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Saturday, February 19, 2022

Links - 19th February 2022 (1 - Covid-19: Children)

More “Covid Suicides” than Covid Deaths in Kids
Clear proof all children need to be vaccinated

No Covid vaccine yet for children as young as five, despite regulators saying it is safe - "The mass vaccination of children as young as five will not yet go ahead, despite safety regulators giving the jab the green light. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has said it wants more real-world evidence before recommending the jab, after it found that a million doses among five to 11-year-olds would prevent only two healthy children from requiring intensive care."

Britain may vaccinate children before sharing doses with rest of the world, Matt Hancock suggests - "a senior member joined a chorus of eminent scientists questioning the ethics of vaccinating children, who face virtually no risk of serious disease or death from Covid-19... "the trouble with that is an ethical question about safety.” While clinical trials have suggested the vaccine is safe in children, he said, these involved relatively small numbers. A fellow JCVI member, Professor Adam Finn, said the question of whether it is necessary to vaccinate children remained open. Meanwhile, Professor Russell Viner, former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said: “Having a license doesn’t mean the vaccine should be used for all teenagers however. “Decisions about wider use in teenagers need to carefully balance the benefits and risks and the ethical issues involved in vaccinating children. “The early reports about myocarditis in young men need to be properly investigated and may not be related to the Pfizer vaccine, however they provide a warning that we should not rush into these decisions.”"

Why are we vaccinating children against COVID-19? - "Bulk of COVID-19 per capita deaths occur in elderly with high comorbidities.
Per capita COVID-19 deaths are negligible in children.
Clinical trials for these inoculations were very short-term.
Clinical trials did not address long-term effects most relevant to children.
High post-inoculation deaths reported in VAERS (very short-term)."

Global Ethical Considerations Regarding Mandatory Vaccination in Children - "Whether children should be vaccinated against coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) (or other infectious diseases such as influenza) and whether some degree of coercion should be exercised by the state to ensure high uptake depends, among other things, on the safety and efficacy of the vaccine. For COVID-19, these factors are currently unknown for children, with unanswered questions also on children's role in the transmission of the virus, the extent to which the vaccine will decrease transmission, and the expected benefit (if any) to the child. Ultimately, deciding whether to recommend that children receive a novel vaccine for a disease that is not a major threat to them, or to mandate the vaccine, requires precise information on the risks, including disease severity and vaccine safety and effectiveness, a comparative evaluation of the alternatives, and the levels of coercion associated with each. However, the decision also requires balancing self-interest with duty to others, and liberty with usefulness. Separate to ensuring vaccine supply and access, we outline 3 requirements for mandatory vaccination from an ethical perspective: (1) whether the disease is a grave threat to the health of children and to public health, (2) positive comparative expected usefulness of mandatory vaccination, and (3) proportionate coercion. We also suggest that the case for mandatory vaccine in children may be strong in the case of influenza vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic."

Health experts urge caution on giving Covid vaccines to UK children - "Launching a programme of Covid-19 immunisations for children should be considered only in special circumstances, leading health experts have warned... Doctors would be giving vaccines for which there was limited information about possible side-effects to children who have nothing to gain from such a move, said Professor Adam Finn of Bristol University."

Opinion | As pediatricians, we say please don’t use precious coronavirus vaccines on healthy children - The Washington Post - "Speaking as pediatricians who are also vaccine researchers, we say: Please don’t make a priority of immunizing healthy children 2 to 11 years old against the coronavirus... in the United States alone, there are nearly 50 million children 11 and younger. Meanwhile, crematoriums are working around the clock in India. Overwhelmed hospitals are running out of oxygen in Brazil. Many poorer countries have yet to receive a single vaccine shipment. In this context, it is difficult to justify using limited vaccine supplies to immunize young, healthy children at little risk of severe disease from covid. There is a clear humanitarian and ethical imperative to use available vaccines to try to reduce deaths and hospitalizations everywhere, not just in wealthy countries. Ethical arguments aside, the fact remains that the greatest threat to children in countries with well-advanced vaccine programs comes from areas where covid remains highly prevalent. This risk is compounded by the emergence of strains potentially capable of escaping vaccine- and infection-induced immunity... With growing evidence that coronavirus vaccines prevent asymptomatic infection and onward transmission, an argument used to justify immunizing young children is that it would mean reaching herd immunity faster. That approach can be useful with influenza or pneumonia, because children play a large role in their transmission. But young children do not appear to be important transmitters of covid... the focus should be on those who are the most likely to transmit the virus; in the United States, with much of the elderly population vaccinated, that means young adults."
Too bad liberals don't care and just want endless boosters for everyone, including children
Another article that needs to be memory-holed, since we are now told that the vaccines were never supposed to prevent infection/transmission so claiming that they have failed means you are a stupid anti-vaxxer

Public health officials are dangerously destroying their credibility - "Public health officials and the media have employed an interesting strategy for the almost two years of this pandemic: lie to and manipulate the public to try to elicit their desired behavior. Some are better at it than others, who don’t realize they’re not supposed to say the quiet part out loud. “Pediatric hospitalizations are becoming an increasing point of concern,” NBC New York reported Wednesday, a day after Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the state has 184 child COVID hospitalizations, 109 of them in Gotham. “Dr. Mary T. Bassett, the state health commissioner,” NBC continued, “said pediatric COVID hospitalizations have doubled in the last three weeks. In New York City, they’ve quintupled in that time span.” Here’s the quiet part that NBC New York knew to keep out of its reporting but Bassett volunteered during the same hearing: “The numbers that we gave on pediatric admissions weren’t intended to make it seem that children were having an epidemic of infection. These were small numbers that we reported in our health alert. That was based on 50 hospitalizations, and I’ve now given you some larger numbers, but they’re still small numbers. It really is to motivate pediatricians and families to seek the protection of vaccination.” A growing source of frustration for those following COVID data is the refusal to list primary diagnosis in reporting hospitalization numbers. Are children showing up “with” COVID or do they merely discover their COVID-positive status upon admission for other issues?... “We test anybody who’s admitted to the hospital for whatever reason to see whether or not they have COVID, and we’re definitely seeing an increase in cases. However, we’re really not seeing an increase in children who are hospitalized for COVID or in the intensive care unit for COVID.”... In a recent interview with the American Medical Association, Offit discussed the decision to vaccinate young children, weighing it against the risk of vaccine-related issues like myocarditis, a swelling of the heart. “There are never risk-free choices. There are just choices to take different risks,” he said. “And, clearly, the choice is to get a vaccine, which is the lesser risk.” This is messaging that resonates and treats parents with respect, able to make their own risk analysis without information or data being exaggerated or manipulated. Unfortunately for Offit and other forthright experts like him, officials like Hochul and Bassett — not to mention the media who breathlessly cover their statements without showing the full picture — are destroying faith in public health and the lifesaving gift of vaccines for a lifetime. The next time parents show up at a pediatrician appointment and find their children are due for immunizations against dangerous childhood diseases, will they consent? Will they trust that these vaccines are truly necessary or will they suspect they’re being lied to again?"

Remember Swine Flu? That Was More Deadly to Kids Than COVID - "According to a recent study from the UK, unvaccinated children are safer from COVID than even vaccinated adults of any age."
Clearly all kids must be forcibly vaccinated to "protect" them

Alex Marlow: Sotomayor 'Emblematic' of 'Pandemic of Misinformation' - "Alex Marlow highlighted U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s recent false statement about American children “on ventilators” and in “serious condition” with COVID-19 as illustrative of broad-based ignorance driven by a “pandemic of misinformation.” During oral arguments on Friday as the Supreme Court considered challenges to the Biden administration’s coronavirus vaccine mandates, Sotomayor falsely stated, “We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition, many on ventilators.” Marlow described Sotomayor’s demonstrated ignorance as a function of growing centralization of control and increasing politically-driven censorship over the digital flow of information by the technological oligopoly. “All the things that we can’t discuss because it goes against narrative … is becoming … a literal public health crisis,” Marlow stated in an interview with Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL)... "Even PolitiFact rated this false, which they are not really in the business of fact-checking people like Sotomayor.”... Donalds observed how the Supreme Court’s leftist justices focused on attempting to evaluate the utility — not the constitutionality — of the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates during oral arguments... “What Sotomayor is trying to do is come up with any logic stream, based on things that are just completely false, completely wrong. She’s trying to create her own logic stream in a bizarro universe with respect to COVID-19 in order to justify her supporting what Joe Biden is doing.” Donalds warned that left-wing Supreme Court justices expanding their scope of power beyond their defined roles as arbiters of constitutional legality are an existential threat to the American experiment in self-governance. “You can’t govern a nation” if the Supreme Court “becomes about whatever the whim is of the mob” or “the current Democrat president or Democrat majority,” Donalds concluded. “You cannot maintain separation of powers like that, and you cannot maintain a constitutional republic like that.” Marlow added, “[Sotomayor] is so bubbled that she thought this was real, or she’s lying. Both are equally disturbing for different reasons.” In a 2001 speech at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, Sotomayor described herself as a “wise Latina woman” while expressing her support for informal ethnic, racial, and sexual quotas for judicial appointments. She said, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”"
Only the right is capable of spreading misinformation, of course

Rand Paul: 'Is Fauci Advising Justice Sotomayor?' - "there are currently about 4,000 children in the hospital due to the coronavirus... Additionally, data from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) revealed that “0.1%-1.6% of all their child COVID-19 cases resulted in hospitalization” per the 24 states reporting a metric referred to as “cumulative hospitalizations.”... That is far from the only controversial assertion Sotomayor made on Friday; she also falsely claimed that the omicron variant is “just as deadly” as the delta variant."

WHO says no evidence healthy children, adolescents need COVID-19 boosters - "Israel has begun offering boosters to children as young as 12, and the U.S. States Food and Drug Administration earlier this month authorized the use of a third dose of the Pfizer and BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 12 to 15. Last week Germany became the latest country to recommend that all children between ages of 12 and 17 receive a COVID-19 booster shot. Hungary has also done so... “The aim is to protect the most vulnerable, to protect those at highest risk of severe disease and dying. Those are our elderly populations, immuno-compromised people with underlying conditions, but also healthcare workers”"

Estimation of US Children’s Educational Attainment and Years of Life Lost Associated With Primary School Closures During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic - "the decision to close US public primary schools in the early months of 2020 may be associated with a decrease in life expectancy for US children... Comparing the full distributions of estimated YLL under both “schools open” and “schools closed” conditions, based on the US studies and the European studies, the analysis observed a 98.9% probability and a 26.3% probability, respectively, that school opening would have been associated with a lower total YLL than school closure."
Even just looking at years of life lost, closing schools due to covid was more harmful than keeping them open

Why it might take more than a shot in the dark on vaccinating pupils to end school disruption - "The chances of a child dying from Covid is two in a million. It is more likely they will die getting hit by lightning. And yet on Monday, the Government unveiled plans for the mass vaccination of healthy 12- to 15-year-olds. How did it come to this? The answer may lie in the chaos in schools over the past 18 months created by one disastrous policy after another, which has resulted in two years of cancelled exams and huge disruption to children’s education. The solution, or so ministers appear to believe, is to vaccinate pupils to try and keep schools open rather than run the risk of yet another term of turmoil. The first problem for the Government was that the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) did not recommend the rollout. Earlier this month, it delivered its long-awaited verdict, saying the “margin of benefit” of jabbing 12 to 15-year-olds was “considered too small” and citing the low risk to healthy children from the virus. Undeterred, Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, instructed Prof Chris Whitty, England’s Chief Medical Officer, to look again to see whether there was a wider benefit to society from vaccinating children... despite the JCVI’s pronouncement that the margin of benefit is “too small” to support the universal rollout of the Covid vaccine to children, the Government is pressing ahead with it not on health grounds alone, but on the ground that it will help to keep children in the classroom. This is despite dozens of Tory MPs warning that overruling expert advice risks “dissolving the bond of trust” between the public and the Government. Last week, 26 backbenchers wrote to Mr Javid saying that the Government’s willingness to “ignore” the JCVI is a cause for “serious concern”."
Given that even among the vaccinated, covid isolation is needed, fat hope
So much for listening to the experts

Parents Are Lying to Get COVID Vaccines for Young Kids - The Atlantic - "These days, the distance between ages 11 and 12 is more than a year. It is a chasm between danger and safety. Vaccines promise people 12 and older protection from COVID-19, but aren’t yet approved in the U.S. for younger children, and it isn’t clear exactly when they will be. Frustrated by the wait and desperate to protect their children, some parents are sneaking their 10- and 11-year-old kids across this chasm, and hoping not to get caught... David Reischer, an attorney based in New York City and a CEO of LegalAdvice.com, told me. “Parents lying about their children’s age to get children under 12 years of age vaccinated could be committing a crime, depending upon the jurisdiction where the consent form was unlawfully submitted,” Reischer said. Purposely misrepresenting information such as birth date, marriage status, date of death, and other vital information in state identity documents is unlawful in many jurisdictions... The possible medical consequences of these lies must also be considered. Robert Frenck, the director of vaccine research at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and the principal investigator for most of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine trials conducted there, empathizes with parents, but told me he is concerned that vaccinating young children with doses meant for older children could be unsafe. Part of his job is to help establish the dosage that gives children the best combination of immune response and safety. According to Frenck, parents who are lying about their kid’s age are potentially increasing the likelihood of their child having adverse events post-vaccination, such as fever, chills, and headache... the Food and Drug Administration also urged parents not to get unauthorized vaccines for their young children. “Just like you, we are eager to see our children and grandchildren vaccinated against COVID-19 as soon as possible,” the statement reads. “We have to let the science and data guide us. The FDA is working around the clock to support the process for making COVID-19 vaccines available for children.”"
I saw many liberals in the FB comments cheering this. Naturally.
Given that covid is less dangerous to children than the flu...

FDA delays Moderna vaccine for teens until heart condition studied: report
Covid hystericists must be very upset that they have fewer options to jab their kids with, since clearly the only harm out there is covid

Children below 12 starting to form majority of COVID-19 cases admitted to hospitals: MOH
Once again conflating children in hospital with covid and children in hospital due to covid

Sweden decides against recommending COVID vaccines for kids aged 5-11 | Toronto Sun - "“With the knowledge we have today, with a low risk for serious disease for kids, we don’t see any clear benefit with vaccinating them,” Health Agency official Britta Bjorkholm told a news conference."
Vaxholes are going to hate Sweden even more now

Why UK has been less keen than US to give Covid jab to children - "the JCVI has cited concerns over a very rare side-effect linked to Covid jabs among young people, myocarditis, including the potential long-term effects of the condition. Among other issues, the JCVI has also been concerned about the impact of rolling out Covid jabs to older children could have on the delivery of other school immunisation programmes. With children far less likely than adults to become seriously ill with Covid, there was an ethical concern over the appropriateness of vaccinating children to protect others. This was particularly acute given the uncertainty about the impact the vaccination of 12- to 15-year-olds would have on transmission in the face of the Delta variant. One expert, who is no longer part of the JCVI, suggested it could be better for children to gain protection from natural infection rather than taking a possible risk with a vaccine... Russell Viner, professor of adolescent health at University College London Institute of Child Health, and a participant in the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies during the pandemic, suggested there were a number of reasons why the UK and US have taken different approach, including cultural differences in medicine. “US physicians are generally much more pro-interventionist. In the UK there is a stronger recognition of the potential for harm,” he said. Viner also noted the US has been hard hit by Covid in terms of children. “Their health system does not protect the vulnerable and deprived as ours does,” he said... One source with knowledge of JCVI matters said a key difference between the UK and the US was that in the latter, parents may have to pay for expensive care for their child if they fell ill. The US has also had lower uptake of jabs among adults, which could be driving the push to vaccinate children to try stem the pandemic"
Clear evidence that The Science speaks with one voice, and anyone who disagrees is ignorant

Pandemic Restrictions May Harm Infant Cognitive Development, Study Finds - "For the overwhelming majority of healthy kids, there is no good evidence that they should have to wear masks, practice social distancing, and frequently miss school. Yet in much of the country, the restrictions on young people are currently more stringent than the restrictions on adults and the elderly. In large Democratic cities like New York City and Washington, D.C., schoolchildren are generally masked. And when it's time to eat lunch, they do so outdoors—even as the weather grows colder. Having to eat lunch outside in the cold is a punishment currently endured by school kids, and only school kids. Adults are eating indoors at restaurants and drinking indoors at bars. Now that D.C.'s mask mandate has ended, indoor gyms can once again let their customers go maskless—but in many places, masks are still required for indoor school sports. It doesn't make any sense that authorities are enforcing the harshest restrictions on the least at-risk people. The rules for the college-aged are, if anything, even more extreme: Many campuses severely limit interactions between students, require masks even outside, and discourage nearly all forms of socialization. What's occurring is something close to the exact opposite of the ideal: Whatever mitigation policies are in place for adults and the elderly, the policies for young people should be less restrictive, not more."
Covid hystericists will just blame "long covid" for all this

Yale epidemiologist: I would pull child from school to avoid vaccine - "Yale epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch is advising parents to remove their children from any public school that forces students to get the shots. Risch said Sunday night in an interview that children with serious chronic conditions “should be considered for vaccination.” “Other than that, if it were my child, I would homeschool them”... Risch is a professor of epidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the Yale School of Public Health and Yale School of Medicine. A former member of the board of editors for the American Journal of Epidemiology, he is an author of more than 350 original peer-reviewed research publications... He acknowledged that vaccination “is not a high risk that’s going to kill every child.” “However, it’s enough of a risk, that on the average the benefit is higher for homeschooling than it is for vaccination and being in school.” CDC statistics show children generally do not spread COVID-19 and have little risk of any adverse effects. The seasonal flu is more deadly among children than COVID-19, and the swine flu one decade ago was six times more deadly. The survival rate for children under age 20 who get COVID, according to the CDC, is 99.998%. And CDC Director Rochelle Walensky admitted in August the vaccines had become ineffective in stopping the spread of the virus... Levin noted the inconsistent messaging of public health officials, including CDC Director Rochelle Walensky saying last week that children who are vaccinated will still need to masks and White House coronavirus adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci’s “endless contradictions” in his many media appearances. “This has to be one of the worst year-and-a-half, two-year periods of information provided the American people by the so-called scientific and medical community that I can remember,” he said. Risch replied that the health community is “a top-down structure, and most doctors do not get their information by going back to the original studies and making up their own minds.” “They get fed the information from pharma reps or from what they’re told by society, and the conflicts are legion,” he said. “So it’s no surprise that most doctors don’t pay attention and think what they’re told (to think).”"

Meme - "Can someone call CPS on this "MD"?
Tatiana Prowell, MD @ @tmprowell:: "In case it helps to be concrete, my teen missed a step & rolled his ankle BADLY last night. In usual times, we'd go to his pediatrician or urgent care, get an x-ray. Nope. We'll sort it out when #Omicron settles. We have no confidence that health care settings are safe now."
Imagine being a doctor and thinking that omicron is more of a threat to your teen than a broken ankle

Meme - Show Me The Data @txsalth2o: "Why are people doubling down? It's hard to accept that you damaged your kids for nothing. It's hard to accept that you stole their prom, their first day of kindergarten, their little league championship and their chance of an athletic scholarship for nothing. It has to be a deadly disease, if it's not, that means that they were wrong. Being wrong cost their children dearly. So instead of waking up, saying "I was wrong" & trying to fix it, they're going to double down. Because acknowledging the damage they did is far too painful."

Covid and Age - The New York Times - "An unvaccinated child is at less risk of serious Covid illness than a vaccinated 70-year-old.
Emily Oster, an economist at Brown University who frequently writes about parenting, published an article in The Atlantic in March that made a lot of people angry. The headline was, “Your Unvaccinated Kid Is Like a Vaccinated Grandma.” The article argued that Covid-19 tended to be so mild in children that vaccinated parents could feel comfortable going out in the world with their unvaccinated children. Critics called the article insensitive and misleading, saying it understated the risks that children could both get sick and spread the virus... Today, an accurate version of her headline might be: “Your Unvaccinated Kid Is Much Safer Than a Vaccinated Grandma.”... “Covid is a threat to children. But it’s not an extraordinary threat,” Dr. Alasdair Munro, a pediatric infectious-disease specialist at the University of Southampton, has written. “It’s very ordinary. In general, the risks from being infected are similar to the other respiratory viruses you probably don’t think much about.”... Different elderly people will respond to the risks in different ways, and that’s OK. Some may decide to be extremely cautious until caseloads fall to low levels. Others — especially those without major health problems — may reasonably choose to travel, see friends and live their lives. The risks are not zero, but they are quite low. And few parts of life pose zero risk. As a point of comparison, the annual risk of death for all vaccinated people over 65 in Seattle this year appears to be around 1 in 2,700. The annual average risk that an American dies in a vehicle crash is lower — about 1 in 8,500 — but not a different order of magnitude... For children without a serious medical condition, the danger of severe Covid is so low as to be difficult to quantify... The risk of long Covid among children — a source of fear among many parents — also appears to be very low. All of which raises a thorny question: Should young children be vaccinated? I know some readers will recoil at the mention of that question, but I think it’s a mistake to treat it as unmentionable"
This won't stop the hysteria from people who try to bludgeon others with the "science"

National Mental Health Data Shows the Lockdown 'Cure' Was Worse Than COVID-19 for Children

Covid-19 disruptions killed 228,000 children in South Asia, says UN report

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