Ignoring the science | City Journal

A new study from the CDC shows that the first updated coronavirus vaccine (a bivalent vaccine approved in fall 2022) reduced infections by about 50% in the first two months after vaccination in children and adolescents ages 5 to 17. reported to be % effective. The limited and temporary benefits do not justify the authorities’ official recommendation that everyone in this low-risk age group be vaccinated against COVID-19.

The CDC will introduce a bivalent mRNA coronavirus vaccine containing the original virus and subsequent Omicron strains to people ages 12 and older on September 1, 2022, and to children ages 5 to 11 on October 12, 2022. recommended. It was replaced last fall by a monovalent vaccine against the subsequent Omicron variant. However, limited data are available regarding the protection of bivalent vaccines followed by monovalent vaccines in children and adolescents.

The new study prospectively followed 2,959 participants between the ages of 5 and 17 and conducted weekly tests. The results showed that the bivalent vaccine was 54.0% effective against infectious disease and 49.4% effective against symptomatic COVID-19 infection when compared with those who received the bivalent vaccine and those who received it. found. Has not been vaccinated or only received her first Covid-19 vaccine. The proctor did not monitor the participants for an extended period of time. Among participants who received the bivalent COVID-19 vaccine, the median observation period after vaccination was only 50 days.

However, there is little reason to believe that the limited protection against disease transmission of bivalent vaccines was durable or that newer monovalent vaccines are superior. Early last year, Anthony Fauci said in a medical paper he co-authored that vaccines against respiratory viruses like the one that causes Covid-19 offer only “incomplete and short-lived” protection against infection. It acknowledged that there is sufficient scientific evidence to believe that it does not. As time passed and new virus variants emerged, the coronavirus vaccines continued to protect against severe illness and death, but their imperfect ability to stop the virus quickly waned over the course of several months. has become clear.

That hasn’t stopped public health officials like Fauci from recommending coronavirus vaccines for schoolchildren. Fauci said the effectiveness of these types of vaccines (against viral respiratory diseases such as influenza and the novel coronavirus) against infection is “clearly suboptimal,” as revealed in a January 2023 article. He defended the vaccine mandate as preventing transmission, even though he had long understood that. And “it’s only measured on a monthly basis.” And the CDC continues to recommend vaccination for everyone age 5 and older.

But it never makes sense to protect low-risk groups like schoolchildren from contracting the virus. Early in the pandemic, it was clear that children were at little risk of serious consequences from the virus. For nearly four years (January 2020 to December 2023), children ages 5 to 17 accounted for one-tenth of 1% of total COVID-19 deaths in the United States (911 out of 1.17 million). It accounted for less than 1. By contrast, people over 65, the most vulnerable group, accounted for more than three-quarters of deaths. Similarly, hospitalization rates for COVID-19 among people aged five to 17 as a whole are consistently 10 times lower, while hospitalization rates for people aged 65 and older are 25 times higher.

Like any other medicine, the coronavirus vaccine is not without risk. They have been documented to pose a risk of severe cardiac inflammation (myocarditis and pericarditis), which is most frequently seen in adolescent and young adult men. Because of these risks, caution should be used when recommending vaccines to groups at very low risk of severe disease.

If the CDC recommends vaccination for people under 18, guidance should focus on this age subgroup at highest risk of severe disease and death. For example, children with certain chronic medical conditions, such as type 1 diabetes, obesity, and birth defects of the heart and circulatory system, are more likely than other children to experience severe illness and hospitalization from COVID-19. will be much higher. Pediatric vaccine expert Paul Offit writes: of New England Medical Journal, the new COVID-19 vaccine is aimed at “those most in need of protection against severe disease, specifically older adults, people with multiple co-morbidities that put them at higher risk of severe disease, and those with weakened immune systems.” It is best reserved for those who are in decline. . . . We should stop trying to prevent all symptomatic infections in healthy young people by boosting them with vaccines containing mRNA from strains that may disappear in a few months. ”

Most of the world’s major countries have concluded that healthy children do not need to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. It’s time for the U.S. to change its recommendation to vaccinate all school children, which does little to protect them, exposes them to unnecessary risks, and further undermines trust in public health officials It is something.

Photo: Jane Tyska/Digital First Media/The Mercury News (via Getty Images)