The public-health bureaucracy is adopting yet another excessive vaccination policy. On Oct. 12 the Food and Drug Administration authorized bivalent Covid-19 boosters from Pfizer and Moderna for use in children as young as 5 and 6, respectively. The same day, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended the vaccines for children 5 to 11. Neither shot is likely to find many takers, but that won’t stop the Biden administration from wasting billions of dollars buying them.
Since Covid shots first became available, the federal government has purchased and distributed them instead of relying on the market to match supply with demand. The result has been colossal waste. Between December 2020 and mid-May 2022, the U.S. wasted 82.1 million doses. Some expired on pharmacy shelves before they could be used; others were discarded after remaining unclaimed in opened multidose vials.