It’s a Bad Time to Be a Booster Slacker

And just like that, with the passing of Labor Day, fall was upon us. Seemingly overnight, six-packs of pumpkin beer materialized on grocery shelves, hordes of city dwellers descended upon apple orchards—and America rolled out new COVID boosters. The timing wasn’t a coincidence. Since the beginning of the pandemic, cases in North America and Europe have risen during the fall and winter, and there was no reason to expect anything different this year. Spreading during colder weather is simply what respiratory diseases like COVID do. The hope for the fall booster rollout was that Americans would take it as an opportunity to supercharge their immunological defenses against the coronavirus in advance of a winter wave that we know is going to come.

So far, reality isn’t living up to that hope. Since the new booster became available in early September, have gotten the shot, according to the CDC—just 8.5 percent of those who are eligible. that he expects booster uptake to increase in October as the temperatures drop and people start taking winter diseases more seriously. That doesn’t seem to be happening yet. America’s booster campaign is going so badly that by late September, information about the bivalent boosters, according to a recent survey. The low numbers are especially unfortunate because the remaining 91.5 percent of booster-eligible people have already shown that they’re open to vaccines by getting at least their first two shots—if not already at least one booster.