Recommending Against COVID Vaccines?

On 7 March, Florida’s Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo announced:

The Florida Department of Health is going to be the first state to officially recommend against the Covid-19 vaccines for healthy children.

Cue the Outrage

Reports the WSJ:

• The American Academy of Pediatrics called the recommendation “irresponsible.”
• The Infectious Diseases Society of America accused Dr. Ladapo of putting “politics over the health and safety of children.”
• White House press secretary Jen Psaki jabbed: “It’s deeply disturbing that there are politicians peddling conspiracy theories out there and casting doubt on vaccinations.”

Dr. Ladapo, reports Alysia Finley, is merely acknowledging “the abundant scientific evidence that Covid-19 poses a negligible risk to healthy children, which makes it impossible to know if the benefit of vaccination outweighs the risk.”

Vaccine efficacy against infection, meanwhile, turned negative during the Omicron surge a month after kids were inoculated (minus 10%) and declined even more after six weeks (minus 41%). This means vaccinated children were significantly more likely to catch Covid than the unvaccinated.

Natural Immunity More Protective than Vaccines

How can that be? One possible explanation is that the unvaccinated may have been more likely to have been previously infected, and natural immunity is more protective than vaccines.

But this makes vaccinating children even more senseless. The vast majority have already been infected. The CDC estimates that 58% of children under 18 had infection-induced antibodies as of January, based on commercial laboratory blood samples.

On “Face the Nation,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla promised that vaccinating children is the right thing to do. He continued, “this is also what the authorities of all the world believe, with the exception, of course, of Florida.”

Not quite true, argues Ms. Finley.

Germany, Norway and Sweden don’t recommend vaccines for healthy children under 12, and the Danish Pediatric Society has urged its government to follow suit.

The public-health consensus has been wrong time and again during the pandemic. When it comes to vaccinating children, especially the youngest, Dr. Ladapo is right.