Yet Another New COVID Narrative

Up until a point a few weeks ago, the COVID narrative had been the vaccines are highly effective, and if the pandemic continues at all, it's because too many people are unwilling to be vaccinated. However, the CDC itself began to undermine this by announcing that vaccinated people could still transmit the virus and endorsing indoor masks again, although masks had proven ineffective throughout 2020.

Now the narrative has shifted yet again, and the story now is the vaccines aren't as effective as we'd been saying, and now we need a booster. I noted in Sunday's post that Dr Scott Gottlieb has reversed his previous prediction on the delta variant, is now saying New York and Connecticut will have a big surge, and he's on board with the booster.

Dr Fauci is saying this as well, as of the latest Sunday talks:

Sunday, during an appearance on CNN, Biden medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci offered the possibility that a three-dose regimen may be the proper regimen for immunization against the coronavirus.

Fauci told CNN’s Jim Acosta that the goal continues to be more vaccinations.

“Well, to some extent, that’s indirect,” he explained. “We need the boost because ultimately it may turn out, Jim, that the ultimate proper immunization regimen is a three-dose regimen. Remember, we made it a two-dose regimen. We were dealing with an emergent situation. . ."

The problem is that they'd been saying two shots, but now they mean three. When will they get to four? And what about the J&J vaccine, where one was enough? Do those people need two? Or three? Each time they change the story, they lose credibility. For me, going through the two-shot regimen, having to hassle two appointments, going through the highly stressful cattle pen routine twice, and then a couple days of feeling woozy with the side effects, was bad enough. Now all of a sudden I have to do it again.

And I'm not the only one:

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said on Sunday that his administration is getting “mixed messagings” from the Biden White House when it comes to COVID-19 booster shots.

“I mean we're getting some mixed messagings out of the administration, out of the CDC, the FDA and the White House and, you know we need clear guidance on these booster shots because it undermines the credibility of it,” Hogan said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

. . . The Biden administration had initially signaled that individuals who had received both doses of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccine would be eligible for a booster shot starting in September.

. . . However, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walenksy and Janet Woodcock, the acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), reportedly met White House coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients to say that only some people who received the Pfizer vaccine may now only be eligible currently for the third shot of the COVID-19 vaccine.

It's becoming clearer that the confusion is a result of the public health establishment's need to coordinate with the Biden administration's political message, as the failure of successive COVID narratives has been another driver of Biden's sinking popularity. According to Politico,

Now, frustration with the disease’s resurgence — coming at the same time as the messy withdrawal from Afghanistan — appears to be a factor softening Biden’s previously stable approval ratings and adding to Democrats’ worries about retaining their slim majority in the House and Senate after the 2022 congressional elections.

The months ahead will undoubtedly be a mix of advances and setbacks. The political challenge for Biden and the public health system will be to communicate a sense of progress and momentum even without the benefit of a clear “turning point.”

The overall theme of the piece is that Biden campaigned in 2020 as someone who would solve COVID, but COVID isn't being solved. In effect, the problem for Biden, Fauci, and Walensky is to change the narrative so people don't expect a solution.

“People are still in denial,” said Celine Gounder, an infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist at NYU and Bellevue Hospital, who advised the Biden transition team. “The sooner people accept the changes in the way we live… the sooner we can get to the new normal.”

The problem is that nobody currently running the show -- any show around Biden -- knows what they're doing. What's that "new normal" going to be? If it changes from week to week, how can we accept it?