Not sure it’s legitimate to calculate an NNT on an observational data set. Need a new RCT in the post Covid world to determine the current benefit/risk situation. Till then it’s all opinion, expert and otherwise
A surgeon is not the best person to write an article about pediatric infectious disease, and with the reading audience being a heavy antivax group it's a disturbing thing.
If the main writers on this site want to increase views and subscribers, awesome.
Maybe you should stick to your lane with adult Cardiology opinions. The NNT of 39 would have had you panting, but the reason to doubt it is not what the surgeon believes.
And yes, I had a family in my office yesterday asking about the COVID vaccine, and I said it was not likely to benefit their child and recommended against it. But for reasons based on a better understanding than this sites.
Thanks for the reply. I think many people on this site (not all…) come here for an honest exchange of thoughtful ideas.
May I respectfully ask you to share- what is your interpretation of the evidence/reason for the telling this particular family that covid vaccination was not likely to benefit the child?
It is difficult to draw any conclusions from statistics on an illness defined by its symptoms when they are indistinguishable from those of practically every other upper respiratory disorder, graded in severity by subjective criteria, and has no diagnostic test that is reliable by any scientific standard.
I assume this could get me shunned from this community, and/but it is real-world, honest and earnest counseling from a Family Medicine resident who is faced with this question multiple times per week from confused parents in my clinic.
When my parents are asking me whether or not I recommend the COVID vaccine for their child, I tell them with 100% sincerity and honesty that since I have been admitting children into the hospital (only ~3 years) - so far I have never admitted an otherwise healthy child (ie no asthma, CF, etc) with a lower respiratory illness and a positive COVID test who was vaccinated for COVID. However, I have admitted many children with lower respiratory illnesses and positive COVID tests who were unvaccinated for COVID. I go on to explain that there are likely millions of children out there who are unvaccinated and never get COVID or who only get mild illness so I never see them. I also explain that the risk of the vaccine is hotly debated - and that as of now, I do not feel comfortable stating that it is “completely safe” but that I do get annual boosters for myself.
I acknowledge that I may be doing a disservice to my patients by not making a firm recommendation for/against vaccination in otherwise healthy kiddos - but for now, at this stage in my training and my life, this “hedging” allows me to sleep at night (at least, whenever I’m not on call!) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The overarching principle is this: COVID is not a disease of the young. Only about 1,000 under 20 died from COVID and they all had serious underlying diseases. More than 1,000 died from complications of the "vaccination" First -DO NO HARM. Plus we have no idea about the long term effects of mRNA on the DNA or epigenetics of the pediatric population.
“ §§ Eligible ED/UC encounters or hospital admissions were those for COVID-19–like illness, obtained using International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) discharge codes. The specific codes used were COVID-19 pneumonia: J12.81 and J12.82; influenza pneumonia: J09.X1, J10.0*, J11.0*, and other viral pneumonia: J12*; bacterial and other pneumonia: J13, J14, J15*, J16*, J17, and J18*; influenza disease: J09*, J10.1, J10.2, J10.8*, J11.1, J11.2, and J11.8*; acute respiratory distress syndrome: J80; chronic obstructive pulmonary disease with acute exacerbation: J44.1; acute asthma exacerbation: J45.21, J45.22, J45.31, J45.32, J45.41, J45.42, J45.51, J45.52, J45.901, and J45.902; respiratory failure: J96.0*, J96.2*, R09.2, and J96.9*; other acute lower respiratory tract infections: B97.4, J20*, J21*, J22, J40, J44.0, J41*, J42, J43*, J47*, J85*, and J86*; acute and chronic sinusitis: J01* and J32*; acute upper respiratory tract infections: J00*, J02*, J03*, J04*, J05*, and J06*; acute respiratory illness signs and symptoms: R04.2, R05, R05.1, R05.2, R05.4, R05.8, R05.9, R06.00, R06.02, R06.03, R06.1, R06.2, R06.8, R06.81, R06.82, R06.89, R07.1, R09.0*, R09.1, R09.2, R09.3, and R09.8*; acute febrile illness signs and symptoms: R50*, R50.81, R50.9, and R68.83; acute nonrespiratory illness signs and symptoms: M79.10, M79.18, R10.0, R10.1*, R10.2, R10.3*, R10.81*, R10.84, R10.9, R11.0, R11.10, R11.11, R11.15, R11.2, R19.7, R21*, R40.0, R40.1, R41.82, R43*, R51.9, R53.1, R53.81, R53.83, R57.9, and R65*; febrile convulsions: R56.0; viral and respiratory diseases complicating pregnancy, childbirth, and puerperium: O98.5*, O98.8*, O98.9*, and O99.5*. All ICD-10 codes with * include all child codes under the specific parent code.”
They used discharge codes to retrospectively determine their subject cohort. So the authors actually could’ve included ONLY patients who had (in hindsight) presented with “COVID pneumonia”…rather than an entire grab-bag of other things that turned out NOT to be COVID-caused issues . And they didn’t report what proportion were enrolled under each of the “discharge codes” categories.
Yeah, the problem is determining a comparison group. So if they just looked at people who were diagnosed with COVID, and found that, say only 1% of them had been vaxxed ... that tells you even less. Is that more or less than expected? What percentage of kids during this time have received a vaccine?
So as a comparison group, they look at all the kids who came in with a respiratory illness but didn't end up testing positive for covid. Turns out that about 4% of that larger group had been vaxxed. Ok, so that does show something.
I think it was a reasonable enough approach, but I really don't think it is particularly useful. Just for example, what if kids who are more prone to respiratory infections are more likely to have parents get them the covid vaccine. Wouldn't that skew the numbers? Or what if the covid vaccine increased the likelihood of other respiratory symptoms/illnesses? I mean, there are a lot of holes with the retrospective design in general. I agree with the critiques in the article about the way this is translated into the lay press. But I don't have much issue with the design of the analysis to begin with, which seems reasonable enough.
I would have used the discharge code of “Covid pneumonia” as the numerator, rather than “Covid test positive”.
This would’ve given you “vaccine effectiveness” wrt “preventing covid pneumonia”, rather than merely “preventing positive covid test”. And it would solve the issue of “admitted WITH covid” rather than “admitted OF covid”.
I agree with the limitations of retrospective observational data. It is quite likely that the children who were vaccinated were different from those who were not, in myriad ways.
To get “risk in unvaccinated” of 0.03004 in a cohort of “42,682” unvaccinated children presenting to ED/urgent care, there would need to have been 1282 positive COVID tests (not 12).
This article is spot on. They should present the data, without sensationalized terminology that smacks of bias.
And what we care about are patients who present “OF COVID” (ie they are there because of COVID related symptoms) and not merely “WITH COVID” (seeking care for something else entirely, gets swabbed anyway, and happen to be COVID positive). This has been an issue with reporting since nearly the very beginning of COVID.
The study was of 44,541 children who presented with "covid-like" illness, call it respiratory illness. Of those children, 42,682 had not been vaccinated while 1,859 had been. It gets a little confusing with the language of "case" and "control" here.
But your math is correct - of the 42,682 unvaccinated children, 1280 tested positive for covid (~3%) while 41,402 did not test positive for covid. Of the 1,859 vaccinated children, 12 tested positive for covid (~0.65%), while 1,847 did not test positive for covid.
The argument of the paper is that when you look at a large sample of children who came in with respiratory illness, it appears that those who had previously been vaccinated were significantly less likely to have covid as the cause of their respiratory illness. (All the other issues, critiques, and problems noted in the article and thread obviously still stand).
The industrial drug complex will never voluntarily admit the truth and stop pushing all these harmful vaccines. If they did it would be their end along with possible criminal charges. They will also never reveal any real proof of diagnosis of a covid infection, because no viable standard diagnostic test exists. Without proven infections there is no reason for their the death vaxxes.
If 12/42,000 un vaxxed had Covid and 15/2,000 in the vaxxed it’s quite clear the vaccine doesn’t prevent ER visits. Never look at relative efficacy. Always kook ar absolute efficacy. Anyone quoting relative results is trying to deceive you.
Sorry I read it as 12 not 1,280. Still I’ll agree with the American people and vote against this as as even a 3% chance of stopping nothing isn’t worth time or money.
Thank you for this "sensible" piece :) Also, what appears to always be missing from the conversation around covid vaccines is the complete lack of any long-term safety data. Obviously, we know about the myo/pericarditis risk but we do not know about potential "non-specific effects" yet, it has been recommended to give to healthy young people and pregnant women (without any idea of how the mRNA platform may negatively affect a developing human being).
CDC would do well to shut down. They have been a net negative to public health for decades now. If there is any chance of getting this kind of function working, it will need to be a whole new organization with all new staff.
The institutions that purport to deal with public health need to be eliminated. A new organization would soon start to resemble the existing ones. The term "public health" is at least anachronistic if not oxymoronic.
i agree. But the organization was originally constituted to generate credible statistics and that function would still be useful if honest (might not be possible). Public health is every bit as oxymoronic as population health -- one cannot care for either.
Can someone please explain the math to me? 12 cases out of 42,000 unvaccinated is a lower number and less risk than 15 out of 2000 vaccinated .? isn’t it? Is there a decimal area here or am I missing something?
Is there a typo? Was there 120 cases maybe versus 15
The study looks at 44,541 visits to an ER/Urgent care for respiratory illness (which they call "covid-like" illness.
Among the children who showed up with respiratory illness, 1292 tested positive for COVID "case", while 43,249 did not "control." Of those who tested positive for covid, 12 of them had the vaccine in the last year. Of those who did not test positive for covid, 1847 had the vaccine in the last year.
So then they sort of flip the numbers around to compare all the vaccinated kids (12 + 1847 = 1859) against all the non-vaccinated kids (1280 + 41402 = 42682). Among those kids who were vaccinated, then showed up with a respiratory illness, 0.65% turned tested positive for covid (12/1859). Among those kids who were not vaccinated, then showed up with respiratory illness, 3.0% tested positive for covid (1280 / 42682).
This is where the "vaccine efficacy" number comes from basically - the argument is that the vaccine decreased the likelihood of getting covid (as defined by having your respiratory infection that sends you to Urgent Care be from covid vs something else), from 3% to 0.6% (~78% risk reduction).
That makes sense but follow up question please. You have 20 times as many kids unvaccinated. The assumption is that if you had 20 times more vaccinated kids the rate would stay the same.? wouldn’t you have to perspectively divide the groups up and then figure out the statistical significance? Is the data robust enough say that if 40,000 kids were vaccinated the rate would indeed be the same?
Theoretically, if the difference in the rates were 100% attributable to the vaccine, you could say, let's say the 42682 had been vaccinated. Now, instead of 3% (1280) testing positive, only 0.65% (277) test positive. So basically 1280 - 277 = 1003 cases of covid requiring urgent care / hospital were prevented.
So, roughly speaking, vaccinate 40,000 kids to prevent 1000 urgent care / hospitalizations for COVID. That would be the numbers using the most generous interpretation of the data.
Does that mean that this study proves that? No, far from it. As noted throughout the critique, there are all kinds of issues with the assumptions there, and even more so with the lay press interpretation. But that's at least the numbers of the argument.
Thanks. I guess I’m a little biased. Of all things a good friend decided to vaccinate their young adult and they ended up with Covid vaccine myocarditis. I’m a cardiologist and when I was in the military and when they were using live virus, smallpox vaccines they actually had deaths with smallpox myocarditis seen in the heart and cultured . Of course you could also of course get it from Covid but it gets right down to it at the end of the day if kids were getting hospitalized and getting life-threatening complications in substantial numbers that would make sense but that’s not what we’re hearing. If you’re old usually defined as a year older than me, it can make sense. Certainly if you have comorbid conditions. Although after three vaccinations and multiple cases of Covid, I’m not sure boosters make any sense.
It is a sign of the bankruptcy of the public health establishment that they continue to flog covid shots in healthy kids. In addition to the weak methodology that the author dissects, a fair analysis would almost certainly show that the highly reactogenic modRNA covid shots cause more influenza-like illnesses than they prevent, even if one accepts the flawed MMWR results at face value. We have already reached the point where even a single case of vax-induced myocarditis from these shots is an unacceptable risk for kids.
great piece. unfortunately for some the damage has already been done. remove the shots from the childhood schedule.we live in a fear based society where folks are unable to see through the madness.
I have always been of the opinion that if fancy statistics are necessary to prove something then it’s probably not true. Number needed to treat (NNT)should be the way all medical science should be reported to the public and serve as a basis by which we make clinical decisions.
Not sure it’s legitimate to calculate an NNT on an observational data set. Need a new RCT in the post Covid world to determine the current benefit/risk situation. Till then it’s all opinion, expert and otherwise
A surgeon is not the best person to write an article about pediatric infectious disease, and with the reading audience being a heavy antivax group it's a disturbing thing.
If the main writers on this site want to increase views and subscribers, awesome.
Maybe you should stick to your lane with adult Cardiology opinions. The NNT of 39 would have had you panting, but the reason to doubt it is not what the surgeon believes.
And yes, I had a family in my office yesterday asking about the COVID vaccine, and I said it was not likely to benefit their child and recommended against it. But for reasons based on a better understanding than this sites.
Thanks for the reply. I think many people on this site (not all…) come here for an honest exchange of thoughtful ideas.
May I respectfully ask you to share- what is your interpretation of the evidence/reason for the telling this particular family that covid vaccination was not likely to benefit the child?
It is difficult to draw any conclusions from statistics on an illness defined by its symptoms when they are indistinguishable from those of practically every other upper respiratory disorder, graded in severity by subjective criteria, and has no diagnostic test that is reliable by any scientific standard.
I assume this could get me shunned from this community, and/but it is real-world, honest and earnest counseling from a Family Medicine resident who is faced with this question multiple times per week from confused parents in my clinic.
When my parents are asking me whether or not I recommend the COVID vaccine for their child, I tell them with 100% sincerity and honesty that since I have been admitting children into the hospital (only ~3 years) - so far I have never admitted an otherwise healthy child (ie no asthma, CF, etc) with a lower respiratory illness and a positive COVID test who was vaccinated for COVID. However, I have admitted many children with lower respiratory illnesses and positive COVID tests who were unvaccinated for COVID. I go on to explain that there are likely millions of children out there who are unvaccinated and never get COVID or who only get mild illness so I never see them. I also explain that the risk of the vaccine is hotly debated - and that as of now, I do not feel comfortable stating that it is “completely safe” but that I do get annual boosters for myself.
I acknowledge that I may be doing a disservice to my patients by not making a firm recommendation for/against vaccination in otherwise healthy kiddos - but for now, at this stage in my training and my life, this “hedging” allows me to sleep at night (at least, whenever I’m not on call!) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This kind of nuanced explanation is exactly what the CDC and every health care provider should strive for.
The overarching principle is this: COVID is not a disease of the young. Only about 1,000 under 20 died from COVID and they all had serious underlying diseases. More than 1,000 died from complications of the "vaccination" First -DO NO HARM. Plus we have no idea about the long term effects of mRNA on the DNA or epigenetics of the pediatric population.
From the MMWR report:
“ §§ Eligible ED/UC encounters or hospital admissions were those for COVID-19–like illness, obtained using International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) discharge codes. The specific codes used were COVID-19 pneumonia: J12.81 and J12.82; influenza pneumonia: J09.X1, J10.0*, J11.0*, and other viral pneumonia: J12*; bacterial and other pneumonia: J13, J14, J15*, J16*, J17, and J18*; influenza disease: J09*, J10.1, J10.2, J10.8*, J11.1, J11.2, and J11.8*; acute respiratory distress syndrome: J80; chronic obstructive pulmonary disease with acute exacerbation: J44.1; acute asthma exacerbation: J45.21, J45.22, J45.31, J45.32, J45.41, J45.42, J45.51, J45.52, J45.901, and J45.902; respiratory failure: J96.0*, J96.2*, R09.2, and J96.9*; other acute lower respiratory tract infections: B97.4, J20*, J21*, J22, J40, J44.0, J41*, J42, J43*, J47*, J85*, and J86*; acute and chronic sinusitis: J01* and J32*; acute upper respiratory tract infections: J00*, J02*, J03*, J04*, J05*, and J06*; acute respiratory illness signs and symptoms: R04.2, R05, R05.1, R05.2, R05.4, R05.8, R05.9, R06.00, R06.02, R06.03, R06.1, R06.2, R06.8, R06.81, R06.82, R06.89, R07.1, R09.0*, R09.1, R09.2, R09.3, and R09.8*; acute febrile illness signs and symptoms: R50*, R50.81, R50.9, and R68.83; acute nonrespiratory illness signs and symptoms: M79.10, M79.18, R10.0, R10.1*, R10.2, R10.3*, R10.81*, R10.84, R10.9, R11.0, R11.10, R11.11, R11.15, R11.2, R19.7, R21*, R40.0, R40.1, R41.82, R43*, R51.9, R53.1, R53.81, R53.83, R57.9, and R65*; febrile convulsions: R56.0; viral and respiratory diseases complicating pregnancy, childbirth, and puerperium: O98.5*, O98.8*, O98.9*, and O99.5*. All ICD-10 codes with * include all child codes under the specific parent code.”
They used discharge codes to retrospectively determine their subject cohort. So the authors actually could’ve included ONLY patients who had (in hindsight) presented with “COVID pneumonia”…rather than an entire grab-bag of other things that turned out NOT to be COVID-caused issues . And they didn’t report what proportion were enrolled under each of the “discharge codes” categories.
Yeah, the problem is determining a comparison group. So if they just looked at people who were diagnosed with COVID, and found that, say only 1% of them had been vaxxed ... that tells you even less. Is that more or less than expected? What percentage of kids during this time have received a vaccine?
So as a comparison group, they look at all the kids who came in with a respiratory illness but didn't end up testing positive for covid. Turns out that about 4% of that larger group had been vaxxed. Ok, so that does show something.
I think it was a reasonable enough approach, but I really don't think it is particularly useful. Just for example, what if kids who are more prone to respiratory infections are more likely to have parents get them the covid vaccine. Wouldn't that skew the numbers? Or what if the covid vaccine increased the likelihood of other respiratory symptoms/illnesses? I mean, there are a lot of holes with the retrospective design in general. I agree with the critiques in the article about the way this is translated into the lay press. But I don't have much issue with the design of the analysis to begin with, which seems reasonable enough.
I would have used the discharge code of “Covid pneumonia” as the numerator, rather than “Covid test positive”.
This would’ve given you “vaccine effectiveness” wrt “preventing covid pneumonia”, rather than merely “preventing positive covid test”. And it would solve the issue of “admitted WITH covid” rather than “admitted OF covid”.
I agree with the limitations of retrospective observational data. It is quite likely that the children who were vaccinated were different from those who were not, in myriad ways.
I presume there is a typo.
To get “risk in unvaccinated” of 0.03004 in a cohort of “42,682” unvaccinated children presenting to ED/urgent care, there would need to have been 1282 positive COVID tests (not 12).
This article is spot on. They should present the data, without sensationalized terminology that smacks of bias.
And what we care about are patients who present “OF COVID” (ie they are there because of COVID related symptoms) and not merely “WITH COVID” (seeking care for something else entirely, gets swabbed anyway, and happen to be COVID positive). This has been an issue with reporting since nearly the very beginning of COVID.
The study was of 44,541 children who presented with "covid-like" illness, call it respiratory illness. Of those children, 42,682 had not been vaccinated while 1,859 had been. It gets a little confusing with the language of "case" and "control" here.
But your math is correct - of the 42,682 unvaccinated children, 1280 tested positive for covid (~3%) while 41,402 did not test positive for covid. Of the 1,859 vaccinated children, 12 tested positive for covid (~0.65%), while 1,847 did not test positive for covid.
The argument of the paper is that when you look at a large sample of children who came in with respiratory illness, it appears that those who had previously been vaccinated were significantly less likely to have covid as the cause of their respiratory illness. (All the other issues, critiques, and problems noted in the article and thread obviously still stand).
The industrial drug complex will never voluntarily admit the truth and stop pushing all these harmful vaccines. If they did it would be their end along with possible criminal charges. They will also never reveal any real proof of diagnosis of a covid infection, because no viable standard diagnostic test exists. Without proven infections there is no reason for their the death vaxxes.
If 12/42,000 un vaxxed had Covid and 15/2,000 in the vaxxed it’s quite clear the vaccine doesn’t prevent ER visits. Never look at relative efficacy. Always kook ar absolute efficacy. Anyone quoting relative results is trying to deceive you.
1280 of 42,682 (~3%) of the unvaxxed tested positive for covid. 12 of 1847 vaxed (~0.65%) tested positive for covid.
Sorry I read it as 12 not 1,280. Still I’ll agree with the American people and vote against this as as even a 3% chance of stopping nothing isn’t worth time or money.
Thank you for this "sensible" piece :) Also, what appears to always be missing from the conversation around covid vaccines is the complete lack of any long-term safety data. Obviously, we know about the myo/pericarditis risk but we do not know about potential "non-specific effects" yet, it has been recommended to give to healthy young people and pregnant women (without any idea of how the mRNA platform may negatively affect a developing human being).
CDC would do well to shut down. They have been a net negative to public health for decades now. If there is any chance of getting this kind of function working, it will need to be a whole new organization with all new staff.
The institutions that purport to deal with public health need to be eliminated. A new organization would soon start to resemble the existing ones. The term "public health" is at least anachronistic if not oxymoronic.
i agree. But the organization was originally constituted to generate credible statistics and that function would still be useful if honest (might not be possible). Public health is every bit as oxymoronic as population health -- one cannot care for either.
Can someone please explain the math to me? 12 cases out of 42,000 unvaccinated is a lower number and less risk than 15 out of 2000 vaccinated .? isn’t it? Is there a decimal area here or am I missing something?
Is there a typo? Was there 120 cases maybe versus 15
The study looks at 44,541 visits to an ER/Urgent care for respiratory illness (which they call "covid-like" illness.
Among the children who showed up with respiratory illness, 1292 tested positive for COVID "case", while 43,249 did not "control." Of those who tested positive for covid, 12 of them had the vaccine in the last year. Of those who did not test positive for covid, 1847 had the vaccine in the last year.
So then they sort of flip the numbers around to compare all the vaccinated kids (12 + 1847 = 1859) against all the non-vaccinated kids (1280 + 41402 = 42682). Among those kids who were vaccinated, then showed up with a respiratory illness, 0.65% turned tested positive for covid (12/1859). Among those kids who were not vaccinated, then showed up with respiratory illness, 3.0% tested positive for covid (1280 / 42682).
This is where the "vaccine efficacy" number comes from basically - the argument is that the vaccine decreased the likelihood of getting covid (as defined by having your respiratory infection that sends you to Urgent Care be from covid vs something else), from 3% to 0.6% (~78% risk reduction).
That makes sense but follow up question please. You have 20 times as many kids unvaccinated. The assumption is that if you had 20 times more vaccinated kids the rate would stay the same.? wouldn’t you have to perspectively divide the groups up and then figure out the statistical significance? Is the data robust enough say that if 40,000 kids were vaccinated the rate would indeed be the same?
Theoretically, if the difference in the rates were 100% attributable to the vaccine, you could say, let's say the 42682 had been vaccinated. Now, instead of 3% (1280) testing positive, only 0.65% (277) test positive. So basically 1280 - 277 = 1003 cases of covid requiring urgent care / hospital were prevented.
So, roughly speaking, vaccinate 40,000 kids to prevent 1000 urgent care / hospitalizations for COVID. That would be the numbers using the most generous interpretation of the data.
Does that mean that this study proves that? No, far from it. As noted throughout the critique, there are all kinds of issues with the assumptions there, and even more so with the lay press interpretation. But that's at least the numbers of the argument.
Thanks. I guess I’m a little biased. Of all things a good friend decided to vaccinate their young adult and they ended up with Covid vaccine myocarditis. I’m a cardiologist and when I was in the military and when they were using live virus, smallpox vaccines they actually had deaths with smallpox myocarditis seen in the heart and cultured . Of course you could also of course get it from Covid but it gets right down to it at the end of the day if kids were getting hospitalized and getting life-threatening complications in substantial numbers that would make sense but that’s not what we’re hearing. If you’re old usually defined as a year older than me, it can make sense. Certainly if you have comorbid conditions. Although after three vaccinations and multiple cases of Covid, I’m not sure boosters make any sense.
Agree. There must be a math error here.
If you cannot state the benefit in two sentences or less, it’s probably not there.
Simplistic? Yes. But frequently true.
It is a sign of the bankruptcy of the public health establishment that they continue to flog covid shots in healthy kids. In addition to the weak methodology that the author dissects, a fair analysis would almost certainly show that the highly reactogenic modRNA covid shots cause more influenza-like illnesses than they prevent, even if one accepts the flawed MMWR results at face value. We have already reached the point where even a single case of vax-induced myocarditis from these shots is an unacceptable risk for kids.
great piece. unfortunately for some the damage has already been done. remove the shots from the childhood schedule.we live in a fear based society where folks are unable to see through the madness.
I have always been of the opinion that if fancy statistics are necessary to prove something then it’s probably not true. Number needed to treat (NNT)should be the way all medical science should be reported to the public and serve as a basis by which we make clinical decisions.