concerns among some members that the vaccines didn’t have enough testing on human subjects and that two months wasn’t long enough between shots. The Biden administration announced on Sept. 8 that it had secured 170 million of the updated doses. It is still seeking an additional $22 billion from Congress to buy more.

Only 19.4 million Americans have received bivalent boosters to date—only 8.6% of the number who completed their primary two-dose vaccine series. The reason for low demand is simple. People respond to risk. Daily new Covid cases have been declining for three months. Daily deaths with Covid have been low and stable since May. Unsurprisingly, the number of vaccines administered daily has fallen from its latest peak in December 2021, when Omicron was surging, and has remained low ever since.

Demand for bivalent vaccines will be even weaker for children, whose risk of severe Covid is extremely low. As of Oct. 19, only 31.6% of 5- to 11-year-olds had completed the primary vaccine series. That means more than two-thirds of American children in this age range aren’t even eligible for the bivalent booster. And some parents remain wary of the bivalent vaccine’s evolving safety profile.

Americans’ demand for vaccines is lower than the government’s arbitrary target—and for good reason. It’s time for the government to release its monopoly on the purchase and distribution of vaccines and let the private market do what it does best: aligning supply with the American people’s demand for goods they will actually use.

Dr. Zinberg is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and director of the Paragon Health Institute’s Public Health and American Well-Being Initiative.