FDA and CDC experts said the plan was ill-advised, so the agencies cut them out of the decision process.
The U.S. government is pushing Covid-19 vaccine boosters for 16- and 17-year-olds without supporting clinical data. A large Israeli population study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine earlier this month, found that the risk of Covid death in people under 30 with two vaccine shots was zero.
Booster mandates for healthy young people, which some colleges are imposing, will cause medical harm for the sake of transient reductions in mild and asymptomatic infections. In a study of 438,511 males 16 to 24, 56 developed myocarditis after their second Pfizer dose (or 1 in 7,830, at least seven times the usual rate). True, most cases were mild, but in the broader group of 136 people (including older and female patients) who developed myocarditis after the vaccine, seven had a “complicated course,” and one 22-year-old died. Moderna’s vaccine carries an even higher rate of heart complications, which is why some European countries have restricted it for people under 30. But in the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indiscriminately push for boosters for all young people. . .
Last week I testified before Congress that many Covid policies are no longer driven by science. Data is being cherry-picked to support predetermined agendas, while the roles of natural immunity and life-saving therapeutics are being sidelined.
We’ve seen medical bandwagon thinking hurt the country before. The false assumption that Covid spreads by surface transmission still has Americans engaging in futile disinfection rituals. We’ve suffered from barbaric policies that prohibited people from saying goodbye to, or holding hands with, loved ones who were dying. Children were shut out of school for a less contagious variant. Our public health leaders are making critical mistakes and affirming each other with groupthink, while journalists forfeit their duty to ask key questions.
Forcing immune, young, healthy, low-risk students to get a third vaccine shot is excessive and wasteful. These precious vaccine doses should be going to poor countries that still don’t have enough.
Read the full article in The Wall Street Journal.
