Manipulating COVID-19 data to stoke fear, boost vaccinations for children
OPINION:
COVID-19 is a leading cause of death for children in the U.S., despite [a] relatively low mortality rate,” a CNN report read this week, citing a study published by JAMA. Multiple other news media followed with similar, fear-mongering headlines.
But if one were to actually read the study, one would find that COVID-19 ranked eighth among all causes of pediatric deaths and accounted for fewer than 1% of all COVID-19 deaths. The study itself was also flawed: The authors chose a nonstandard year specifically aimed to capture two COVID-19 waves, with no correction for overcount.
Scientific policymakers within the U.S. government and academia are manipulating data to make COVID-19 appear more threatening to children than the virus really is. Their “findings” are then parroted by an alarmist media, pushing COVID-19 vaccine jabs for kids.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices used a similarly flawed study when it met in June to approve vaccinations for children aged 6 months to 5 years. The authors, like the ones in the JAMA study, took pains to exaggerate COVID-19 deaths in children, including changing the time period for the COVID-19 deaths to focus on the worst 12-month period of the pandemic.
That study, conducted by a group of academics from the U.K., downloaded COVID-19 deaths from the National Center for Health Statistics, which overcounts COVID-19 deaths because it includes deaths resulting from a different underlying cause.
As pointed out by Kelley Krohnert, the Georgia-based author and fact-checker on COVID-19 in Georgia, the CDC initially counted COVID-19 deaths over a 26-month period of time and then compared them to 12 months of deaths from other causes, further inflating the COVID-19 numbers.
Once Kelley — as she is widely known online — pointed out the error, the CDC doctored the dates on the data to reflect the maximum possible number of child deaths, focusing on the 12 months when both the delta and omicron variants were raging.
In October, the CDC voted to add the COVID-19 vaccine to the recommended immunization schedule for children based on data it seemingly manipulated to fit its preconceived conclusion.
At the time, Dr. Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins School of Medicine professor, joined Fox News’s Tucker Carlson and blasted the decision based on the lack of clinical studies.
“They’ve got data from eight mice on the Omicron vaccine in young people,” he said. “The child vaccine story is essentially a story of bypassing clinical data, which is why many of us are asking, Why even have an FDA? Why do we even do clinical trials? Now we’ve got Pharma saying, ‘Hey we did a study, and we’re going to give you the top line of the press release. We’re going to call the White House.’ The White House then calls the FDA and the CDC and tells them to get in line,” Dr. Makary explained.
“There has never been a vaccine added to the child immunization schedule without solid clinical evidence [that] it reduces disease significantly in the community. The COVID vaccine in children will be the first,” Dr. Makary said.
The clinical data supporting the CDC’s October recommendation still haven’t been made public. The U.S. has also refused to conduct studies on the risk of adverse events among healthy young adults who receive the jab. The Paul-Ehrlich-Institut in Germany detailed that one in 5,000 people reported a serious side effect after getting a COVID-19 vaccination.
Furthermore, an Israeli study found males between the ages of 14 and 30 were the most susceptible to myocarditis after a second or third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, and that among males aged 16 to 19 years, approximately 1 in 15,000 developed myocarditis after their booster.
Another study from FAIR Health, which analyzed about half of the nation’s private insurance data, found that children without chronic conditions had a COVID-19 mortality rate of zero. A Pfizer study based on 2,186 children aged 5 to 11 found no child in either the vaccine or placebo group developed a severe illness from COVID-19 and that there was no scientific justification for vaccination if a child had already had and recovered from the virus.
In addition to the JAMA study, another — more positive — one was released out of the U.K. this week. It found 73% of U.K. omicron deaths in children up to the age of 19 were incidental.
“We estimate the risk of COVID-19 death to be one in a million omicron infections in kids,” Shamez Ladhani, the study’s author and a pediatric infectious disease specialist at St. George’s Hospital, tweeted of the results. “With higher immunity from prior infection/vaccination, infection fatality rates will likely decrease further.
“Most fatalities occurred in kids with severe/life-limiting comorbidity,” he said, adding: “COVID19 has NEVER been a major or significant cause of death in children or adolescents at ANY time during the pandemic.”
Our government, however, would like you to believe otherwise.
Last week, an FDA panel voted unanimously to update all COVID-19 vaccines. Data presented to the committee showed COVID-19 hospitalizations have been rising for children under the age of 2 over the past year. There was alarm that 90% of children under the age of 4 remain unvaccinated.
“The most concerning data point that I saw this whole day was that extremely low vaccination coverage in 6 months to 2 years of age and also 2 years to 4 years of age,” said Dr. Amanda Cohn, director of the CDC’s Division of Birth Defects and Infant Disorders on Jan. 26 to CNN. “We have to do much, much better.”
And so, the fear-mongering will continue.
• Kelly Sadler is the commentary editor at The Washington Times.
