New study questions value of giving mRNA shots to children for 'short-lived' 26% 'protection,' while FDA and CDC double down on booster push; COVID-19 Mortality in England ‘Extremely Rare’ Among Under-20s: Official Study, and other C-Virus related stories

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New study questions value of giving mRNA shots to children for 'short-lived' 26% 'protection,' while FDA and CDC double down on booster push:

A new study out of Qatar has raised doubts about the efficacy of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines amid a concerted campaign by both the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under President Joe Biden to push bivalent booster shots on children. It turns out the COVID-19 boosters may be far more effective at generating profits for Pfizer and Moderna than they are at actually keeping children safe.

The rundown

Booster shots didn't appear to protect Pfizer chairman and CEO Albert Bourla, who tested positive for COVID-19 in September after having caught the virus the previous month. They also didn't protect CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, who took ill from the virus in October, one month after receiving her booster, or FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, who tested positive this week.

Despite concerns about their efficacy and whether they may exhaust patients' immune responses, the FDA authorized new COVID booster shots for people 12 years and older on Aug. 31 before testing them on humans.

The boosters, which had only been tested on eight mice, were touted as "bivalent," meaning they would target the original COVID-19 strain as well as new Omicron subvariants.

Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of both the National Institutes of Health working group on vaccines and the FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, said in September that "there's not clear evidence of benefit" of the vaccine in healthy young people.

Offit told CNN: "What I fear is that they're going to say everybody should get it when in fact, the healthy young person really is unlikely to benefit from the booster dose, and so I hope they targeted more specifically, to those really who are most likely to benefit from this additional dose."

Months earlier, Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo announced that healthy children shouldn't get the vaccines, as the benefits are dubious and the risks are potentially substantial.

The FDA clearly heeded neither Offit's nor Ladapo's warnings, because on Oct. 12, it authorized the bivalent boosters for children anyway. The CDC also authorized the bivalent booster shots for children the same day. --->READ MORE HERE

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COVID-19 Mortality in England ‘Extremely Rare’ Among Under-20s: Official Study

Deaths from COVID-19 remain “extremely rare” in people under the age of 20, according to a study of follow-up data in the UK.

Between March 2020 and December 2021, while there were 185 deaths in England among children and young people (CYP) within 100 days of a lab-confirmed COVID-19 infection, fewer than half died directly because of the virus, the study found.

The peer-reviewed study, published on Nov. 8 on the PLOS Medicine Journal website, was conducted by researchers from the UK’s Health Security Agency (UKHSA). Studying the 22-month follow-up data on all 6,790 under-20s deaths, the team corroborated findings from a number of previous analyses that looked at data from a shorter period of time.

20 Healthy CYP Died From COVID-19

Excluding two stillbirth/intrauterine deaths, 81 (43 percent) deaths were attributed to COVID-19.

It accounts for 1.2 percent of all-cause CYP deaths, with a COVID-19 infection fatality rate of 7 per million (using estimated infections number) and an overall mortality rate of 6 per million (estimated CYP population).

Of the 81 deaths from COVID-19, one in four (20) were otherwise healthy, while 61 had “significant underlying health conditions,” including neuro-disability, immunocompromising conditions, Down syndrome, Edward syndrome, chronic heart disease, and four premature birth, meaning the COVID-19 mortality rate for otherwise healthy CYP was 1.5 per million. --->READ MORE HERE

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