On Tuesday this week, the New York Times ran a story about the CDC’s new recommendation that every American aged six months and older should get the latest Covid shot. The article said that some CDC advisors had concerns about the broad-based recommendation, but that they voted for it anyway, and the article over all presented a vigorous, one-sided endorsement of the CDC’s decision.

Yet the agency’s uniform recommendation has been met with sharp opposition by a number of public health professionals—including Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee—who say there is insufficient evidence that the booster will yield a net benefit for much of the population. Dissenting voices were not presented in the piece.

Further, in line with the criticisms, the CDC’s indiscriminate guidance differs greatly from widely-adopted tailored plans abroad. The UK, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Germany, Belgium, and Australia, among other countries, each have far more restrictive recommendations or availability of the booster dose than the US—generally limiting it to people over aged 65 or to those at high risk or in regular contact with those at high risk. Some of these countries do not recommend any Covid vaccination at all for healthy children and adolescents.