In the trial of 2250 kids 5-11 years, 1500 were given Pfizer's covid vaccine.
It's important to decipher the language used here:
Pfizer claims the vaccine is 90% effective against *symptomatic* Covid in these kids. This data is based off only 19 cases of *symptomatic* covid in the trial of 2250 (3 in the vaxxed group).
The word *symptomatic* raises red flags from the start since many more non-symptomatic cases could have been present & not detected. Also what is *symptomatic* referring to? A runny nose? Cough?
When we are talking about a vaccine only effective at decreasing symptoms, what are we decreasing the already mild symptoms of children down to? The side effects of the vaccination included sore arms, fever and muscle aches--- sounds worse than actual Covid in most children.
17 out of 18 FDA committee members voted yes to recommend approving it for emergency use, but with LOTS of uneasiness it seems.
They seem to have a, "we will wait & see what happens, hopefully nothing bad" mentality. Take a look at some of their open concerns:
"This is a much tougher one, I think, than we had expected coming into it," said committee member Dr. Eric Rubin, editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine. "The data show that the vaccine works and it’s pretty safe ... we’re worried about a side effect that we can’t measure yet," he said, referring to a heart condition called myocarditis.
"It just seems to me that in some ways, we’re vaccinating children to protect the adults, and it should be the other way around," said committee member Dr. James Hildreth, president and CEO of Meharry Medical College in Tennessee. "I do believe that children at highest risk do need to be vaccinated. But vaccinating all of the children ... that seems a bit much for me."
Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine researcher at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a committee member, acknowledged the difficulty of the decision.
"It’s always nerve-wracking, I think, when you’re asked to make a decision for millions of children based on studies of only a few thousand children," he said. "The question is, when do you know enough? And I think we certainly know that there are many children between 5 and 11 years of age who are susceptible to this disease who could very well be sick and are hospitalized or die from it."
Committee member Oveta Fuller, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Michigan, supported the vote.
"The benefits of this option far outweigh the known risks," she said. keyword KNOWN "We certainly cannot anticipate all the risk ahead, but we know we have systems in place that can help us do that. So, I think we have to take a step and say we want to make this option available for what it might do to help the children, as well as others in this pandemic."
The lack of data on myocarditis was a source of concern to committee members. In a presentation to the committee, Dr. Mathew Oster of the CDC’s Covid-19 Response Team, said that for 12- to 17-year-olds who received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, the rate was as high as 56.7 cases per million doses in the three weeks following vaccination.
FDA scientists affirmed Pfizer’s data, concluding that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks in most scenarios when Covid was widespread. It was only when Covid cases were very low in the community — as was the case in June — that it did not appear beneficial to vaccinate children.------ so will we stop vaccinating these children when cases are low again?!?!? It seems the benefit is extremely low if it can flip that quick, ey?
Just like with some of the other childhood vaccines, while some chronically ill children may benefit from the vaccine, it seems entirely ridiculous to blanket this LIABILITY FREE pharmaceutical product across all HEALTHY children Let's hope the FDA & CDC recognize that while SOME children could benefit, it's not needed for all, but we're assuming Pfizer already has their different colored vials (orange for kids, purple for adults) manufactured & distributed. No pressure!