Should COVID-19 be a vaccine disease or a childhood disease?

 

Kids, Covid, and Vaccination.  Should we be vaccinating children as young at 12, or even any younger than that, for Covid?

Let’s “follow the science”, as we seem to hear so often.

First, there has been a small Pfizer-sponsored study of 2260 adolescents who randomly either received a vaccination or a saline injection (basically, a placebo). The resulting paper concluded that the vaccine “had a favorable safety profile”, however, based on data presented in the study, in the age group 12-15 years, 7/1131 vaccinated vs. 2/1129 unvaccinated had a severe adverse event, which is a 3-fold increased risk.  I am not actually sure of the definition of a “severe adverse event”, but I don’t like the sound of it.  Also in the study, it was found that in the 16-25 years age group, 9/536 vaccinated vs. 3/561 unvaccinated had a severe adverse event, likewise a 3-fold increased risk. The combined results indicate a 3.28-fold increased risk in severe adverse events among children and young adults, age 12-25.

This is the equivalent of 1 of every 100 vaccinated child experiencing a severe event, vs. 3 of 1,000 unvaccinated.

This is not to say that the vaccine isn’t effective at stopping Covid.  But like everything else in life, at what cost?  And this is nothing new with vaccines.  For example, a effective and protective measles vaccine had to be withdrawn after being associated with 2-fold higher mortality rate for females.  There was also a malaria vaccine that was associated with 2-fold higher mortality rate in females and was also withdrawn.  While the vaccines protected against the target disease (measles, and malaria), they increased the likelihood of other diseases substantially. Thus, as the Covid vaccine study showed, the protection against Covid may come at the cost of susceptibility to other infectious agents or side effects.

And there are other vaccines that were shown to have problems.  The 1976 swine flu vaccine caused Guillan-Barre syndrome in at least 450 people.  The H1N1 vaccine in 2009 caused several thousand cases of narcolepsy.

There has also been considerable concern about cardiomyopathy issues in young adults after receiving the Covid vaccinations.  In fact, just last Friday in Pediatrics, a study was published showing that cardiomyopathy in vaccinated young adults (under the age of 21) showed signs of a marker associated with a 5-times increased risk for long term major adverse cardiac events. 

Given that children, all along, have been ‘dead ends’ for covid, meaning that they don’t really spread it and show only minor symptoms, if any symptoms…is it worth pushing this vaccination on them?

Should COVID-19 be a vaccine disease or a childhood disease? Should it be something that we vaccinate against (add it to the CDC schedule) or should it be something that we allow children to naturally contract and then become defended against by their immune system?  Many seem to assume that COVID-19 will become a disease for which we vaccinate the whole population perhaps annually or biannually, as there has been talk for several months already about ‘boosters’ needed, and that talk has increased with the increased Delta variant spread. To vaccinate an entire population repeatedly sounds incredibly expensive - and potentially harmful, if the (repeated) vaccinations have negative effects. I say this as a whole, but especially when it comes to our children…heck, I’d define ‘children’ as anyone under the age of 25.

It has been shown over and over again, in copious data, that Covid very rarely causes severe disease in children.  Therefore, the safest and cheapest way forward would be to treat it as a ‘childhood disease’, something that kids get, respond to, and then live with innate protection against.  This may sound scary to some of you, but it is ok to allow Covid to infect children, who thereby likely become protected against severe disease well into late adulthood. In fact, I read the following while putting together this column:

 “Once most adults are vaccinated, circulation of SARS-CoV-2 may in fact be desirable, as it is likely to lead to primary infection early in life when disease is mild, followed by booster re-exposures throughout adulthood … This would keep reinfections mild and immunity up to date”.  Incidentally, this is how chickenpox use to work…get it young, get over it, and then get exposed to it throughout life (via kids, then grandkids) to keep your immunity up to date.  Unfortunately, now we vaccinate for chicken pox and natural immunity is waning.

Choosing not to vaccinate children for Covid removes any change of a “severe adverse event.”  It also allows them to develop natural immunity, which is stronger, more broad-based, and will be strengthen well into adulthood.  And finally, there is a cost to all of this.  I feel that money is much better spent getting kids healthy nutritionally, physically, emotionally, mentally.  Let’s focus our money and energy there.