A Fox & Friends host and guest have claimed that President Joe Biden is promoting Covid vaccination booster shots to distract from the chaos unfolding in Afghanistan.
Host Brian Kilmeade had guest Dr Marc Siegel on Thursday’s show when he asked: “Politically, this was a head fake to get us distracted again, but do we need this third shot?”
Dr Siegel replied, agreeing that Biden was using “diversionary tactics” because the president “didn’t take any questions on Afghanistan”.
President Biden has said the US public will need boosters from September, or eight months after a first jab, to make “you safer for longer, and will help us end the pandemic faster”.
Dr Siegel questioned the effectiveness of having a booster: “They are basing everything on the fact that antibodies are diminishing over time, that doesn’t prove that immunity against severe infection diminishes over time and we have reason to believe that you still have a very robust immunity at this point if you’ve had the two shots.”
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He also wondered if people would question the efficiency of the vaccines if the messaging around needing a booster shot was wrong.
“I’m concerned that this sends the message to America when you say everybody, a month from now, is going to need a third shot, it’s going to make people shaky on whether it works or not.”
Some 2.5 billion people around the world have so far been shut out of the global vaccine campaign. Dr Siegel made the point that a large number of unvaccinated people could be contributing to the development of new variants, and discussed whether we should be focusing on vaccinating the world. He also claimed that Mr Biden has “bullying” and “shaming” tactics when it comes to Covid shots.
The US has administered 358 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine to date, amounting to 51 per cent of the US population being fully vaccinated. There have been 37 million cases of coronavirus in the US, and 624,000 deaths from the disease.