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New COVID Vaccines Will be Ready This Fall. America Won’t Be.
![[Image: original.gif]](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/n6lQHJF4ZjlvI07gTQm6fvoW1Ew=/0x0:1200x675/976x549/media/img/mt/2022/07/vax_fall/original.gif)
Respiratory-virus season starts soon, and our autumn vaccine strategy is shaky at best.
Since then, the tale of the U.S.’s COVID immunity has taken on a tragicomic twist: First we needed a vaccine; then we needed more people to take it. Now the problem is both.
And it chose to include BA.4 and BA.5, the reigning Omicron subvariant—rather than the long-gone BA.1, which Pfizer and Moderna had been working with.
The Biden administration could soon offer second booster shots to all adults—an amuse-bouche, apparently, for fall’s Omicron-focused vaccines, which may not debut until October at the earliest, by which time BA.5 may be long gone.
Experts still can’t agree on how many shots people need, how often we’ll need to update them, even what the purpose of a COVID vaccination should be: stopping just severe disease and death?
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...er/670535/
Respiratory-virus season starts soon, and our autumn vaccine strategy is shaky at best.
Since then, the tale of the U.S.’s COVID immunity has taken on a tragicomic twist: First we needed a vaccine; then we needed more people to take it. Now the problem is both.
And it chose to include BA.4 and BA.5, the reigning Omicron subvariant—rather than the long-gone BA.1, which Pfizer and Moderna had been working with.
The Biden administration could soon offer second booster shots to all adults—an amuse-bouche, apparently, for fall’s Omicron-focused vaccines, which may not debut until October at the earliest, by which time BA.5 may be long gone.
Experts still can’t agree on how many shots people need, how often we’ll need to update them, even what the purpose of a COVID vaccination should be: stopping just severe disease and death?
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...er/670535/
