EMA advises vaccinating young kids WITH UNDERLYING ILLNESS

Not "all healthy kids"; a key distinction from Biden Administration Zealots

Two weeks ago, the CDC’s ACIP committee voted to add COVID-19 vaccination to the routine immunization schedule for very young children. This decision was controversial, and tacitly equates COVID-19 vaccination with necessary and established vaccines such as those for measles, polio, and whooping cough. I believe that decision was incorrect for 4 reasons, which I detailed in a post for Common Sense with Bari Weiss. Most importantly however is that equating these vaccines is medically incorrect, and may paradoxically lead some parents to reject all.

Recently a subtle action taken by the European Medicines Agency (the EU counterpart to FDA) suggests agreement from across the pond. Pay attention to the language.

EU Medicines Agency @EMA_News

#COVID19vaccines in small children: EMA recommends vaccinating primarily small children with underlying illness to protect them from hospitalisation & death. ❗️The decision on children’s vaccination lies with the EU Member States. #EMAPresser

Notice what it doesn't say: EMA recommends that all children be vaccinated against SARS-Cov-2 in perpetuity. It doesn't say healthy kids. It focuses on the high risk subgroup.

That's one of the distinctions between the European vaccine policy and American policy. Under this administration, the American policy has repeatedly spent political capital pushing vaccines and boosters in the lowest risk populations, with the most severe side effects, including young men who have already had COVID-19. And— children have already had COVID-19— who have the least to gain. (note: myocarditis is largely post pubescent.)

This administration has also green lit boosters based on scant data. Mouse data (!) alone was used to support the bivalent (Wu/BA45) booster. Recently, two small studies both showed that the new bivalent booster failed to generate more BA5 antibodies than the old vaccine, suggesting immunological imprinting. Yet, look how FDA dismisses these results:

Peter Marks from FDA had this to say.

But this is the same gentleman who authorized the shot based on 8 and 10 mice. Seems a bit arrogant to say 18 and 21 people are too small when you're in the 8 to 10 mouse business.

There has always been, and there will always be a range of COVID-19 policy views among scientists. Those will range from extreme concern about the virus, and extreme confidence about our therapeutics, to the converse. Somewhere in the middle is the truth.

This administration has chosen advisors who are on one extreme. These advisors appear to not understand the principles of evidence-based medicine, as evident by pushing interventions on the lowest risk populations in perpetuity based on mouse data.

They deviate from their European colleagues on issues of child vaccination. And even their thought process is illogical and nonsensical. Dismissing a human study because it sample size is less than 25 is fair, but not when you've authorized vaccines based on fewer mice.

As a lifelong progressive and expert in evidence-based medicine, I'm concerned both medically and politically. Medically, it is never a good idea to recommend unproven interventions to children. Better to run controlled studies, and do so if and only if the trade-offs are positive. Politically, it is not a good idea to pay the way for college mandates - which are actually occurring now in places like Yale University for bivalent boosters - based on inadequate or flawed studies in mice.

I suspect the Democrats are going to pay a tremendous political price for their COVID zealotry. Their policies on schools, masking very young children, and vaccinating the young run counter to medicine, and public sentiment. If they are to try to regain ground for the presidential election. I urge them to get new advisors. There are plenty of advisors who believe in centrism, wisdom, and good medicine.