The Kids Are Alright

We vaccinate people for essentially two reasons -

1. To protect the individual against infection or severe disease;

2. To reduce the spread of a virus and, in some cases, eliminate the virus from a population.

3. Both, to protect the individual and to protect the community.

Shingles vaccination is done to solely help the individual.

HPV vaccination of boys is the protect the women they will have sex with in the future against cervical cancer and is done solely to help the community.

Flu vaccination is for both - younger people are vaccinated to reduce the spread of the virus and vaccination of older people is done to protect the individuals against infection or severe disease.

Historical Perspective -

Mass vaccination of kids make sense if you can get rid of disease. Mass vaccination of children was used very successfully against smallpox, and against polio. Smallpox and polio are two notable examples. Smallpox was eradicated from the US in 1949 and from the human population over 40 years ago. Polio was eradicated from the US in 1979 and, in 2018, there were only thirty-three cases worldwide.

But the Covid vaccines aren’t as effective as the smallpox and polio vaccines, not even close. The lack of durable protection means that people will become at risk after being vaccinated, not know it and get infected. Further, not every adult is going to get vaccinated. In other words, there are always going to be plenty of adults at risk of infection with Covid.

Back to smallpox and polio, mass vaccination of children is done for two reasons, for the “community” and for the “individual.” Polio was a very serious pediatric problem from 1920’s through the 1950’s, when the vaccine first came out. In the 1960’s we switched from a dead virus vaccine to a weakened virus vaccine, from Salk to Sabin. The Sabin vaccine was more effective but had a risk of causing paralysis in ~4 in 1 million children. In the 1990’s, when polio was no longer a problem, we switched back to a safer vaccine.

Smallpox vaccine was no fun and has many serious side effects, as borne out during the 2002 smallpox campaign among the military. Since smallpox had not occurred in the US since 1949 and hadn’t occurred in North America since 1952, smallpox vaccination in the US was halted in 1972, or 5 years before smallpox was eradicated.

So, it’s risk vs. benefit. There is no point in doing vaccinating kids for the “community.”

Therefore, it’s only about the children themselves

Does vaccinating all kids make sense?

According to the AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) and the CDC, As of September 30 -

• ~5.9 million children < 18 years-old (7.8% of this population) have tested positive for COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic.

• 0.1%-1.9% of all their child COVID-19 cases resulted in hospitalization

• 0.00%-0.03% of all child COVID-19 cases resulted in death

• obese kids are three times more likely and kids with type 1 diabetes are 4.6 times more likely to be hospitalized.

What do we know about the Pfizer vaccine in children between 5 – 11 years of age?

• 2,268 participants 5 to <12 years of age

• trial began in 7 months ago

• “the vaccine demonstrated a favorable safety profile”

• “elicited robust neutralizing antibody responses”

A few things –

Regarding vaccine efficacy in this population, it appears Pfizer is planning to submit only neutralizing antibody data. There is no mention of efficacy rate. This will be ironic since healthcare workers with natural immunity after infection are not exempted from vaccination even if they have a potent antibody response.

The safety data haven’t been released. Assuming there were no serious adverse effects, the study only included 2,268 children and the first dose was given only 7 months ago. So, the safety data, in the best case scenario, are limited by few numbers and short time interval after vaccination.

Public health –

If people are concerned about adults getting Covid from unvaccinated children, then they should first focus on adults getting vaccinated. The children should not be put at risk for a complication, because some adults have not gotten the vaccine.

How often are the kids going to get vaccinated against Covid? In the elderly, by 6 months the efficacy of the vaccine falls 50%. Kids will certainly last longer, but do they get a blood test or do they get an automatic booster every year or so?

What about kids with natural immunity? You cannot force kids with better immunity than that induced by the vaccine to get the vaccine. That’s nonsense. Will there be an exemption for children who antibody levels are equivalent to those levels used to get FDA-approval for the vaccine?

In short –

Vaccination of children in this situation has to be only about the individual child and not about adults around them.

• The rate of severe Covid in children 5-11 is very low, 0.1%-1.9%. The mortality rate is, fortunately, much lower still, 0.00%-0.03%

• For those children, who are neither diabetic nor obese, it is ten times lower.

• So, the chances of a healthy, non-diabetic, not obese child, 5-11 years-old, getting severely ill from Covid are very small.

• Covid cases, for now, are falling again. So far, only 8% of children have tested positive for Covid (total percent infected is unknown). The chances of a child being infected in the next 12 months are much less than 1 in 12.

• So, the rate of a given child without diabetes and obesity becoming infected and developing severe Covid are 0.1%-1.9% x 1/10 x 1/12.

• We just don’t know the side effects of this vaccine in children ages 5-11.

• 2,268 kids observed over <=7 months simply isn’t much data, when deciding to vaccinate 20 million children, perhaps repeatedly.

• No one predicted that adolescent – young adult males would be at increased risk of myocarditis from the Covid vaccines. Sweden and Denmark have halted on the use of the Moderna vaccine in younger patients, because of this side effect.

So, should kids 5-11 get the Pfizer vaccine? Well, it’s up to their parents, or, at least, it should be.

Decision makers are for the first time misrepresenting data for reasons I cannot understand.

The CDC has not honestly evaluated all of the available data. And that scares me.

Dr. Fauci has stated that if he had grandkids, he would certainly want them to get the vaccine. He reminded me of Eugene Levy in Splash.

https://clip.cafe/splash-1984/im-really-a-nice-guy/