Indefensible: Vilification And Hectoring To Vaccinate Children Expands – Wirepoints

By: Mark Glennon*

Informed parents have a simple reason why they might choose not to vaccinate their children against COVID: Experts disagree on whether it is safe.

That much is certain. Many experts believe COVID vaccines are safe and effective for children, but these are among many who say otherwise:

• The World Health Organization says there “are currently no efficacy or safety data for children below the age of 12 years. Until such data are available, individuals below 12 years of age should not be routinely vaccinated.
• Yale epidemiologist Harvey Risch says the benefits of vaccinating children are outweighed by the risks, and he would rather pull a child from school than submit to a requirement that they be vaccinated.
• Martin Kulldorff, who was an epidemiologist and biostatistician at Harvard Medical School for ten years, says “It will take a few years until we know the COVID vaccine risk profile, and until then, we do not know whether there is more benefit or harm in vaccinating children. The benefits of the vaccine for young people do not outweigh even the small risk of “a serious adverse event…. When government officials ignore these important issues, trust in vaccines declines among everyone,” he recently wrote.

Parents therefore should be entirely free from condescending insults and coercion if they choose not to vaccinate their children or to wait until better evidence is in.

But politicians, including President Joe Biden and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, have resorted to hectoring and steamrolling parents into vaccinating their kids, pretending that the science in favor of vaccinating kids is certain.

Most reprehensibly, some are making direct appeals to children. The Centers for Disease Control offers posters and social media graphics directed at kids like those shown here “to use in exam rooms, waiting rooms, schools, and on your social media channels” to make that direct appeal to children.

Biden, in his Tuesday afternoon television address, surely knowing it would be heard by many children, warned of a “winter of severe illness and death for the unvaccinated,” claiming vaccination is a “patriotic duty.” His administration is promoting the vax for all kids age five and up.

Lightfoot’s new mandate shuts out from restaurants, gyms and entertainment venues any child five and up who can’t show proof of vaccination. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s office praised Lightfoot’s new mandate, raising the question of whether he will impose it statewide.

That’s unconscionable. Some common sense on the general topic of vaccines and masks came last week from Colorado’s Democratic Governor Jared Polis:

“You know, public health [officials] don’t get to tell people what to wear; that’s just not their job, Polis Public health [officials] would say to always wear a mask because it decreases flu and decreases [other airborne illnesses]. But that’s not something that you require; you don’t tell people what to wear. You don’t tell people to wear a jacket when they go out in winter and force them to [wear it]. If they get frostbite, it’s their own darn fault. 

“If you haven’t been vaccinated, that’s your choice. I respect that.”

The controversy will now deepen, given the clear need for boosters to maintain any reasonable vax efficacy, and given the far higher likelihood of breakthrough infection by the new Omicron variant. That’s because boosters are particularly controversial for young people. Prof. Marty Makary of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine wrote this week that boosters for young people are “dangerous.” They “will cause medical harm for the sake of transient reductions in mild and asymptomatic infections,” he wrote.

This is not an anti-vax message. We at Wirepoints are not anti-vaxxers. Vaccines Save Lives. That’s the title of a recent column by Kuldorff. We agree with every word of it, but you have to read the whole thing to get the exceptions, which include children. COVID is not a subject on which there are simple black and white answers, and fanatics on both sides are not advancing the debate.

Finally, the rationale that vaccinating children helps protect more vulnerable adults is now gone. Even CDC Director Rochelle Walensky has said “what [vaccines] can’t do anymore is prevent infection.” That’s even more true now because the new Omicron variant breaks through vaccines so easily.

Even if it were true that vaccinating healthy children helps protect adults, would you ask them to take any risk or bear any sacrifice? Haven’t children have already suffered enough from the pandemic?

Between age, asthma and related respiratory issues, I am in a high risk group. But there is no way in hell I would ask any child to sacrifice in any way for my protection, and I hope every adult would say the same.

*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.