What’s the rationale for vaccinating children for COVID-19? Where’s the data, the science that would support this move? We see none, and we think it’s dangerous.
Why would there be a push to vaccinate 6-month-old babies or 10-year-old children via an experimental vaccine that delivers genetic code into your cells instructing it to produce a portion of the virus (the ‘S’ or Spike protein), yet with no safety data and based on trials that didn’t run to the required duration to adequately assess the safety of the vaccine?
Why put our children at undue risk when they can be allowed to be infected naturally and harmlessly as part of day-to-day living, by mingling?
What Is the Risk?
There’s no basis for vaccinating children from COVID-19 as is being suggested by Dr. Fauci (from 6 months to 11 years old). Children are at very low risk of illness, especially severe illness from COVID-19, and children do not spread the illness. The most updated data from the American Academy of Pediatrics showed that “Children were 0.00 percent–0.19 percent of all COVID-19 deaths, and 10 [U.S.] states reported zero child deaths. In states reporting, 0.00 percent–0.03 percent of all child COVID-19 cases resulted in death.”Risks Versus Benefits
Children should not be carte blanche subjected to the same policies as adults without careful examination of the benefits versus the risks. Of course, zero risk is not attainable—with or without mask mandates, lockdowns, vaccines, therapeutics, distancing, or anything else medicine may develop or government agencies may impose.The potential risk of unknown and serious side effects from the brand-new and barely tested vaccines are—in truth—completely unknown. That’s because it’s almost unheard of for a vaccine to be released to the public this quickly. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get the vaccine.
We’re certainly not anti-vaxxers and certainly children should receive their measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines among others, as these have had a dramatic effect on morbidity and mortality for decades. For populations where the risk of death or serious illness from COVID-19 is substantial—middle-aged and older adults or individuals with other chronic medical vulnerabilities such as serious respiratory, cardiac, or immunological problems—using a new and barely tested vaccine is not only reasonable, it may and can be the most prudent and responsible thing to do.
Inexplicably, there has been a recent flurry of statements supporting the vaccination of children. Of course, this also means that the experimental vaccines must be tested in children prior to mass introduction and use.
A Call for Caution
We also write this as a call for caution. This really is about risk management decisions we as free people, and as parents, are allowed to make in the United States. Remember, also, young children can’t give proper informed consent. This is an important ethical matter.The death rate in children under 12 is as close to zero as we can get. We have masked our children, closed schools, locked them down, and driven surges in suicides in adults as well as our children due to these policies, and now we seek to vaccinate children with an experimental vaccine for which we have no data on the long-term harms. This is very unsafe in our opinion.
Parents must now step up and demand that health officials and vaccine developers (and any entity with interests in the development of these vaccines) make their case for vaccinating their children. Do not simply accept this, for there’s no credible reason for it. Force these people to make their case, and if they can’t, if in your own risk-management assessment it doesn’t make sense, then don’t do it. It’s not like buying a pair of shoes for them. They could be left with a lifetime of severe illness and disability and even death if something goes wrong.
We haven’t done the safety testing nor will any proposed study be able to collect that data for the time period it’s needed. Sample size can never compensate for time. Remember the disaster with the polio vaccine in 1955 and the Cutter incident; remember the dengue vaccine in 2017 (Dengvaxia) and the dangerous plasma leakage syndrome where the vaccine posed a risk for those children without prior infection; remember the H1N1 2009 vaccine and narcolepsy; remember the vaccine for RSV in the 1960s; remember the measles vaccine in the 1960s and the impact on children; remember the 1977 DPT vaccine, and so on.
Making such claims is not science, and decisions based on such claims are not evidence-based. We need to see the actual science and not just rampant speculation by often nonsensical media medical experts.
The Way Forward
Children should live normally, and if exposed to SARS-CoV-2, we can rest assured that in the vast majority of cases, they will have no to only mild symptoms while at the same time developing naturally acquired immunity—an immunity that is definitely superior to that which might be caused by a vaccine. This approach would also accelerate the development of the much-needed herd immunity about which much has been written.Allow child-to-child daily interaction. Harmless and natural exposure. Not only will that drive the adaptive immunity but it will give the children a more robust defense against any mutant variants of the virus itself. This will also allow our children’s immune systems to be taxed and tuned up daily, as opposed to the weakening we are subjecting them to with the year-long lockdowns and school closures.
We ask the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) and other governmental agency spokespersons give clarity to this burgeoning societal risk. We ask that testing of the vaccines in children be halted post-haste. This is based not only on putative risks associated with mass vaccination but even more specifically because, and as we have said, children simply don’t need a vaccine for COVID-19.
Further, we request that governmental agencies elucidate the risk-benefits of such vaccines to children before proceeding to another “emergency use authorization” of vaccines in this population.
In closing, we remain skeptical about the safety of the currently administered vaccines in general, since the FDA issued an emergency use authorization and didn’t apply the needed full regulatory Biologics License Applications approval. This continues to concern us greatly, since the safety component has not been fully assessed and essentially means that all persons taking COVID-19 vaccines at present are in a large Phase III trial.
The efficacy and safety results will be known in two to three years, and perhaps longer for the longer-term adverse effects that become known at a later date.
Exposing children to an untested emergency use medication implies that there’s a dire risk to the children without it. There’s no data to support such a potential risk, and for any medical expert to imply otherwise is duplicitous. It’s time government agencies and their medical experts stop spinning the information and come clean with the public, especially when it comes to our children.
If there’s a credible basis, if there’s evidence, then bring the evidence and let us have a look at it, but until then, please, we ask you, to leave our children alone.