It appears parents have agreed with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. COVID-19 shots for kids under 5 may not be all that the Biden administration wants them to be.
Despite assurances from the Biden White House, Big Pharma, the media, and Democrats that the vax is safe for the youngest Americans, the rollout is painfully slow.
According to WebMD on Friday, just 300,000 children have received at least one dose of the vaccine roughly a month after the Biden administration authorized it for children under 5.
Recall that DeSantis was hammered by the media and by the Biden White House for not pre-ordering the jabs. Florida, we were repeatedly reminded, was the only state not to do so before the shots were approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
Yet so far, just 1.5 percent of U.S. parents of eligible children under 5 have opted for the shots for their kids. Which is still far below the 18 percent who told pollsters they would definitely get the shot for their kids once it became available.
Florida’s Department of Health is not recommending the shot for that demographic, saying it’s of little value to a group that is at little risk from COVID.
But DeSantis has given his critics something else to chew on as they digest the fact that he was correct about parents’ appetite for jabbing the young.
At a press conference on Friday, DeSantis alleged that the Biden administration has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Big Pharma – helping push the jabs, especially for the smallest tikes, to stoke profits for drugmakers.
“The criticism of the FDA is, they’re basically a subsidiary of Big Pharma,” DeSantis said during a visit to Cape Coral.
“And so they’re acting in ways with the baby vax. The baby jabs, that was something that obviously would cause more of those to be sold.”
He’s onto something here.
On Friday, Pfizer’s stock price closed at $53 a share – roughly double what it was in March 2020 before the onset of the pandemic. The price of stock for Moderna, which is also approved for COVID vaxxes for kids under 5, closed at $176 a share, roughly six times the price in March 2020.
Moderna’s stock price is up about $50 a share since the Biden administration greenlit its vaxxes for the youngest kids. Pfizer’s has held mostly steady over the past month.
Yet Pfizer did not help the perception DeSantis created. The company is a major sponsor of the Florida Democratic Party’s Leadership Blue 2022 conference in Tampa next weekend.
DeSantis on Friday was not trying to spread doubt about the vax. “People can do what they want,” he told reporters.
But despite the full-court press from the left, relatively few parents are buying the argument that the vaccines are life-savers four really young children.
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