It certainly has been a busy week for Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
First, he orders the phase-out of petroleum-based food dyes from American food.
Now, he is actively considering removing the COVID-19 vaccine from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) recommended immunization schedule for children.
This move, if enacted, would mark a significant shift in American vaccination policy and would be Kennedy’s most consequential intervention in the nation’s vaccine recommendations since taking office.
The directive under consideration would remove the Covid shot from the childhood vaccine schedule maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and widely used by physicians to guide vaccine distribution, marking Kennedy’s most significant move yet to shake up the nation’s vaccination practices.Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist, has previously questioned the need for kids to get the shot, raising doubts about its safety and citing studies showing healthy children face an extremely low risk of death from Covid.Eliminating the vaccine from the CDC schedule would not bar kids from receiving it. But the change would represent an extraordinary intervention by Kennedy to override the agency’s scientific decision-making and reverse a recommendation backed by the CDC and a slate of independent advisers just three years ago.The removal would also likely influence vaccination procedures across the nation. Pediatricians rely on the CDC schedule to determine which vaccines they should give children and when to administer them, in order to protect against a range of common infectious diseases.
I could not agree more with this change. The mRNA vaccine is too new, and long-term effects have not been fully evaluated. Parents should be allowed to decide if their children face a significant risk from a COVID-19 infection, and have the choice to decline the vaccine if there is none.
The potential for death or significant adverse health effects for children who have COVID is extremely low. Globally, among 4.4 million COVID-19 deaths, only 0.4% (over 17,400) occurred in individuals under 20 years old, with about half of these in children aged 0–9 years.
Additionally, an extensive, multinational study of COVID-19 vaccines from companies like Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca was linked to rare occurrences of heart, brain, and blood disorders. At this point, most rational health professionals would allow an individual to decide if the risk of heart, brain, and blood disorders outweighs the risk of experiencing COVID without the vaccine in any of its mutations and variations.
Furthermore, there have been long-standing concerns about the possibility of the vaccine causing an inflammation of the heart tissue (myocarditis). These worries were not allayed when the CDC released over 100 pages of blank documents when the study focused on the matter was FOIA’d.
Perhaps Kennedy was able to access and review these pages?
The HHS Secretary’s move also aligns this country with far more sensible standards practiced elsewhere.
Such a change, according to CNN, would put the U.S. more in line with international guidance. The UK, Canada and many other countries do not recommend an annual COVID-19 vaccine for healthy young people. The World Health Organization similarly recommends one dose for children and adolescents only if they have comorbidities….The change, if it happens, could align with recommendations from the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices—an independent panel composed of medical and public health experts—which last week considered narrowing their COVID-19 vaccination guidelines. Specifically, the committee could change that to a risk-based recommendation, advising two doses of COVID-19 vaccines each year for adults over 65 and people with weakened immune function. Other groups who may be included are those at high risk of COVID-19, such as healthcare workers or children in daycare.
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