The Wall Street Journal’s Monday piece, written by Allysia Finley, asks “Why the rush to vaccine toddlers?” “Covid was clearly a medical emergency for adults in 2020. In contrast, the urgency feels political.
Whoa. For the past two years, it’s rare for a major national media outlet to criticize vaccines. It is quite shocking to read that a major newspaper called the approval process “political”, to put it mildly.
The Biden Administration began the roll-out of COVID vaccines to children aged 6 months to 5 in June with assurances that they were safe and effective. Finley strongly disagrees.
We don’t actually know if these vaccines are safe or effective. The FDA’s rushed action was based upon very weak evidence. It’s one thing for the FDA to demonstrate regulatory flexibility in an emergency. Covid is not an emergency for children. FDA slashed its standards in an unusual way and ignored troubling evidence that calls for more investigation.
Last month, we reported that President Biden said at a vaccine center that “We are the only country doing this right now.”
The Journal continues to report on how FDA granted adult Pfizer and Moderna vaccines an “emergency use authorization” in response to a clear and immediate health risk to adults in 2020. Finley claims that the FDA approved the same authorization for childhood vaccines. However, Finley says that this is questionable as there is no emergency for children and the Wuhan virus is not that dangerous for them. About.02 percent (or a small fraction) of all virus deaths in the US were in children. Many of these had pre-existing conditions. The flu kills more children than COVID and hospitalizes them.
Finley continues to detail in great detail how Moderna and Pfizer jiggled the numbers to use standards far below the minimum required to obtain approval for a drug we are now expected to inject into our most vulnerable populations. She concludes:
The FDA standard for vaccine approval in otherwise healthy individuals, particularly children, should be higher than that for drugs that treat the sick. The FDA has lowered its standards for approval of Covid vaccines in toddlers, however.
This is extremely alarming if true. Not only is the approval process questionable, but also some trial results raise questions.
Pfizer’s trial revealed that vaccinated toddlers were more likely than those who received a placebo to become severely ill with Covid. Pfizer claimed that most severe cases were not “clinically significant.” However, this meant that the FDA should have required a longer follow-up before authorizing the vaccine.
It is also concerning that most children who contracted multiple infections during the trial were vaccinated. This is a concern because experimental vaccines for other diseases can increase the susceptibility to infection.
The administration would rush to approve childhood vaccinations when children are not at risk of COVID, the trials were rushed using dubious methods and there are still many safety questions. Finley suggests that someone might have been influencing the FDA to do so for political reasons. She suggests that the FDA may have felt pressure from both anxious parents and the White House.
She ends her sentence by pointing out the president’s inhumanity.
It is difficult to swallow Mr. Biden’s hypocrisy. To its credit, the FDA accelerated Covid vaccines and treatments when they were most needed. Children would have been more fortunate if the FDA took longer to make sure that the vaccines were safe and effective. This was even though America wasn’t the first.
It’s quite shocking to see articles that are so critical of the pandemic response, as I mentioned earlier. This is not a Twitter conspiracy theorist or a low-rated kooky website. It is written by an editor of one of the most respected newspapers in the country. Facebook and Twitter cannot cancel them. However, you can bet that they would love to.
A mere 29 percent of children aged 5-11 years have had a double dose COVID vaccination, while the rate for those aged 12-18 is slightly higher at 59 percent. The vaccine advocates expected much higher numbers. The numbers for children aged 6 months to 5 years will almost certainly be lower than this.
Many parents will hesitate to give their children the shot due to the rushed approval process, medical uncertainties, and lack of clarity about what this little kid’s vax is. They are not wrong and have every reason to be concerned for their children.
