By: Mark Glennon*
A COVID vaccine is now widely available to children five and up across Illinois.
We’re certainly not about to tell parents whether they should vaccinate their kids against COVID. It’s for many of the same reasons that we think the State of Illinois also should not.
Parents and their doctors should make an informed choice on their own, being aware that expert opinion varies and that the science is rapidly evolving. That means advice from any single source, including the State of Illinois, should not be accepted as dogma.
The Pritzker Administration, however, unequivocally advises parents to vaccinate children. You can see that here in the linked video from the Illinois Department of Public Health. Search the subject and you will find many experts in agreement. But you will also find skeptics and firm opponents of vaccinating children, such as Yale epidemiologist Harvey Risch.
Maybe you will end up on the fence – concluding that the right answer is what two medical school experts recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal. “If you’re agonizing about whether to have your young child vaccinated against Covid-19, be reassured: The risk is extremely low either way.”
An important exception, they wrote, is kids who were already infected and have natural immunity, which they say is probably 50% of the childhood population. For them, “there’s no scientific basis for vaccination,” they wrote.
That’s one reason why we think unequivocal advice from the state to vaccinate kids is wrong. From the start, as we have often written, the entire subject of natural immunity has been suppressed by Illinois and many other government authorities. Whether a child has natural immunity should be relevant, at a minimum, to the decision about when a child should be vaccinated – whether it is sensible to wait and see what else is learned.
Another reason to look beyond the state’s unequivocal advice is that their record simply has not been good, to put it mildly. They’ve gotten too many things wrong, some of which we have documented in the columns listed below. And they rely almost exclusively on guidance from the Centers for Disease Control, for which the same can be said.
Finally, we are dealing with a moving target and that should make the state’s advice to immediately vaccinate kids suspect. The science is evolving and new drugs are appearing. New studies appear routinely, especially on the key question of whether vaccination materially reduces the risk of a child spreading the virus to others.
Good news is now appearing regularly on powerful, new treatments, as opposed to vaccinations for prevention. Earlier this month, for example, Pfizer claimed that a new, oral antiviral reduced the risk of hospitalization or death by 89% in a study of patients with mild or moderate COVID-19 symptoms. And a new study on Regeneron, which was already known to be a highly effective treatment, indicated the drug is 82% effective as a preventative.
As that science and those alternatives to vaccination evolve, so should conclusions about vaccinating children.
The government helped make COVID vaccines available, but it has no business giving cocksure advice about whether children should get them. A better role for the state would be to provide as much information and opinion as it can from all reasonably credible perspectives, thereby helping parents and doctors make informed decisions.
Be aware that these questions apparently aren’t going away soon because COVID will be with us indefinitely. For a great explanation why, watch this short video by one of the world’s top epidemiologists, Professor Sunetra Gupta of Oxford University.
*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints
Earlier related Wirepoints articles:
- Stop Following CDC COVID Guidance Because The CDC Lies
- The Delta variant and its limited impact on Illinois children
- The big new question: With vaccines failing to reduce COVID spread, what’s the justification for mandates?
- Antibody Treatments For Covid Work. Why Aren’t They Being Promoted?
- Lies, damn lies and COVID statistics: Using data to justify Illinois’ mask mandate
- IL Unconcerned As Communication and ‘Science’ Behind COVID Policy Slip Toward Chaos
- Now? Now Illinois decides to focus COVID vaccination effort on elderly?
- Millions (yes, millions) of hours probably already wasted on Illinois’ absurd COVID vaccination appointment system
- Give Us Better Data And Projections: With COVID-19 Cases Soaring, Officially Reported Information Is Increasingly Useless
- Why Governor Pritzker’s Congressional Testimony on COVID-19 Was False and Hypocritical
- Pritzker Says Masks ‘Turned the Corner’ on COVID-19; Data Say Otherwise
- Pritzker’s Latest Data Blather and a Broader Look at His COVID-19 Shutdown Order
- Jumping the COVID vaccination line: the next casualty of common sense
- COVID-19 Peaked In April in Illinois Just When Pritzker Changed ‘Science and Data’ To Say Otherwise
- Illinois Still Not Providing Essential Covid-19 Hospitalization Numbers It Promised
- Illinois’ own COVID-19 data reveals the state’s coronavirus policy is upside down
If you’re frustrated with Illinois’ educational results, you may want to follow the money from teachers unions. In the last four years alone, Illinois lawmakers and political candidates have taken nearly $30 million in contributions from teachers unions and their national affiliates.
Wirepoints President Ted Dabrowski testified on April 10, 2024 to members of the House Revenue and Finance Committee at the invitation of Rep. Joe Sosnowski. Ted told lawmakers that the state’s property tax burden has become dire for countless Illinoisans.
Ted joined WLS 890’s PM Chicago Show to discuss Chicago’s worsening pension crisis, why the city’s crisis makes it such an outlier nationally, its negative impact on residents, government workers and retirees alike, and what Mayor Brandon Johnson should do about it.
When has any company persisted with a project in the face of stronger local, statewide and national opposition? When have taxpayers subsidized a more harebrained project?
JB SUCKS! Vote him out Illinois!!!
I invite everyone to listen to this podcast interview with Dr. Jordan Peterson and Michael Malice. MM will not be everyone’s cup of tea, but he is spot on in his analysis of why and how we have come to this juncture, (i.e. people trading liberty, common sense, and Americanism for the illusion of safety). The relevant part to this discussion starts at about 1 hour in, but I recommend listening to the whole thing.
https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/podcast/s4e30/
Big Pharma didn’t make enough off the adults, they gotta jab kids now too…???
Lets hope this comes true – *pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered*…
I think it is a bad decision to jab the kids. The study period was cut short to get the shots out. There are zero long term studies. I have read several articles that what could come from this shot is a lot of autoimmune issues. No thank you. Our daughter had a bad reaction to the Gardasil shot. She now has 5 autoimmune diseases. NO thank you! Of course the obvious I don’t want any government telling me what shot to take period.
Perfect alignment between the Marxists in government and the economic interests of the Sickcare industry. The Marxists provide the taxpayer dollars, mandates, coercion, and legal protections sought by the Sickcare industry to enrich themselves. In return, the Sickcare industry provides the Marxists with an air of legitimacy in their goal to control the population and the tools (i.e., the injections) to enable it. So much focus on the “pandemic” and no actual focus on the man-made origins of how it started. How did we get here? The fact that issue receives no attention from anyone in government (save a few… Read more »
I’m wondering why many parents and doctors aren’t more concerned about hijacking a child’s young and developing immune system with artificial mRNA to treat something that has killed no healthy kids. Then you add in all the social issues this is going to create.
I don’t get it. Mass psychosis? Herd mentality? Ignorance? Stupidity? Perhaps some combo of all.
There is no good innocent benign answer. All the answers are bad, and some are pure evil.
I so agree with you! At least from what the media is portraying, some parents & grandparents are so excited that “finally, now our children will be protected”. Are you kidding me?? I want to ask them, what research have you done? Are you merely watching/listening to the lamestream media and the goofy press conferences in Illinois to get your orders? Dear God, save us from people who possess all the items you listed!
The Leftist Democrats have gotten everthing they wanted, aided in large part by establishment Republicans. What’s left to want is the kids. Moloch likes the young ones.
When I was little mothers used to send their kids to “chicken pox parties” when they heard that another kid down the block had chicken pox. So their child would acquire natural immunity. Denying your kid natural immunity by interrupting the process with a flawed drug is negligent. The science shows kids breeze through a covid bout and are rewarded with immunity. My 3 year old grandchild got covid, it took all of 3 days for him to start destroying the house again.
If they are willing to do this to children, it is a clear sign that they will stop at nothing to get complete control.
Spot on – several parents I know that quickly got the shot for themselves are being much more cautious with their kids. Funny how our fearless leaders can’t see with what happened in VA that parents don’t want govt coming between them and raising their kids. Will there ever be a true wake up call here in IL?
I just knew you’d like this one. It was the headline, right?
You’re the man!
Perhaps it is my perception (from news stories) but it seems like they’re moving full-steam ahead with each age group, as though it’s a race to the finish line. :/ And in Chicago, they even have a day off from school to allow parents to take their kids in for the shot, tho I read somewhere this is for the unions — to make it a 4 day weekend.. Since we know the effectiveness in the adult version drops off precipitously after time, I wonder if this is going to be a monthly thing soon…. And in my opinion, I… Read more »
We dont need no vaccinations, we dont need no drug control, HEY, PRITZGER……….LEAVE THOSE KIDS ALONE!
This is a huge misstep by JB and democrats everywhere. Parents, regardless of political affiliation, will put their own children first. Plenty of Dems see no reason to take such a huge risk with vaccines that were rushed to market when their child is 99.99% likely to have no issue with the virus. This is over reach by Biden and company. You don’t even hear about co-morbidities anymore. It’s as if we’ve learned nothing. This issue, along with the fixation on CRT, will hopefully result in punishing losses for the Dems in the midterms. Enough is enough!
Many of my friend’s wives have taken their 6 year olds to the clinic for their clot shot and then post pictures of it on the internet. First of all, don’t ever post pics of your kids on the internet; and secondly, 6 year olds don’t need the clot shot.