The UK is following Denmark in restricting who is eligible for COVID booster shots, sparking a lot of conversation among vaccine skeptics for pretty obvious reasons.

I didn’t plan for today to be heavily weighted toward writing about COVID vaccines, but it sure worked out that way. This will be my third piece on the matter in a single day. Trust me, this is not an obsession of mine. It just worked out that way.

First the news:

Healthy adults under the age of 50 who are yet to receive a booster jab have just two-and-a-half weeks to take up the offer before they are no longer considered eligible. After this deadline, experts have advised for the universal offer to shift “towards a more targeted offer during vaccination campaigns”.

Because of this, only certain groups of people will be given an offer for the first and second jabs during certain times of the year. Currently, anyone aged five or over from August 31, 2022 can receive their primary course vaccinations at walk-in centres or via the NHS’ national booking service.

Some people have exaggerated a bit and suggested that the UK has “banned” COVID vaccines for most people under 50, and clearly, that is not quite true. Still, this is a massive course change from the current emphasis on jabbing everybody everywhere anytime.

The new targeted programme will focus vaccination offers for: care home residents and workers; frontline health and social care workers; adults over 50; people who are clinically at risk; carers and people who live in a house where someone is immunosuppressed.

However, officials have highlighted that if people are newly deemed to be at clinical risk of Covid infection, they will still be able to receive a vaccination. While no date has been given for the end of the universal programme, it is believed it will happen at some point this year.

It comes as the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said the initial booster offer for healthy adults aged 16 to 49 should close as the autumn booster programme comes to an end. In England, the programme is due to end on February 12.

Two major issues seem to be at work, reading into the press release from the UK government. The first is that the government is transitioning from a focus on pandemic response to pandemic recovery, which I interpret to mean as the emergency is over. We already knew that, although neither our government nor the COVidiots has gotten the message.

The second is simpler: people are no longer taking the jabs. Uptake for the boosters has been dismal.

The 2022 COVID-19 autumn booster vaccination campaign commenced in early September last year. The most recent coverage data (15 January 2023) of the autumn booster programme in those aged 50 years and over is 64.5% and 82.4% in those aged 75 years and over. By the end of summer 2022, the coverage of the 2022 spring booster programme was 77.3% in those aged 75 years and over.

Following high uptake rates for the initial (third) booster dose of COVID-19 vaccine in December 2021, further uptake has been low at less than 0.1% per week since April 2022 in all eligible people under 50 years of age.

Similarly, uptake of primary course vaccination, which has been widely available since 2021, has plateaued in recent months across all age groups.

As the transition continues away from a pandemic emergency response towards pandemic recovery, the JCVI has advised that the 2021 booster offer (third dose) for persons aged 16 to 49 years who are not in a clinical risk group should close in alignment with the close of the autumn 2022 booster vaccination campaign.

People are done with it. 0.1% per week is embarrassing, and if the government stayed on the emergency footing they would look ridiculous. Nobody cares anymore, rightly or not.

There was no mention at all of the risks related to the vaccine. This could be due to the government not believing the risks to be significant, or it could mean that the bureaucrats don’t want to fuel speculation that risk could be a factor in their decision-making. People on the pro- and anti-vax sides will have a good time fighting over this one.

The bottom line is that the US push to shove boosters into everybody’s arms is looking more and more like an outlier in the OECD, and more epidemiologists are raising questions about the risk/reward profile for some young and healthy people, especially children.

The CDC and the government as a whole are losing credibility with people and would do well to rethink their approach. Shouting the same message louder and louder isn’t working for them.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: getting the vaccine is and should be a personal decision based on your evaluation of the risks and potential rewards. Read lots of sources, all skeptically. Just because the CDC isn’t trustworthy doesn’t make them wrong, and just because somebody agrees with you politically doesn’t make them right.

Figuring out what is right for you is tough. I can’t make it any easier because I simply don’t know what is the right call.