President Joe Biden received his sixth COVID-19 shot in late September. Despite White House physician Kevin O’Connor urging the public to follow the president’s example, Americans have become increasingly wary of COVID-19 boosters.
While as many as 15 million Americans were estimated to have been inoculated with an updated vaccine at this time last year, only about eight million people have received one so far this year, according to a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services.
Last week, Pfizer, one of America’s main vaccine manufacturers, revised its projected COVID-19 vaccination sales for the year, reducing its forecast by $2 billion to account for lower-than-expected demand.
Pfizer also said there has been a drop in sales of Paxlovid, its oral antiviral pill used to prevent the coronavirus from replicating in the body. As a result, the company is now predicting $7 billion less in revenue from the drug.
Pfizer’s CEO, Albert Bourla, told investors on Monday, “We have come through the period of fear that defined the early days of Covid where everybody wanted to be vaccinated very quickly.” He went on to stress the current “Covid fatigue where everyone wants to forget about the disease” as well as “a peak of anti-vaccination retort.”
Moderna, another major vaccine manufacturer that has recently introduced an updated shot, maintained that it is “too early” to accurately predict this year’s vaccination rates. But investors aren’t so convinced, as the biotech firm saw its stock become the worst-performing stock in the S&P 500 on Monday and continue to plummet since then.
The push for vaccination has been complicated by the fact that the federal government has decentralized vaccine distribution to the private sector. With the government no longer buying and distributing booster shots, many Americans have faced logistical challenges as well as insurance-related issues.
There also remains a sharp partsian divide over vaccination. While nearly eight in 10 Democrats plan to get the latest booster, less than 40 percent of Republicans say they will do so, according to a September poll by Politico and Morning Consult.
DeSantis-appointed Florida surgeon general Joseph Ladapo recently said that healthy adults under the age of 65 should not receive a booster shot. But Mandy Cohen, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, lashed out at the Florida surgeon general, arguing that “any efforts to undercut vaccine uptake are unfounded and frankly dangerous.”
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