2021: “Kids are less likely to acquire SARS-CoV-2”

The first data about the adolescent vaccine emerged on March 31, 2021, when Pfizer announced their vaccine was 100% effective in stopping COVID infections in a randomized-controlled trial. (The study was later published in the NEJM). By this time however, the campaign against the vaccine was already well underway, and few doctors worked harder to ensure unvaccinated children contracted COVID than adult oncologist Dr. Vinay Prasad.

In a Twitter thread from January 2021, he speculated that children wouldn’t need to be vaccinated as the pandemic seemed to be “abating”.  He wrote:

Let me be perfectly clear: children DO NOT NEED a sars-cov-2 vaccine before they are permitted to return to normal activities, such as school and visiting loved ones…If the epidemic is abating, how can you justify giving 100 kids those AEs (adverse events), so that perhaps 1 or 2 or even 3 will be spared a case of covid that might be as mild as the AEs themselves?…Once adults, particularly older adults are vaccinated, and if *god willing* there is not vaccine escape, covid19 is over. We are going back to normal.

On February 3, 2021, he formalized his thoughts in an essay titled Kids Don’t Need Covid-19 Vaccines to Return to School, in which he gave “five reasons why schools can and should open at 100% capacity before a vaccine for those under age 16 is available.” In addition to fear mongering about mundane side-effects such as fevers and using obviously bogus statistics– “the vaccine might save one life for every 1 million kids who get it” – Dr. Prasad’s top reason for exposing unvaccinated children to the virus at that time was:

Kids are less likely to acquire SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, than adults. Several meta-analyses confirm that in contract tracing studies, kids are approximately half as likely to acquire the virus as other household contacts with the same exposure.

In June 2021, he continued to tell parents that children didn’t need to be vaccinated because they could avoid the virus. He wrote:

Remember cases are FALLING PRECIPITOUSLY…The fraction of all cases that are adolescents is not the point. The raw number of adolescent cases is the point THAT IS FALLING…The actual numbers show both COVID and MIS-C is plummeting with adult vaccination.

The Delta variant arrived shortly after this, and headlines would soon read, “COVID Hospitalization Rate in Kids Rose 5x as Delta Variant Spread, CDC Says.”  Unvaccinated teenagers died preventable deaths, and a CDC report found, “hospitalization rates were 10 times higher among unvaccinated than among fully vaccinated adolescents.” The Omicron variant arrived shortly after this, and headlines would soon read “COVID Hospitalization for Young Children 5 Times Higher During Omicron Than Delta”. During New York City’s Omicron wave, 54% of hospitalized children had no underlying conditions, and again, unvaccinated children suffered the most. (I shared many more studies here).

2022: “Most kids already had COVID-19”

Dr. Prasad reacted to this sad news by continuing to advocate for the mass infection of unvaccinated children, though he discovered a completely new reason as to why. In July 2022, he participated in A Pro-Con Debate: Should Doctors Encourage Healthy Kids 11 and Under be Vaccinated Against COVID-19? which argued that “​​all kids, like all adults, will eventually get COVID-19.”  Dr. Prasad’s top reason for exposing unvaccinated children to the virus then became:

Most kids already had COVID-19. CDC estimates 75% as of February, but this number is an underestimate, as millions have been infected since.

Dr. Prasad was against vaccinating children when he thought they were less likely to contract SARS-CoV-2, and he was against vaccinating children after they already had it, though he neglected to mention that 12 million babies, who have the highest risk of COVID by far, arrived during the pandemic without “natural” immunity.

And thus it becomes clear. Some doctors were always against vaccinating children, and no data was going to sway them. Whether cases were going up or down, the facts on the ground were used to support their unshakable, predetermined conclusion that unvaccinated children should contract COVID. Though they claim to “follow the evidence,” their minds were made up months before any evidence even existed.

Those of us who thought about these issues before the pandemic know perfectly well that anti-vaxxers start with their conclusions and work backwards to retrofit the “evidence.” Doctors who do the same shouldn’t be regarded any differently.