FDA Guidelines on COVID-19 Vaccines Are Throwing Those Most at Risk Into Despair

When the Food and Drug Administration approved updated COVID-19 vaccines on August 27, 2025, it also imposed new restrictions on who is eligible to get them. The new restrictions have created widespread confusion and concern, as well as a series of shakeups in government and public health institutions.

“The [FDA’s] new recommendations are acting as a bureaucratic deterrent against people getting the vaccine, exacerbating the problem of record lows in rates of COVID vaccination last year,” evolutionary epidemiologist and fellow Truthout contributor Rob Wallace told me. The changes come as COVID-19 infections are rising , according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The new guidelines officially limit vaccine approval to people older than 65 and th