We need to protect our children, for they are our future

The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) have provisionally approved the Pfizer vaccine for use in children aged 5-11 years. The roll out will begin on 10 January 2022.
 
Let’s take a look at the facts.
 
According to the Department of Health, at the time of writing, there has been 64,388 cases of COVID-19 in those aged 0-19. Tragically, three children have lost their lives.
 
However, on closer examination, the three children who passed away did so with COVID-19, not from COVID-19. This is an important distinction.
 
According to a report in The Age, a “child aged under 10 years, who died with COVID-19, also had other serious comorbidities”.
 
The article also states that a “15-year-old Melbourne girl who health authorities said had a “a number of health conditions” also died with the virus”.
 
A report in The Guardian claimed that a “teenager from south-west Sydney died in August after contracting pneumococcal meningitis, and while he was also Covid-positive it was not the reason for his hospitalisation or death”.
 
It is clear that all three deaths were due to other causes, and not from COVID-19. Yet, they are listed as COVID-19 deaths on the Department of Health website.
 
University of Sydney infectious diseases paediatrician Robert Booy said that the “risk of deaths associated with COVID-19 in children and teenagers were extremely low compared even with vaccinated adults… Of the 25 deaths in COVID-positive children and teens up to the age of 16 recorded in Britain until March this year, half of them were in children who had a major medical problem… For example, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy or severe heart and lung disease.”
 
A study conducted in Germany and published on the preprint server MedRxiv found that “SARS-CoV-2-associated burden of a severe disease course or death in children and adolescents is low”.
 
“The lowest risk was observed in children aged 5-11 without comorbidities. In this group, the ICU admission rate was 0.2 per 10,000 and case fatality could not be calculated, due to an absence of cases.”
 
Another study conducted in Sweden and published in the New England Journal of Medicine demonstrated a “low incidence of severe Covid-19 among schoolchildren and children of preschool age during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic”.
 
Children are not at risk of severe illness, hospitalisation and death from SARS-CoV-2. Vaccinating children against COVID-19 is completely unwarranted and unnecessary.
 
The Australian Product Information for the Pfizer vaccine shows that the Phase 2/3 trial (Study C4591007) included 2,268 children aged 5-11, of which 2,158 were followed up for at least two months after the second dose.
 
Of these 2,268 children, 3 in the vaccine group and 16 in the placebo group developed COVID-19, resulting in a vaccine efficacy of 90.7%, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. This is known as relative risk reduction.
 
On closer inspection, 19 children out of 2,268 developed COVID-19, which equates to 0.8% of the total number of participants. The absolute risk reduction of the COVID-19 vaccine for those aged 5-11 is 1.9%. This is the actual efficacy of the vaccine, and is a more accurate measure of an individual’s overall risk.
 
Not only is the vaccine unwarranted given the mild nature of SARS-CoV-2 in children, it is also ineffective at preventing mild to moderate disease.
 
However, the most disturbing statement in the Australian Product Information is this:
 
“THE SAFETY EVALUATION IN STUDY C4591007 IS ONGOING.”
 
A vaccine, which is still in the clinical trial phase until July 2024, according to National Institutes of Health (NIH), and which uses technology that has never been used on a mass population previously, is being injected into children with unknown longer-term safety.
 
This is completely unforgiveable. This defies all reason and logic. The vaccine should never have been provisionally approved for children aged 5-11 based on this data.
 
According to the Australian Product Information, “the most frequent adverse reactions in children 5 to <12 years of age that received 2 doses included injection site pain (>80%), fatigue (>50%), headache (>30%), injection site redness and swelling (>20%), myalgia and chills (>10%)”.
 
The following adverse reactions from post-market experience were derived from spontaneous reports and the “frequencies could not be determined and are thus considered as not known”:
 

• Anaphylaxis and hypersensitivity reactions (e.g., rash, pruritis, urticaria, angioedema)
• Myocarditis and pericarditis
• Diarrhoea and vomiting
• Pain in the extremity (arm)
• Extensive swelling of the vaccinated limb

 
The New England Journal of Medicine summarises the safety and efficacy in children aged 5-11 as follows:
 
“Limitations of the study include the lack of longer-term follow-up to assess the duration of immune responses, efficacy, and safety. However, longer-term follow-up from this study, which will continue for 2 years, should provide clarification. This study was also not powered to detect potential rare side effects of BNT162b2 in 5-to-11-year-olds.”
 
What dystopian nightmare are we living in?
 
Let that sink in.
 
The longer-term follow-up “should provide clarification” and the study was “not powered to detect potential rare side effects”.
 
What if the longer-term follow up provides clarification that the vaccine is unsafe for use in children? It will be too late. The damage will have already been done.
 
We have seen from post-market assessment that serious adverse reactions are occurring in children aged 12-17, especially myocarditis and pericarditis.
 
According to the TGA’s COVID-19 vaccine weekly safety report, there have been 137 cases of suspected myocarditis and 109 cases of suspected pericarditis in those aged 12-17 following vaccination with the Pfizer vaccine.
 
“We have observed a higher-than-expected number of cases of myocarditis in vaccinated compared to unvaccinated individuals for Comirnaty (Pfizer). The Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety at the World Health Organization has recently stated that current evidence suggests a likely causal association between myocarditis and the mRNA vaccines.”
 
A study in Clinical Infectious Diseases demonstrated a “significant increase in the risk of acute myocarditis/pericarditis following Comirnaty vaccination among Chinese male adolescents, especially after the second dose”.
 
“The overall incidence of acute myocarditis/pericarditis was 18.52… per 100,000 persons vaccinated.”
 
In other words, 1 in every 5,400 children. The clinical trial for those aged 5-11 only had 2,268 participants. This sample size is not large enough to detect an adverse event such as myocarditis or pericarditis.
 
Another pre-print study in MedRxiv concluded that “post-vaccination CAE (cardiac adverse event) rate was highest in young boys aged 12-15 following dose two. For boys 12-17 without medical comorbidities, the likelihood of post vaccination dose two CAE is 162.2 and 94.0/million respectively. This incidence exceeds their expected 120-day COVID-19 hospitalisation rate at both moderate (August 21, 2021 rates) and high COVID-19 hospitalisation incidence.”
 
Why are we putting children at risk of a serious heart condition, along with other severe side effects, for a virus that they have almost no chance of dying from?
 
And finally, this article in the British Medical Journal.
 
“The number of children that would need to be vaccinated to protect just one adult from a bout of severe covid-19 – considering the low transmission rates, the high proportion of children already being post-covid, and most adults being vaccinated or post-covid – would be extraordinarily high”.
 
“Moreover, this number would likely compare unfavourably to the number of children that would be harmed, including for rare serious events.”
 
“There is no need to rush to vaccinate children against covid-19 – the vast majority stands little to benefit, and it is ethically dubious to pursue a hypothetical protection of adults while exposing children to harms, known and unknown.”
 
Enough is enough. It’s time to stand up.
 
We need to protect our children, for they are our future.

​By Dr Daniel Niemiec

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