More woke media whoppers about Covid vaccines

Politico says the US may face rationing of the miracle shots; in truth demand is near zero and 150 million shots are sitting in freezers.

I try not to spend too much time chasing lies from elite media outlets about the mRNA shots. Doing so would be a more than full-time job.

Plus they never correct anything anyway, much less apologize.

But Politico’s recent article claiming that the United States is about to face Covid vaccine rationing is just too absurd to ignore. The article is not just untrue, it is the opposite of true.

Welcome to the bizarro world of elite media Covid reporting, where shots have joined baby formula and diesel fuel as necessities that the United States of Wokeness no longer seems able to produce.

In reality, mRNA shot stockpiles are growing by the day, and governments cannot give the jabs away (literally, in this case, since they are unwanted despite being free).

Worse, the new data showing that the shots become useless against Omicron within months mean that the current stockpiles will likely NEVER be used even if Covid takes off again, as it may already be doing.

The federal Covid gravy train is ending, and Politico is NOT HAPPY.

In its never-ending quest to supersize the federal government and introduce Americans to the wonders of hyperinflation, the Biden administration has decreed that it needs another $22.5 billion for Covid shots ‘n tests ‘n stuff.

Otherwise disaster looms! The United States will have to treat Covid like every other illness. That means using just regular massive government subsidies and not extra massive government subsidies to pay for Covid treatments. Yes, we spend only $4 trillion annually on medical care, wherever shall we find the money?

Republicans appear to have realized that it is both good politics and good policy to derail this gravy train. They are, in the immortal words of Nancy Reagan, just saying no. Not to $22.5 billion, and not to $10 billion either.

By the way, it is not even clear where the money would go. Politico reported that half of the $10 billion would be used to pay Pfizer for 20 million mRNA doses that have already been delivered. But half of $10 billion is - work with me here - $5 billion. That figure implies the doses cost $250 each, when in reality they run about $20. Political reporters hate math almost as much as asking Democrats hard questions, so that little error slipped through unnoticed.

Anyhoo, $10 billion, $22.5 billion, who cares, it’s fiat currency, we’ll just make more! Inflation is transitory, Covid vaccines are forever (or is it the other way around, I always forget?).

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The point is that without that money, THE UNITED STATES IS GOING TO RUN OUT OF COVID SHOTS:

Among the sacrifices being weighed are limiting access to its next generation of vaccines to only the highest-risk Americans — a rationing that would have been unthinkable just a year ago…

Wait. Hol’ up.

Read that again, real slow.

Among the sacrifices being weighed are limiting access to its next generation of vaccines…

“Next generation of vaccines”?

WHAT NEXT GENERATION? THERE IS NO NEXT GENERATION. THERE IS ONLY THE CURRENT GENERATION.

WHICH BASICALLY DOES NOT WORK AGAINST THE OMICRON VARIANT.

Yes, Pfizer and Moderna are testing shots that are based on the same technology as the current jabs but cause the body to produce a spike that looks more like the Omicron spike.

However.

No one knows if those shots will actually do a better job at helping the body respond to Omicron . That uncertainty applies especially in people who have already received the original vaccines, which strongly bias the immune system to produce antibodies against the original variant. Based on both preclinical work with the Omicron shot and clinical data from shots against other variants that were tested in 2021, the odds are long.

It’s not even clear an Omicron-specific shot would truly count as a new generation of vaccines.

A next-generation shot might involve a different lipid nanoparticle (the shell that wraps the mRNA), or somewhat different modifications to the mRNA itself, or an oral formulation. Any of those may require a massive clinical trial, ideally at least as large as the 30,000 to 40,000-person pivotal trials that regulators required before approving the original shots. Pfizer and Moderna are unlikely to want to run more trials that size, which means that approval for true next-generation vaccines may get complicated -

Sorry.

This theoretical argument between the companies and the regulators over an approval pathway for next-generation mRNA vaccines is a waste of everyone’s time, because - back to the original point - THERE ARE NO NEXT-GENERATION mRNA VACCINES ANYWHERE NEAR APPROVAL.

Thus we are waiting on the Omicron spike vaccine, which - again, based on what’s currently known - even the companies are going to be hard-pressed to sell as a major improvement. Assuming that Sars-Cov-2 has not mutated AGAIN by next winter and left the Omicron vaccine as out of date as the original vaccines.

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Politico’s reporters clearly do not understand even basic virology, immunology, or vaccine development, and that’s fine. Why would they?

What’s not fine is that they appear not to have lived through the last two years - two years in which EVERY PROMISE from public-health authorities has turned out wrong, and in which the miracle mRNA shots have turned out to have a working life measured in months.

They may not understand how epically the vaccines have failed, but everyone else does, which is why even with a second booster now available for MSNBC addicts, the United States is now administering barely 300,000 doses a day.

As a result the United States now has about 145 million mRNA doses in storage (432 + 274 - (343 + 219), work with me, Politico), plus another 12 million DNA shots from Johnson & Johnson in case things get tight.

Rationing? At this point the Biden administration will be lucky if it can find a way to dispose of the expired shots without anyone noticing (though you can be sure Politico will not go out of its way to report that).

Diesel fuel is a different story. But that’s not Politico’s problem! (read more)