The FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee — VRBPAC, for those who love government alphabet soup — just voted to recommend yet another updated COVID-19 vaccine for this fall and winter, because apparently the definition of insanity doesn't apply when you've got a lab coat and a federal pension. The panel voted 8 to 1 in favor on May 28, 2026, with one member abstaining, presumably from laughing too hard.
How many "updated" shots before somebody admits the first ones didn't exactly deliver as advertised?
This time the bogeyman is the XFG variant, cheerfully nicknamed "stratus" — because nothing says "trust the science" like giving your virus a cloud-themed stage name. According to CDC data, XFG strains accounted for more than half of U.S. COVID cases over a four-week period ending April 11. So naturally, the solution is another jab targeting a variant that's already been circulating for weeks by the time anyone rolls up their sleeve.
But here's the part that should make your eyebrows hit the ceiling. Even the panel members aren't fully on board with their own recommendation. VRBPAC member Anna Durbin — who voted for the thing — openly admitted, "We can't make a recommendation if we don't have data, and that's one of my great concerns." She actually called for strengthening real-time surveillance infrastructure and suggested the committee consider meeting more than once a year.
Read that again. A member of the panel that just recommended a new shot said they don't have enough data to make a recommendation. And then recommended it anyway. That's your FDA, folks.
Meanwhile, the CDC's own COVID dashboard is running on fumes. The data used in this decision was already one month old at the time of reporting, and current sequencing data is listed as "unavailable" due to low submission numbers. So we're recommending shots based on stale numbers and a dashboard that's essentially running on the honor system.
This whole circus is playing out against a backdrop the FDA would rather you ignore. Former FDA Commissioner Marty Makary has already resigned. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been raising questions about vaccine safety and transparency that the old guard spent years dismissing as conspiracy theories — right up until the data started backing him up.
The American public figured this out a long time ago. Uptake on the last round of boosters was embarrassing by any measure. People stopped lining up not because they're "anti-science" — they stopped because they watched the goalposts move from "stops transmission" to "reduces severity" to "well, it's still recommended" faster than you can say "fact-check."
But the machine rolls on. As 100 Percent Fed Up reported, the panel pushed this recommendation through despite the gaping holes in their own data, because that's what bureaucracies do — they justify their existence by producing recommendations that justify their next meeting.
One member abstained from the vote. Honestly? That person might be the only one on the panel still paying attention.
Get ready for the fall ad blitz, America. They're cueing up another round of "safe and effective" commercials. The only thing they're effectively doing at this point is proving why nobody trusts them anymore.
