Kids vaccine is low risk either way
Parents sense that, and that is why uptake is poor, Exaggerating will ruin trust in medicine
Recently, a study appeared in the New England Journal that reports COVID-19 outcomes among kids who get vaccinated. It is supposed to show the benefit of vaccines, but what it really shows is that the risks to kids are so low, it doesn’t matter. No one needs to stress. If parents want to do it, fine. If they don’t, fine. Not worth pushing it or antagonizing people about it. Moreover, the proof is in the pudding ~3% of parents of kids <5 have gone through with vaccination, and about 1/3 among kids 5 to 11.
Consider the paper:
First, “Children who had had SARS-CoV-2 infection before the study start date and those who had returned to Singapore after acquiring SARS-CoV-2 infection abroad were excluded from the study.” Already this severely limits generalizability to the USA, where the vast majority of kids already had COVID-19 (75% +++). Risks to kids who had and recovered from COVID from re-infection are lower than immune naive kids.
Second, the study looks at kids who voluntarily took vax vs not. This introduces confounders, specifically socioeconomic status and education. The authors do not adequately adjust for this only doing this, “housing type as a proxy for socioeconomic status (e.g., public housing with one to five rooms, private housing, or other housing)”. That isn’t good enough. Worse it may unlock other problems (perhaps even backdoor pathways) if some of these housing projects were targeted with special messaging.
Third, Singapore uses aggressive asymptomatic testing to test contacts, which will inflate the cases, and, again, is not US standard of care.
Fourth having said all that. Here is the result. Rates of hospitalization, hospitalization requiring oxygen, and death.
That’s not a typo. The risks are so low. You cannot see them. Either way. Now let me blow it up. This is way below 1%. In fact, one quarter of 1%
The difference seen here is likely confounded, likely exaggerated, and would surely be smaller in a group of kids like American kids who mostly had COVID-19 already. But even with all that said. It is low risk.
“Among hospitalized children, only five received supplemental oxygen, four of whom were admitted to the intensive care unit. Of these five children, one was unvaccinated, two were partially vaccinated, and two were fully vaccinated. No deaths attributable to Covid-19 (as determined by the cause of death reported to the Ministry of Health) were observed during the study period.”
On the other side of the ledger
“In Singapore, 22 serious adverse events after vaccination (0.005% of all doses administered) among children 5 to 11 years of age were reported to the Health Sciences Authority as of February 28, 2022”
Bottom line then: Risks to kids are low either way. Putting pressure on parents or making this a major focus of a public health campaign would be a misuse of resources. Exaggerating the importance of the decision is a mistake. Mandates would also be a mistake. Finally, whether this generalizes to the USA is unknown, but if anything the direction of the signal will not go in the positive direction.
Yes but 100 percent risk when it’s your kid who gets myocarditis.
"Among hospitalized children, only five received supplemental oxygen, four of whom were admitted to the intensive care unit. Of these five children, one was unvaccinated, two were partially vaccinated, and two were fully vaccinated. No deaths attributable to Covid-19 … In Singapore, 22 serious adverse events [SAE] after vaccination (0.005% of all doses administered [1 out of 20,000])... Bottom line then: Risks to kids are low either way.”
…
Really? On the Covid risk side, 1 unvaccinated child ended up in ICU (or on O2). On the vaccine risk side, 4 children ended up in ICU (or on O2) anyway and another 22 had a “serious adverse event”. So, risk/benefit of getting injected is 26:1? (or 22:1). Even IF the individual risk is low, that is a big relative difference. And, the numbers add up with millions of children injected.
Also, more important, is the risk of SAE really 0.005%? Not mentioned is the URF (underreporting factor) for the adverse events. In the US VAERS system, the URF is somewhere between 10 to 100 (Steve Kirsch, Jessica Rose estimate about 30 or 40). But the CDC assumes VAERS reports are vastly overreported for the Covid vaccines and basically assume there is no URF (or overreporting).
So, multiply 22 adverse events by the URF, and you have a range of actually 220 to 2200 vax injured children to avoid 1 unvaccinated child from ending up in the ICU. If you use an URF of 40, then the 0.005% SAE risk would actually be 0.2% ( or 1 in 500). That doesn't sound like a “low risk either way” to me for a vaccine for healthy children.
P.S. As a firefighter, I was one of the first to get the Phizer shot on 12/23/20. A week after I got my second shot, I had a DVT, and the following week a PE that put me in the hospital (and on blood thinners for months). At the time, I thought it was a post-surgical complication from outpatient surgery, but my surgeon was surprised by the PE since I had no risk factors and was a relatively young 56 year old (and the shot was “safe” and only caused anaphalatytic reactions in a million or so folks).
A year later, I finally made the association when I finally researched the vaccine injury “conspiracy theory” for myself and saw the huge number of clots being reported (before my firefighting career, I graduated with a MSE of Industrial Engineering from University of Michigan and was briefly a Phd student. I took several courses in applied statistics; I know how to read & evaluate research papers).
The CDC and FDA are the ones full of BS. At best, they're just covering their butts (and the folks in the know at the lower levels are just keeping their mouths shut until they can get their years in to retire with their government pension). At worst, Peter Marks and company are getting ready for a “retirement” job with Phizer, etc.
I got all my shots as a child, and plenty more in the Army. I've gotten a flu shot every year for the past 30 years. On 4/01/21, I had my 16-yr old son get his shot the first day it was available (in 2 weeks he's going to a college without covid shot mandates). I even got my second shingles shot just before I looked into the “conspiracy theories.” I'm hardly a crazy “anti-vaxxer.” But, after watching the ACIP & VRBPAC meetings etc. , and seeing how the “sausage is made”, I'm now very skeptical of vaccines, medical "experts", the "brand-name" medical journals, and the medical industry (partly thanks to reading Vinay's book on “Medical Reversals”, among others). My trust in medical authorities is gone.
Maybe Robert F. Kennedy, Robert Malone and other "anti-vaxxers" aren't crazy, but the victim of censorship & propaganda? Many have been kicked off Twitter, FB, YouTube. Others, lack their courage and have self-censored. Perhaps, including Vinay? He hasn't yet applied his rigorous skepticism toward vaccine safety, VAERS, & the CDC's pro-forma "safety surveillance"? (although, to his credit, he has discussed myocarditis in young men).