Breaking news: a pandemic is spreading across the world! Still. Oh yeah it’s…sorry, I didn’t mean to alarm you, it’s the same pandemic we’ve been dealing with since 2020. It’s not quite as bad anymore, so that’s nice? Like, we no longer have so many people dying that we need to set up mobile morgues where we just have bodies stacked up in UHauls or whatever. That sure was an interesting time. Hopefully it doesn’t happen again, and one way to prevent it from happening again is to go out and get vaccinated!
I know, I know, anti-vaxxers: any day now I will be dying suddenly because of all the vaccines I’ve had. Any day now! Just living each day to the fullest. You know, being healthy and not freaking out over an extremely safe and effective shot. My dog’s fully vaccinated too so I just hope that when we go, we at least go together.
Okay, with that out of the way, yeah, we’re heading into fall and the best thing you can do for your health and the health of those around you is to get your COVID and flu vaccinations. Here in the US, the FDA has approved new vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna that specifically target the current strain, known as KP2, and as of this recording, those vaccines are rolling out to pharmacies around the country. Most if not all insurance companies should cover it, including Medicare and Medicaid.
The shot you got last year is no longer effective both because of the amount of time that’s passed as well as the fact that that variant is no longer circulating widely, so this is an important one to get. The timing depends on whether you’ve had COVID recently–experts still recommend you wait three months to after recovery to make the most of your immunity. I have travel coming up in late October and I still have yet to get COVID, so I’m going to aim to get mine by early October to be protected for travel and the upcoming holidays.
Okay, that concludes the good news for today! Now for the bad news.
I specifically mentioned timing based on whether you’ve had COVID recently because nearly everyone I know has been infected this summer, including at least four people who, like me, had never tested positive before. Researchers have suspected for some time that COVID’s seasonality isn’t quite like the flu and RSV, which tend to spike in the winter and then mostly disappear. Just last month, immunologists published findings that show over the past several years there have been three spikes: a big one in the winter, and then smaller spikes in mid-spring and mid-summer. The vaccines tend to be effective for three to six months. However, our governments are just barely suggesting we all get vaccinated once a year. From a public health standpoint, this is what experts call “completely braindead.” And so, lots and lots of people ended up sick and miserable (and some dead) this summer when there really was no need for them to be.
To make matters worse, this month the CDC is putting an end to the program that provided free vaccines to anyone who needed them, including the approximately 27 million American adults who do not have any health insurance at all. The vaccine costs $100 to $200 out of pocket so we can assume that a decent number of people who want the vaccine will not be able to get it this year. Children can still get the vaccine for free, and some community health nonprofits may be able to scrounge up the money for some adults, but it’s yet another roadblock in the middle of a street already riddled with potholes and crumbling into the sea. Like it’s one of those streets with two guys constantly walking back and forth holding a large pane of glass between them. It’s tough.
Finally, maybe the worst news of all: as bad as American public health looks currently, we also have stopped caring about what’s going to happen in the future. A few months ago I told you about the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, which was responsible for Operation Warp Speed’s success in pushing out COVID vaccines so quickly. If our government gave BARDA just $24 billion, “the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy estimates it (could) have prototype vaccines ready for each of the 26 known viral families that cause human disease. Showing that these vaccines are safe and promote an immune response before we need them will allow for vaccines to be ready for deployment within 100 days after virus identification.”
Now obviously that has not happened, but what I didn’t mention back then was that back in 2021 the Biden administration DID at least set aside $3.2 billion in funding to spread across multiple agencies with the express purpose of not just combatting COVID-19 but also, as Anthony Fauci announced, “to provide a structure, a durable structure, to prepare from a therapeutic standpoint against any of the pandemic threats.”
What I recently learned, thanks to Jason Mast at STAT news, is that that never happened. Once omicron hit, the government siphoned off a bunch of that money on more immediate wants and needs. A few labs were built but then were only given three of a promised five years of funding and told to reapply later. When they did, they were told the money was gone. All funding food all the labs will be gone by April of next year.
The problem, as usual, is capitalism and political wankery. The experts point out that there is no return on investment for the pharmaceutical industry to drop money on vaccines and drugs they may never be able to sell, so they don’t. Politicians are owned by Big Pharma and other industry lobbyists and they don’t believe the average voter has the attention span to worry about what might happen in a decade, five years, next month.
What’s the solution? Well, I know I’m a broken record but it’s this: vote for Democrats, and when they win, bully them. Yeah, Dems have been terrible on COVID policy but unlike Republicans, they still have a tiny scrap of shame that allows them to be bullied. It’s how we got Kamala Harris instead of Biden, and how we got Tim Walz instead of any of the more conservative VP picks.
So let your representatives know that public health matters, with your phone calls, your letters, and your votes.
