On NewsTalk 1370 WCOA, I had Healthcare policy expert Sally Pipes to provide insight on how the full approval Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine might increase vaccinations and affect vaccine mandates.
Pipes is the president, CEO, Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Healthcare Policy with the Pacific Research Institute. She steers the national conversation in health care policy through her weekly Newsmax column, biweekly columns for Forbes.com and the Washington Examiner “Beltway Confidential†blog, and op-eds published in newspapers around the country.
Pipes believes more people who have been hesitant to get the vaccine will now get the Pfizer shot.
“It turns out that 67% of the people polled did not get their vaccination or get fully vaccinated because they felt that the vaccine was too new and they feared that there could be problems,” said Pipes. “And then another 57% worried that there were side effects that we didn’t know about. And interestingly 49% of the wait-and-see people said full approval would have encouraged them to get vaccinated.”
She continued, “And also 40% of people that were on the wait-and-see, now that it’s been fully approved said if their employer demanded that they be vaccinated to work at their place of business, that they would get vaccinated.”
Pipes pointed out another impact of the FDA’s full approval. “The drug companies can advertise to consumers the importance of the vaccination and what the effects of it are, and that could not happen under emergency use. So I’m very pleased that the FDA finally approved it because it is going to encourage more people to get vaccinated I believe.”
She doesn’t support the government making the vaccine mandatory.
“I don’t think it’s the role of government to mandate that people in government get vaccines,”said Pipes. “If private companies, that are privately or publicly held, if they want to mandate that their employees get vaccinated well then that’s their decision. But it’s not up to government to tell people in government that they have to be vaccinated.”
