Children At Risk

Right now we are in the midst of a concerted government effort to vaccinate children as young as 5 years of age against Covid.

In March, the White House announced that they were setting aside $1.5 billion to promote the Covid vaccines via television, radio and digital advertising.

You cannot escape those ads. They are everywhere. 

That has been a great deal for the Pharma companies.

Pharma companies spend a lot of money marketing and advertising their drugs. You cannot watch television for more than a few minutes before seeing a drug ad.

They have not had to spend any money marketing the Covid vaccines which have proven to be the biggest money maker that the vaccine developers have ever seen.

Billons and billions of profit have been made from the Covid vaccines.

Since 84.4% of every age 18+ adult has had at least one dose of the vaccines, the focus has now turned to children 5 ages and up to be vaccinated. In addition, they are recommending everyone age 16 and older get the booster.

Let's review the risk that children have from Covid according to CDC data.

There have been far fewer confirmed cases of Covid in children (relative to their share of the population) than any other age group in the United States.

Source: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographics

 

Children under age 18 make up 22.3% of the population but have accounted for 15.7% of the cases.

Those age 18-64 make up 50.3% of the population but account for 71.7% of the cases.

Seniors age 65+ are 14.7% of the population but make up 12.6% of the cases.

Source: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographics

The fact that Seniors make up a relatively small percentage of the cases is surprising to many since they make up such a disproportionate share of deaths.

However, the CDC also estimates that the 0-17 age group have the highest seroprevalence levels of any age group indicating that more people in this age group have been exposed to the virus and are exhibiting antibodies even though they might never have been symptomatic.

This is shown in the CDC chart below. Almost 40% of those 0-17 have antibodies against Covid without considering the vaccines. This is more than double the percentage in the age 65+ age group.

Source: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#national-lab

Hospitalizations for those under age 18 (the yellow line on the chart below) has been close to zero the entire pandemic. Currently, the hospitalization rate is .26/100,000.

New Admissions of Patients with Covid-19 per 100,000 population
Source: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#new-hospital-admissions

The dark purple line at the top of the chart are hospital admissions for those age 70+.

95% of this age group has received at least one dose of the vaccine according to the CDC. 

Deaths of school children are so low they are not even visible on the CDC chart below of Covid deaths by age group.

76.2% of all Covid deaths have been in those age 65+.

Source: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographics

28.2% of Covid deaths have been of those age 85+ despite the fact that this age group makes up just 2% of the U.S. population and 1.9% of the cases.

Source: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographics

You can see from the data above that all of the deaths of children under the age of 18 that have been associated with Covid have not even reached 1,000 to this point.

That is in a population of 74 million children.

Since we are almost two years into the pandemic that puts that one-year risk of a Covid death in this age group to be .000006756.

How do these Covid deaths compare to other causes of death in children?

Below are the leading causes of death for children age 5-14 from 2009-2020 per CDC statistics.

Covid deaths barely make the chart.

What should concern anybody who looks at the data is to see the sharp rise in suicides, drug overdoses and homicides that occurred in 2020.

 In 5-14 year olds?

Source: https://twitter.com/COVIDData3/status/1470433349999251469/photo/1

To put that in even better perspective based on recent current events, Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky reported today the sad news that 12 children were among the 74 killed in the tornadoes that struck that state last Friday night.

That is more children than have died from Covid over the last two years according to the most recent Covid-19 data from Kentucky.

Cumulative Covid deaths in Kentucky by age 
Source: https://chfs.ky.gov/agencies/dph/covid19/COVID19DailyReport.pdf

What is more interesting is to look at the actual deaths of children who have died from Covid in the CDC data and see  exactly what some of the underlying facts were in these cases.

These are some of the results you get from making a query on the CDC's Wonder System on other contributing factors involving deaths attributable to Covid.

Drownings. Motor Vehicle accidents. Firearms. Cancers. Heart disease.

These are all "contributing factors" listed with these Covid deaths.

 

Source: https://twitter.com/snorman1776/status/1470450941606473729

I have heard some say that there is not one documented case of an otherwise previously healthy child dying from Covid in the United States thus far. I don't know if that is true but the detailed CDC data would suggest that even the limited reported number of Covid deaths in children may be overstated.

Children 12 and up have been eligible to receive the Pfizer vaccine since May. (Moderna and J&J have still not been authorized for anyone under age 16).

Children 5-11 became eligible for Pfizer on November 2.

If you review the data above, there are very good reasons for someone who is 75 years old to get the Covid vaccine.

It is hard to see any reason for a healthy 5 year old girl or 10 year old boy to do so.

Fortunately, it appears that most parents are not volunteering their children for the vaccinations.

Even though children 12 years of age and older have been eligible for the vaccine for over six months just 52% are fully vaccinated in the age 12-17 age group.

Vaccinations for the 5-11 age group are off to a sluggish start as reported in this Reuters story.

 

Fewer than 20% of U.S. children ages 5 to 11 have gotten at least one shot so far, compared to around 80% of U.S. adults, according to federal data. Of particular concern is that the number of U.S. children getting COVID-19 shots may already be plateauing.

In the past week, more children have been receiving a second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine than a first, according to government data. That suggests a slowdown in demand aside from those who were anxious to get their kids vaccinated at the first opportunity.

Those Reuters reporters seem to be concerned that the number of U.S. children getting the shots may already be plateauing. To me, that is encouraging news. It indicates that many parents still have some critical thinking skills remaining when it comes to assessing benefits and risks for their children.

There have been a scores of bad decisions and poor advice given by our public health experts since the beginning of the pandemic.

In my mind, there is nothing that comes close to the recommendation that children be vaccinated by an experimental vaccine (with unknown long term side effects) to a virus to which they have less risk of serious illness or death than almost anything else you can think of.

ADDENDUM:

If you are a parent and are still not sure whether to vaccinate your children, I would encourage you to research the term "original antigenic sin".

This is how that term is described in a 2019 pre-pandemic article in the Journal of Immunology.

The term “original antigenic sin” (OAS) was first used in the 1960s to describe how one’s first exposure to influenza virus shapes the outcome of subsequent exposures to antigenically related strains. In the decades that have passed, OAS-like responses have been shown to play an integral role in both protection from and susceptibility to infections. OAS may also have an important deterministic role in the differential efficacy of influenza vaccine responses observed for various age cohorts across seasons.

Simply stated, the first flu virus a person is exposed to creates broad-based protection to antigenically related strains during the remainder of their lifetime.

Being exposed to Covid as a child may confer broad protection to related variants during the remainder of their lifetimes.

This has been observed through the generations. This layering seems to be God's plan in which to insure that an entire society will not all be vulnerable to a flu-type virus at the same time. 

Some experts are questioning whether vaccinating children will disrupt this natural order.

Is the Covid vaccine's spike protein too limited in scope to allow the child to develop that layer of broad based immunity they need for their lifetime? 

Will the vaccine end up suppressing their broader immunity for future circulating variants of Covid and other virus strains that will make them much more vulnerable to disease in the future?

I don't know.

The FDA, CDC and Dr. Fauci don't know either. The long-term effects of this vaccines have not been studied long enough. That is true for adults but it is particularly true for children who have their entire lives ahead of them.

Are the vaccines appropriate for children considering the potential unknown long-term risks associated with the vaccines when balanced against the known risks of Covid for children as outlined above?

That is the question every parent needs to weigh carefully.