On Tuesday, August 31, the FDA announced the departure of two top officials from the administration’s Office of Vaccines Research and Review, not specifying the reasons for the resignation. And the word from sources inside the FDA is that the departures weren’t planned retirements but responses to the Biden administration’s desperate scramble to expedite the authorization of coronavirus vaccine boosters by the regulator.
(Photo by Bernd Weißbrod/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Sources also reported that Dr. Marion Gruber, the now-former director of the office, had grown frustrated with the lack of communication from top officials in the White House. Many at the FDA have argued that current plans for booster shots are unnecessary, ironically arguing that President Biden was placing as much political pressure on the agency as former President Trump. Biden accused Trump of politicizing the FDA for attempting to fast-track emergency use authorization for the vaccines on the debate stage. By his own standards, the president appears to be doing the same today.
Disorder at the FDA appears to be forming out of the conflict between FDA commissioner Janet Woodcock’s push for quick regulatory approval and her employees refusing to rush through the regulatory requirements to meet the Biden administration’s planned September 20 booster shot deployment date. A significant amount of the data backing a booster shot rollout campaign has been coming from Israel’s reported success with booster shots of the Pfizer vaccine in the last month. This data was also brought up during Biden’s meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, demonstrating the president’s public support for the program. The eagerness of the Biden administration to begin a booster shot program seems to be based more on pandemic anxiety than on conclusive long-term scientific evidence. Defenders of the administration claim the president is merely preparing the public for the reality of the pandemic, his rhetoric only serving to provide a goal for Americans to look forward to as their hardships continue.
“Follow the science” has supposedly been the modus operandi for Democratic politicians through the United States since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Reality has proven just the opposite over the last 17 months. Whether it comes to defending a birthday bash at Martha’s Vineyard during a spike in cases or being found dining indoors with bigwig corporate lobbyists, it’s certainly not a good time for Democrats to claim they rule by scientific consensus. In the first place, public policy should not be dictated solely based on science, especially when that science is far from being settled.
Biden’s sinking poll numbers over his job in Afghanistan and lingering concerns about the longevity of the pandemic have clearly led the president’s team to push for a public relations victory. Success with the pandemic seems to be the last resort for an ailing administration that, so far, continues to fail to live up to its flashy promises from the campaign trail a year ago.
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