Prior to the pandemic, if I discussed pediatric vaccines at all, it was only to belittle “skeptics” at Science Based Medicine who wasted their time dunking on the anti-vaccine movement. Things have changed, and I’ve since anointed myself the chief defender of childhood vaccination for all diseases other than COVID. There’s no questions that “skeptics” who’ve corrected anti-vaccine misinformation since Andrew Wakefield came on the scene care much less about these issues than I do.
As such, I know something they don’t: if parents are encouraged to vaccinate their children against COVID, they will somehow lose trust in vaccines for more significant diseases. If trust in the COVID vaccine goes up, trust in other vaccines goes down. Don’t blame me. That’s just how it is. It’s already happening. When you see headlines like this, you should think to yourself “none of this would be happening if only the CDC was cool with more unvaccinated babies getting COVID.”
Which vaccine-preventable diseases are more significant than COVID? Simple-minded “skeptics”, incapable of nuance, claim that just because COVID overwhelmed pediatric hospitals, sent thousands of children to the ICU, and killed hundreds more children this year than every other vaccine-preventable disease combined, it somehow qualifies as a “significant disease”. This is absurd. They’ll even claim that COVID is worse than the flu, just because it killed 50 times more children since the start of the pandemic. That’s how ridiculous they are. When I asked “Should We Let Children Catch Omicron?“, they rushed in unison to answer “no“. “For children, getting sick and recovering is part of a natural and healthy life”, I wrote. They disagreed. Sheeple.
To be clear, COVID is insignificant for the following reasons:
- COVID kills more old people.
- Only a very small percentage of children who get COVID die from it.
- Children are more likely to die from other causes than from COVID.
- Most children who die have underlying conditions.
“Skeptics” will further claim that since babies have the highest fatality rate of all children (slide 19), the vaccine will likely be an important tool to prevent these deaths moving forward. Rational people know these deaths would be sad and worth preventing only if fewer children died in accidents or if COVID was less dangerous for elderly people.
Of course, without a randomized-controlled trial (RCT) of a million children, any claims of the vaccine’s benefits are just speculative nonsense. Remember, claims of vaccine benefits can only come from massive RCTs, while unverified VAERS reports are sufficient to firmly establish the harms of the COVID vaccine. Sometimes it’s even fun to spitball rumors to my large Twitter audience, just asking questions about whether pediatricians are misdiagnosing children with COVID when they actually have RSV.
Not only are “skeptics” less concerned about routine childhood vaccinations than me, they are also less knowledgeable about the anti-vaccine movement and effective ways to combat it. It’s obvious the best way to maintain trust in vaccines is to convince parents that drug companies, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and pediatricians who’ve worked with sick children throughout the pandemic are either lying to them or woefully incompetent. Federal regulators at the CDC and FDA deserve special scorn. You see, these folks unanimously voted to authorize these vaccines.
All 21 members of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee voted “yes” in response to the question: “Based on the totality of scientific evidence available, do the benefits of the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine when administered as a 2-dose series (25 micrograms each dose) outweigh its risks for use in infants and children 6 months through 5 years of age?”
I know better than all 21 of them.
Is there a better way to instill confidence in vaccines in general than to deny the benefits of the COVID vaccine and to constantly hype vaccine side-effects? Of course not. Treating rare side-effects that are nearly always mild and temporary as a fate worse than death from COVID is the only way to ensure parents will vaccinate their children against more significant diseases.
No one cares more about pediatric vaccination than me. Yet, when you read articles titled “Low Demand for Young Kids’ Covid Vaccines is Alarming Doctors” please know this is referring to doctors who actually treat sick children, not me. Unlike them, I know that to maintain trust in vaccines for more significant diseases, the ones that kill fewer children than COVID, we must keep COVID vaccination rates as low as possible. That’s why I’ll never stop minimizing COVID or trashing the vaccine against it.