Since the very worst of the pandemic, getting a Covid booster has been a relatively straightforward process. You head to your local pharmacy, stick out your arm, and jab! Protection received.
But because this is 2025, the very worst timeline, securing a vaccine today means navigating a confusing patchwork of state rules and federal guidance. As my colleague Julia Métraux writes in her latest:
Now, in an increasingly anti-vaccine public health regime, Americans are subject to a patchwork of state rules on who qualifies for the Covid vaccine and under what circumstances, as right-wing legislators and governors like Florida’s Ron DeSantis race to outdo one another in reducing access not only to Covid shots but vaccination in general.
For a growing share of people in the US, that leaves crossing state lines as the best option to get the updated vaccine: a new era of interstate vaccine tourism.
There’s yet another layer. On Friday, CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), now filled with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appointees, will meet to discuss new potential Covid vaccine guidance. In states that still require prescriptions for the Covid vaccine or did until recently, many people have already reported issues in actually getting the shot.
I endured some of this personally last week upon calling my primary care doctor for a prescription. They, in turn, listed off a sampling of preexisting conditions I needed to have to qualify for a booster. By the end, we both knew where the conversation was headed: Me, without a script.
But exactly one day later, my state became the latest to officially break with federal guidance and expand booster access. Soon enough, my doc called to let me know that I could go straight to my local Walgreens and get boosted after all.
So here I am, newly jabbed and relieved, but experiencing a strange deja vu from the early days of the Covid vaccine. It's a memory I don't wish to recall, and yet here we are: federal officials choosing a sicker America.
—Inae Oh
