The Booster-Shot Debate Was a Debacle

At long last, the booster-shot debate has come to an end. On Wednesday, the FDA authorized boosters of the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines as well as the “mix and match” approach to booster shots. Yesterday, a CDC advisory panel sanctioned that authorization and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky endorsed it. With a green light for all vaccines from both agencies, the booster plan first announced by the Biden administration in August can finally roll out in full.

In its wake, it will leave behind a trail of chaos. Since that announcement, the three agencies spearheading the United States’s response to the coronavirus pandemic—the FDA, the CDC, and the Department of Health and Human Services—have, at best, operated independently of one another. At worst, they have been embroiled in ugly open warfare. These fractures and in health authorities but also displayed the country’s mismanagement of its extra doses on the in the midst of a mounting international vaccine-inequity crisis. In short, the past two months have been a health-messaging nightmare with abysmal optics.