As of last week, in spite of an extremely high level of confidence among policy officials and public health experts that any of the three Covid-19 vaccines with emergency use authorization are safe and effective, about 70 million adults in the U.S. remained unvaccinated, as well as nearly 50 million children under age 12 who aren’t yet eligible for inoculations.
But now, with the Food and Drug Administration’s eagerly anticipated announcement Monday that the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine has been granted full, formal approval for anyone 16 or older, vaccination holdouts have much less of a pretext to refuse to get a shot, and we may now witness rapid progress in upping the country’s vaccination rate. Presumably, many people will be relieved to know that the federal government is fully confident in the vaccine’s effectiveness and safety. And even if this doesn’t change the feelings of those who oppose vaccines, it should pave the way for more institutions to mandate their use.
