Last Saturday, the Biden Administration gave the green light to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for children from 6 months to 5 years old, with CDC Director Rochelle Walensky appearing strangely ecstatic in her announcement video.
Today marks an important step in our fight against #COVID19 by making safe & effective vaccines available for children ages 6 months-5 years.
On today’s #DirectorDebrief, I discuss the recent recommendation by @CDCgov & the importance of getting children under 5 vaccinated. ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/TRgk4RekGd
— Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH (@CDCDirector) June 18, 2022
The Washington Post and its ilk are also super-excited that these vaccines are “finally” approved, a moment that “many parents have anxiously awaited for months.”
Then on Tuesday, President Joe Biden and his wife Jill visited a COVID vaccine center Tuesday.
Biden declared, “We’re the only country in the world doing this right now.” Which begs the obvious question: why are we the only country dosing our babies with MRNA vaccines? It seems a little strange that we’re serving up our kids as the guinea pigs of the world.
I also wonder: Why the excitement, when little kids are at extremely limited risk from the viral disease? From UNICEF:
The available evidence indicates the direct impact of COVID-19 on child, adolescent and youth mortality to be limited. However, there is concern that the indirect effects of the pandemic on mortality in these age groups stemming from strained health systems, household income loss, and disruptions to care-seeking and preventative interventions like vaccination may be more substantial.
The impact is “limited,” says UNICEF, and “indirect effects” of the pandemic have been more harmful to children than the actual disease. How will the vaccine fix that?
Not everyone’s on board:
We have an FDA doctor on camera saying there’s a five fold increase in myocarditis for 12-17 year olds who are vaccinated. Here’s the President of The United States calling for more taxpayer money to put that “vaccine” in more children.
Evil people run this country. Evil. https://t.co/KoQ5iVIPLc
— Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) June 21, 2022
But President Biden isn’t worried, taking selfies with little kids Tuesday at a vaccine center at the Church of the Holy Communion in Washington D.C., saying, “This is a great day for you all. Thanks for the example you are setting.”
They may be setting an example, but it would appear that most parents won’t follow suit. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll shows that only about one in five parents of children under age five want to get their kids vaccinated, while 38 percent say they’re going to wait and see. Twenty-seven percent said they will “definitely not” get their under-5 kids vaccinated. Meanwhile, vaccines were made available to children aged five to 11 in November of last year, but only 30 percent have taken up the offer and gotten fully vaccinated.
Children’s Health Defense says it’s all about the money:
But, if the vaccine is added to the pediatric vaccine schedule, and if it’s mandated like other childhood vaccines, it will become an evergreen market representing billions of dollars to the drug companies.
It’s also to appease the neurotic parents who have been driven to terror by a disease that likely won’t hurt their children. From Axios:
“Some parents are so concerned about the risk of exposure that they’re still completely isolating their children socially, perhaps above and beyond what the current CDC and AAP guidelines currently suggest,” said Mark Sawyer, an infectious disease specialist at Rady Children’s Hospital and a member of the committee said. “The availability of this vaccine will liberate those children to some extent.”
I have a feeling nothing will calm parents like that.
Further complicating the issue is the vaccine’s efficacy rates for children. According to Yale Medicine, the data ain’t that great:
Moderna: Interim results show that the vaccine was 51% effective against symptomatic infection among children ages 6 months to 2 years, and 37% effective among those 2 to 5 years. …Vaccine efficacy was significantly lower for both vaccines in these age groups, compared with their efficacy in adults.
Dr. Brian Murray, a specialist in Pediatric Infectious Diseases, says (emphasis mine), “We know the vaccines still offer this greater protection for adults, and we expect the same with children. But we don’t know how these vaccines will perform in real life with respect to protection from being infected.”
That’s hardly reassuring. Oh, and will children need boosters? You can bet on it, although the FDA says only that they “may” need it. We’ve seen this movie before.
Translation: I support this unnecessary & potentially risky thing because I'm unwilling to tell someone they're being a bad parent. https://t.co/dZYqKMgMr6
— The Robber Baron (@Robber_Baron_) June 16, 2022
Forgive me if I’m not overjoyed by the news of the approval of child COVID vaccines. It was almost a year ago to the day when I, fully vaccinated so I could visit an elderly relative, sat in bed with COVID listening to Biden tell me, “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.”
I haven’t listened to him since.
Story cited here.