Is mass Covid vaccination for children prudent? The case for caution
Dr. Fauci has been consistently and confidently suggesting that all children should get the Covid-19 vaccine by the end of 2021 or early 2022. Schools, it seems, are listening. Mobile clinics are going around to high schools and even middle schools before the 2020–2021 school year is over to get students vaccinated. Many colleges are requiring their students get this non-FDA approved medical intervention in order to return to campus — a policy we don’t believe has a precedent.
Fauci’s reasoning has been that we need to reach herd immunity, which he suggests could be achieved with 75–85% of the population.
However, his strategy appears to hinge on the assumption that all Americans have a roughly equal likelihood of spreading Covid. As we discussed in a previous article, the data tells a very different story. Research from the National Academy of Sciences found that just 18% of people produce 80% of aerosols and NONE of these high-risk spreaders were under the age of 26. Since experts tell us Covid spreads via aerosols, doesn’t it follow we would get an 80% reduction in spread by vaccinating just 18% of the population? Targeting high-risk spreaders should get us to herd immunity much faster. Happily, these high-risk spreaders are the same population likely to get the greatest benefit from the vaccines.
To our knowledge, Fauci has not explained why he ruled out this more targeted approach. We find this concerning given how aggressive the policy he’s promoting is — and how few tough questions the media is asking him about this. We are making the case for caution and pleading for everyone to slow down the mad rush to mass vaccinate children. Our reasons are as follows:
1) Covid vaccines are not FDA-approved and have no long-term safety data
None of the Covid vaccines are FDA approved. They only have Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), a significantly lower safety standard. The two most common Covid vaccines in the US, Pfizer and Moderna, use a new mRNA technology that inserts itself into our genetic processes (RNA is part of our genes) like no FDA-approved medical intervention ever has before. We have no long-term safety data for mRNA injections. As we’ll explain further below, healthy children are not vulnerable to Covid and many experts believe mass vaccinating children is not necessary. Given these facts, we believe an abundance of caution is a moral imperative and just common sense.
2) Children have a very low risk of dying from Covid
Cambridge’s Office of National Statistics has suggested that the chances of a child dying from Covid is lower than the chances of getting struck by lightning. In the US, a “remarkably low” (Washington Post’s words) number of children died with Covid-19 in 2020. The vast majority of them suffered from serious pre-existing health conditions. Child deaths are low to begin with and Covid made up a miniscule fraction of child deaths in 2020. While deaths are not all that matter, they are the standard of how we measure disease severity. Every child’s life is precious, but does this justify giving a new gene-based technology that is not yet FDA-approved with no long-term safety today to tens of millions of healthy children? Does it justify mandating it?
Even Politifact deemed Senator Ron Johnson’s statement that, in many cases, seasonal flu was deadlier for young people as “mostly true”. Flu vaccines are not required to attend school. And they use traditional vaccine technology with decades of safety data.
3) A physician-epidemiologist from John Hopkins was joined by two others arguing on BMJ’s website that the conditions for emergency use are not met for giving Covid vaccines to healthy children
A British Medical Journal (BMJ) blog post penned by two epidemiologists and a mathematician raise serious questions about whether an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) is legally appropriate in the case of children and Covid. They explain, “One might hope to achieve population level benefits with broader child vaccination for Covid-19, even while the relative benefits and risks for children themselves remain unclear, but this is inconsistent with the conditions for emergency use authorization.”
As we explained in the introduction, given children are low-risk spreaders, we don’t believe the public health case is very strong. But it appears even if it was, a public health rationale is outside the scope of an EUA. Why is Fauci never asked about this in his near-daily mainstream media appearances?
4) Vaccines are available for adults, who are the drivers of Covid’s spread — children pose a low risk to the community
Again from the BMJ blog post above, “Fortunately, Covid-19 vaccines have shown very high effectiveness across the adult population, and future trajectories of hospitalizations and deaths will largely be determined by vaccination rates in adults.” This suggests mass vaccinating children is not necessary. Studies of schools in Sweden and elsewhere in Europe and Asia where children continued to go to school through Covid also show they were not significant vectors for Covid.
5) Many doctors are questioning the necessity and safety of mass vaccinating children
This includes doctors at the top of their field like Harvard’s Martin Kulldorff, who boasts over 25,000 academic citations, and Oxford’s Sunetra Gupta, whose work has garnered over 17,000 academic citations. They are co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, signed by over 50,000 doctors and public health researchers, which promotes age-specific policies for Covid over blanket mandates given Covid operates in a highly age-specific manner:
A recent New York Times (NYT) article, which was advocating nearly giving all children the Covid vaccine stated, “Half of respondents (723 epidemiologists surveyed) said at least 80 percent of Americans, including children, would need to be vaccinated before it would be safe to do most activities without precautions.” The NYT highlights the support for this position, but reading between the lines, half of the over 700 epidemiologists surveyed did NOT agree 80% of Americans, including children, need to get vaccinated.
Notably, the NYT fails to include a single quote from the half of the epidemiologists who did not think this was necessary. Inexplicably, the NYT used this data as evidence to support their assertion that, “The campaign to vaccinate more Americans cannot let up until children are protected, they (the epidemiologists) said.” This is highly misleading given that epidemiologists were split down the middle and there appeared to be no consensus children need to be vaccinated. Why didn’t the NYT acknowledge this or include any input from any of the 50% of epidemiologists who didn’t agree it was necessary? Why hasn’t this been acknowledged by Fauci, who instead speaks as though mass vaccinating children is a foregone conclusion? Why doesn’t CNN or MSNBC invite on doctors who oppose mass vaccinating children to share their concerns? Where is the debate as we rush to inject all of our children with an experimental gene-therapy technology still in clinical trials??
It appears to us as though our health authorities and media, who have called for an abundance of caution before allowing young children to play unmasked on the playground, are now throwing caution to the wind when it comes to injecting a novel gene-based pharmaceutical with no long-term safety data nor FDA-approval into tens of millions of American children. All without offering a compelling scientific explanation as to why these extreme measures are necessary nor offering cogent responses (or really any responses) to the many doctors who argue they are unnecessary and even dangerous. We strive not to be alarmist, but this is alarming.
The push to mass vaccinate children with the Covid vaccine is moving at breakneck speed. We believe it is imperative that we slow down, consider alternative courses of action and arrange a robust public debate between experts on opposing sides so that parents have all the information they need in order to make an informed decision. We owe that much to our children.
