Newly released data from the New York State Health Department indicates that Pfizer’s flagship mRNA Covid-19 vaccine fell to a startlingly low 12% effectiveness in children aged 5-11 during the omicron outbreak in late summer and fall. The drop came as a result of the lowered dosage given to younger children and also correlated to the amount that passed after the second dose was given in a two-dose regimen.
For parents who were eager to vaccinate their young children, this may come as disappointing news. For parents who wanted to wait for more information, this data can serve as vindication that it was not worth vaccinating a five-year-old with a medication that quickly sinks to 12% effectiveness.
Despite an ongoing push from the Biden administration to get Covid vaccines approved for children at the youngest age ranges, such as under 5, that effort may have hit a wall:
Researchers from the New York State Department of Health found the ability of the vaccine to protect children who got the lowest dose — kids ages 5 to 11 — from catching the virus dropped the most, falling from 68% to just 12%. Those children received an injection containing just 10 milligrams, one-third of the dose given to older children, adolescents and adults.
Meanwhile, the effectiveness in children ages 12 to 17, who got the same 30-milligram dose as adults, showed a smaller decline, dropping from 66% to 51%.
“These results highlight the potential need to study alternative vaccine dosing for children and the continued importance [of] layered protections, including mask wearing, to prevent infection and transmission,” the study stated.
The study opines that a less effective vaccination dose indicates the need to keep other protective layers, such as masking, in place until the end of time, or start increasing the frequency of child Covid vaccinations. Good luck with masking kids forever. Even in New York, the originator of the study, mask mandates in schools are finally being dropped after the political science changed.
With Covid-19 vaccination effectiveness in children vastly oversold, how many parents will be eager to simply force masks on their children until an unspecified time in the future? Not many, even the ones who were all in favor of quickly vaccinating kids aged 5 to 11 for a disease that poses them statistically little risk.
Not that long ago we reported on the Biden administration leaning heavily on Pfizer to get its paperwork in order and apply for emergency use for the mRNA Covid vaccine for kids under 5. The company had been delaying the application, and the results of the New York study mentioned above probably explain why:
It also follows an unexpected delay in the process for an emergency use authorization for the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine in children 6 months through 4 years of age. The company said new data emerged, and the Food and Drug Administration said it needed more time to evaluate the data.
If the vaccine loses effectiveness down to 12% or less among kids aged 5 to 11, then how can it possibly be of use in children under 5 in even smaller doses? The risks of adverse side-effects may start to outweigh any benefit.
This all dovetails back to the data housed at the FDA which has not yet been publicly disclosed. What else does the government, and Pfizer, for that matter, know about the efficacy of the mRNA Covid vaccines that they’re not disclosing? The FDA originally asked for a 75-year delay in disclosing all Pfizer Covid vaccine data it has. A judge reduced that to 18-months.
Parents have every right to slow down and demand more information before allowing their children to be subjected to what is essentially experimental medicine for what amounts to a 12% improvement in outcome.
