When I recently received a measles booster, the nurse practitioner who administered the shot said, “Congratulations on beating RFK.”
He was referring to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Before the political scion was confirmed as President Trump’s health and human services secretary, I’d never considered updating a vaccination I first received as a toddler more than 60 years ago.
But that was before this nation was deep in the throes of its second-largest measles outbreak — more than 1,000 confirmed cases this year — since the disease was declared eliminated in 2000. At least three people have died, including two children.
The nurse practitioner told me that with a longtime anti-vaxxer as this nation’s chief health official, there’s been a notable increase in people getting the MMR vaccine — measles, mumps, and rubella — in recent months. “They want to get the shot while they can still get it,” he said.
That’s because the Trump White House is moving to make vaccines for all a thing of the past. When the next COVID-19 booster is released in the fall, only those over the age of 65 or deemed “high-risk” will be eligible to receive it.
In a commentary in The New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Vinay Prasad, the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine division chief, and Dr. Martin Makary, FDA commissioner, cast doubt on the need for additional COVID shots for young and middle-aged people.
“The benefit of repeat dosing — particularly among low-risk persons who may have previously received multiple doses of Covid-19 vaccines, had multiple Covid-19 infections, or both — is uncertain,” they wrote. “The American people, along with many health care providers, remain unconvinced.”
Kennedy, Prasad, and Makary are the unconvinced. It’s also how these men who now oversee crucial aspects of this nation’s well-being landed their current positions in the Trump administration.
As the COVID pandemic ravaged communities, Prasad criticized vaccine mandates and drug approval policies. During the pandemic, Makary was a frequent guest on Fox News, where he often ripped into the Biden administration’s pandemic response. He branded the government as the “greatest perpetrator of misinformation” about COVID.
Now the same people who didn’t want the government to dictate Americans’ health decisions by mandating COVID vaccines want to mandate who shouldn’t be allowed to get the next vaccine.
Makary and Prasad claim the FDA will require new clinical trials for those considered low risk. Given this administration’s agenda, such studies could be met with skepticism.
The FDA’s advisers were scheduled to meet Thursday to determine the composition of the fall COVID booster.
What public distribution of that booster will look like is anyone’s guess. Will pharmacists be required to check identification for proof of age? Will those under 65 who want the vaccine have to prove they are “high risk” enough to receive it?
In its evisceration of the federal government, the Trump administration hasn’t shut down every agency outright. But through diminished staffs saddled with bigger workloads or those contending with byzantine rules, agencies are left so irreparably broken that whatever purpose they might have once served is lost.
And the more complicated it becomes to get a COVID shot, the less likely people are to get one.
There are also legitimate concerns that even a mild case of COVID can lead to long COVID, the chronic health problems that can linger for months, even years, after an initial infection.
But perhaps the most unsettling thing is how this nation’s top health officials may use these arbitrary new requirements to restrict access to other vaccines. For all his talk of restoring “medical freedom” to Americans, Kennedy is pushing an agenda that lets the government further curtail that freedom whenever it wants.
While the general feeling these days is that we’re done with COVID, the virus may not yet be done with us. Making fewer people eligible for vaccines invites more infections, more sickness, and, possibly, more vaccine-resistant variants.
Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement threatens to ensure that many Americans, if deprived of proven vaccines, may never be healthy again.
Renée Graham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at renee.graham@globe.com.