Public health experts worry pandemic fatigue will stymie national efforts to get shots in arms as evidence piles up that a booster shot will be needed to effectively fight off infection from the omicron variant.
“As the data become clearer, boosters are going to be a very important part of our preparedness for dealing with omicron and even dealing with delta,” said Dr. Thomas Giordano, an infectious disease expert at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas. “If I were in charge of the marketing, I would say, ‘If you’re tired of COVID-19, get a booster,’ because this is the surest way to help keep the numbers down.”
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Evidence that an additional dose of vaccine will be necessary to fight off severe illness is mounting, yet people are not likely to put their social lives on hold because of increased community spread caused by the omicron variant. For instance, just 28% of people surveyed in a new Axios-Ipsos poll say they are likely to stop gathering with others outside their household, and only 33% say they will stop dining at indoor restaurants.
The national vaccination effort is contending with nationwide exhaustion after roughly two years of dealing with COVID-19 stress, which makes people less willing to follow safety protocols such as masking in public places. News that a third shot will be necessary to fight off severe disease has been hard to swallow for many people, even those who were not hesitant to get vaccinated in the first place.
“I’m hearing that people are not eager to [get the booster], especially if people have had side effects from the second dose or the first dose, and now they have to go through it again,” Giordano said.
A majority of U.S. adults have been fully vaccinated, though roughly 15% have yet to get their first shot, according to federal data. The Biden administration can expect to face an uphill battle trying to get additional shots administered, according to Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. To many people who have been fully vaccinated, getting a third shot will not be a priority.
“It’s always a lot more difficult to get that last group of people on board with these kinds of programs,” Benjamin said. “The inertia around ‘I can’t get it done today’ for whatever reason — life happens and gets in the way when people are plotting to get it done. All of those life barriers that get in the way are still factors.”
While the numbers show that millions of adults have already received their booster shots, federal data remain unreliable. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tally reports that at least 53 million people have rolled up their sleeves for an extra dose. However, a tucked-away footnote on the agency’s vaccination tracking page said that its data underestimate the true number of people who have gotten the booster while overestimating the number of people to have gotten their first shot.
The CDC removes all personal information from vaccine data before entering it into the national database. That means that if a person went to the same location for the first round of shots but a different location for the booster, the agency may be unable to connect them, and the booster is counted as a first dose administered to an unvaccinated person. This can happen if a person moved before signing up to get a booster or if they found a more convenient location for getting the shot.
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The Biden administration has acknowledged that pandemic fatigue is taking its toll on people as the United States approaches the two-year anniversary of its first confirmed COVID-19 case.
“There’s a fatigue from COVID,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said last month. “We see that in poll after poll. … People are sick and tired of COVID and the impacts on the economy. We understand that. We’re tired of it too.”
