“Why the rush for toddler vaccines?” the Wall Street Journal asks in a Monday piece by editorial board member Allysia Finley. “Covid was clearly a health emergency for adults in 2020. By contrast, the urgency now feels political.”
Whoa. It’s been rare to see a major national outlet criticize anything to do with vaccines for two years now. To read a top newspaper calling the approval process “political” is jarring, to say the least.
It was in mid-June that the Biden Administration started the roll-out of COVID vaccines for children from 6 months to 5 years old with assurances they were “safe and effective.” Finley flatly disagrees:
In fact, we don’t know if the vaccines are safe and effective. FDA’s rushed action was founded on very weak evidence. It’s one thing to show regulatory flexibility during an emergency. But for children, Covid isn’t an emergency. FDA ignored disturbing evidence and bent their standards in an extraordinary way.
My wife wasn’t impressed:
This is how you bury the leade. It appears in 9 paragraphs of a 14-paragraph piece.
“More troubling, vaccinated toddlers in Pfizer’s trial were more likely to get severely ill with Covid than those who received a placebo.”
What do you think? https://t.co/FipTndGaMK
— Roxanne Hoge (@RoxanneHoge) July 5, 2022
We reported last month how President Biden bragged at a vaccine center that “We’re the only country in the world doing this right now.” Which begs the obvious question: Why These areWe are the only ones?
The Journal goes on to document how the FDA granted the adult Pfizer and Moderna vaccines “emergency-use authorization” because there was a clear and present health danger to adults in 2020. The agency approved the same authorization for the childhood vax, but Finley argues that that’s questionable because there is no such emergency for children—the Wuhan virus is simply not very dangerous to them. About.02% of the virus-related deaths in America have occurred in children. Many of these had already been diagnosed. Many more children die from the flu than COVID, and many are also hospitalized.
Finley goes on to explain in complicated detail how Pfizer and Moderna jiggled the numbers and used standards far below what should be required to get approval for a drug that we’re now expected to inject into the arms of our most vulnerable population. The conclusion of Finley:
FDA standards for vaccine approval in healthy individuals, particularly children, are supposed to be higher that for medicines for the sick. The FDA has lowered the standards for approval of Covid vaccines in toddlers.
If true, that’s extremely disturbing. It’s not just the questionable approval process that’s alarming, though; it’s that some of the trial results bring up questions too:
More troubling, vaccinated toddlers in Pfizer’s trial were more likely to get severely ill with Covid than those who received a placebo. Pfizer claimed most severe cases weren’t “clinically significant,” whatever that means, but this was all the more reason that the FDA should have required a longer follow-up before authorizing the vaccine.
It is also concerning that most children who contracted multiple illnesses during the trial were not vaccinated. More research was needed as experimental vaccines against other diseases can increase the susceptibility of infection.
It is strange that the government would approve vaccines for children so quickly, despite the fact that A) COVID exposure in childhood is very low, B) these trials were run with dubious protocols and C) many safety questions remain unanswered. Finley believes that the FDA was being manipulated by someone for political reasons. “Perhaps it (the FDA) felt pressure from the White House as well as anxious parents,” she says.
She ends her sentence by pointing out the President’s infidelities:
Mr. Biden’s hypocrisy is hard to stomach. It is a credit to the FDA that it accelerated Covid treatment and vaccines in times of urgent need. But children would have been better off had the FDA taken more time to ensure the vaccines really are safe and effective, even if this meant that America wouldn’t be first.
As I said earlier, it’s shocking to read articles this critical of any pandemic response. This isn’t some Twitter conspiracy theorist, nor some low-rated kooky website—this is from the pen of an editorial board member of one of the most prestigious newspapers in the country. Facebook and Twitter can’t simply just cancel them, though you can bet they’d love to do so.
Just 29 percent of children between the ages of 5 and 11 have been given a double dose COVID vaccine. A slightly larger 59 percent of 12-18-year-olds have chosen to get it. Many vaccine supporters were expecting much more. In reality, the numbers for children aged 6 months to 5 years old will be much lower.
Expect many parents to be reluctant to allow their toddlers or babies to have the vaccine because of the rushed approval and unknown medical issues. They are not wrong.
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