Should children be vaccinated for COVID19?
Parents want to make the right decision about COVID19 vaccination for their child, and that involves weighing the benefits and risks.
The Benefits
The greatest benefits of COVID19 vaccination for children concern prevention. While there’s no sign the covid shots prevent illness from the hypothetical virus SARS-CoV-2, there is compelling evidence they prevent many other harms for parents and children alike, such as:
Image by Virginia Stoner at nworeporter.com
Prevents confrontation with school administrators and other government bureaucrats demanding vaccination.
Prevents criticism of your parenting skills, intelligence and sanity by pro-vax family, friends, and strangers on the internet.
Prevents your child from being treated like a social outcast by vaccinated peers and their parents.
Prevents your child from being excluded from extracurricular activities and sports.
Prevents your child from being ineligible for certain jobs where COVID19 vaccination is required.
If the ‘covid crisis’ continues, more prevention benefits of the covid shots are likely to emerge, such as preventing the inability to use public transportation, attend church, or even buy food and gasoline. Parents should consider the possible dire consequences of being stuck at home with an agnostic 16-year-old with no job, no gas to drive and no munchies.
The Risks
The following estimates of risk for COVID19 vaccination are based on serious injuries and deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) in the U.S., and vaccine data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
Reports of serious injury and death from COVID19 vaccines are much higher than they have been for any other vaccine in VAERS history. In fact, more deaths have been reported to VAERS from the covid shots than from all other vaccines combined for the last 30 years—and the massive increase is not due to more vaccination. For more information, visit our CVax Risk page.
Although reports to VAERS don’t prove the vaccine caused the injury, VAERS is an early warning system of vaccine danger, so this information is important for informed consent.
The following chart shows the number of COVID19 vaccines administered in each age group, and the number of serious injuries and deaths reported to VAERS. (1)
Based on the number of vaccines administered and the number of VAERS reports in each age group, the probability that a COVID19 vaccine will result in a report of serious injury or death to VAERS is shown in the chart on the right. It shows risk increases with age; but keep in mind that not many vaccines have been given to anyone in the 0-17 age group so far.
But the risk of serious injury or death can’t be accurately estimated from the raw number of VAERS reports compared to the number of vaccines, because most vaccine injuries aren’t reported. According to the VAERS website, only a “small fraction” of vaccine injuries are reported (2). A study about it found less than 1% were reported (3). So, the actual number of serious injuries and deaths is likely 10 to 100 times higher. Risk increases with each dose of vaccine as well.
The following risk estimates don’t take into account coincidental injuries and deaths that may have been reported to VAERS. Coincidental reports would inflate the estimates of risk.
On the other hand, the CDC says 9,143 deaths have been reported to VAERS from the covid shots as of October 25—that’s 1,295 more deaths than my VAERS search showed on October 28, which was 7,848. That many deaths could have increased the risks calculated here a lot, had I been able to include them. Where are they? The difference between what the CDC says the number of deaths reported is, and what VAERS says it is, has been going on for months, with the CDC claiming more US death reports; I’ve ignored it, assuming it was some kind of processing delay—the latest data available on VAERS is from October 15 (apparently it’s October 25 for the CDC). But after watching the difference grow from a few hundred to over a thousand, it’s getting hard to ignore—especially considering that 1,295 deaths is more than were reported to VAERS in the entire 8 years from 2013 through 2020.
This chart breaks down the risk of COVID19 vaccination for the 0-17 age group, including adjustments for VAERS underreporting and multiple doses of vaccine. To estimate risk, choose the percent of vaccine injuries reported to VAERS, and the number of doses of vaccine.
For example, if 1% of vaccine injuries were reported to VAERS, an estimated 135,800 children have been seriously injured or died from the COVID19 vaccines so far, and the estimated risk of serious injury or death for a child given 2 doses of vaccine is 1 in 92, or 1.09%.
For the more optimistic, if 10% of vaccine injuries were reported, an estimated 13,580 children have been seriously injured or died from the shots, and the estimated risk of serious injury or death for a child given 2 doses of vaccine is 1 in 921, or 0.109%.
Care to roll the dice?
***
NOTES:
(1) For the chart COVID19 vaccines administered & serious injuries & deaths reported to VAERS:
The CDC’s COVID19 vaccine tracker is here. It’s not designed for precise counting—they provide the number of people in each age group with “at least one dose administered” and the number who are “fully vaccinated”. I counted one vaccine for each person in each group, and ended up with about 379 million vaccines. Since the CDC said in its last covid shot risk statement that 414 million covid shots have been administered, I designated the extra 35 million as Unknown and used them to calculate risk for the Unknown group of VAERS reports.
For serious injuries and deaths reported, 2 VAERS searches were done:
(2) Only a “small fraction” of vaccine injuries are reported to VAERS, according to guidance on the VAERS website. VAERS is jointly managed by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Food & Drug Administration (FDA).
(3) Less than 1% of vaccine injuries are reported to VAERS, according to research by Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc.
