Kids Under 5 Eligible for Covid Vaccine, By Jondi Gumz

COMMUNITY NEWS

Kids Under 5 Eligible for Covid Vaccine

By Jondi Gumz

On June 21, Santa Cruz County Public Health announced children under 5 years of age are eligible to receive Covid-19 vaccines – interested parents can contact their doctor.

Three days earlier, Dr. Rochelle Walensky announced a recommendation to vaccinate all 20 million children 6 months to 5 years old.

On June 17, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized emergency use of Covid-19 vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna for those young children.

The Western States Scientific Safety Review Committee and the California Department of Public Health also approved Pfizer’s three-shot series and Moderna’s two-shot series.

On June 21, Josh Guetzkow, a PhD at Hebrew University, posted the CDC response to his Freedom of Information Act request asking if the CDC is analyzing the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System for “safety signals” from Covid-19 vaccines.

This database, https://vaers.hhs. gov/, is where health care providers are to report adverse events after a vaccine. It was created after Congress passed a law in 1986 protecting vaccine manufacturers from civil personal injury lawsuits and wrongful death lawsuits resulting from vaccine injuries.

Observers were curious why there’s been no government study to evaluate if the injuries reported in VAERS were caused by a vaccine.

An early briefing document said, “The CDC will perform Proportional Reporting Ratio (PRR) data mining on a weekly basis or as needed.”

This would compare the proportion of an adverse event after getting a specific vaccine vs. the same adverse event after another vaccine. A higher rate would count as a safety signal to trigger a more thorough investigation.

The June 16 letter from FOIA Officer Roger Andoh to Children’s Health Defense said that “no PRRs were conducted by CDC. Furthermore, data mining is outside of the agency’s purview, staff suggest you inquire with FDA.”

Guetzkow called PRRs “one of the oldest, most basic and most well-established tools of pharmacovigilance.”

A handful of countries, including China, Cuba, Venezuela, vaccinate children under 5.

Denmark’s health minister, Seren Brostrom, has regrets, saying the country should not have vaccinated children for Covid.

Deaths of young children represent a tiny percentage of U.S. Covid deaths: More than 1 million.

Covid has claimed the lives of many elders, those 85 and older with pre-existing medical conditions and it’s easy for kids to catch Covid, especially the highly contagious Omicron subvariants, but deaths of children are few and far between.

In 46 states plus Puerto Rico, 0.00%0.02% of all child Covid cases resulted in death, the American Association of Pediatrics reported in June. Dr. Vinay Prasad, who has a master’s in public health, struggled to understand how Pfizer calculated 80% efficacy during the Omicron surge for the third booster shot for the initial coronavirus.

Pfizer reported on its clinical trial involving 1,678 children — 10 got sick. In its report, Pfizer looked at Covid cases 7 days after dose 3, not cases before that.

“You can’t exclude days,’ Prasad said, “You don’t get to say the first seven or 10 days don’t count.”

Prasad said Pfizer’s “emergency use authorization” reports an analysis of this age group was “found not to be reliable” because of the low number of Covid cases.

He point to the “confidence level” present by Pfizer, which ranged from 99.6% to minus 370%, a big range “that gives you little confidence that it’s areliable result.”

The Kaiser Family Foundation reports 18% of parents of children under 5 plan to vaccinate them immediately, with 38% planning to wait to see if there are side effects, 27% with no plans to use the Pfizer product on their children, and 11% saying thy would do so only if required for school or day care.

Parents were surveyed in April, when Omicron subvariants began increasing cases.

Among parent concerns: Long-term effects.

Could it be that young children represent an untapped windfall for the drug-makers?

It all depends on whether these vaccines are added to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccine schedule for children.

See www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/ hcp/imz/child-adolescent.html

At a press event filmed and posted on Twitter, President Biden said Dr. Ashish Jha, who heads White House Crisis Response, is “the guy that’s running the CDC for me these days basically.”

Cases Up

The highly contagious coronavirus Omicron subvariants have pushed up case numbers in California– but Santa Cruz County cases are on a rollercoaster, 1,715 on May 23 then 1,472 on May 26 and 1,705 on June 13, then 1,924 on June 23.

This spring, the biggest spurt, May 9, after Mother’s Day, was 182 cases, followed by four days of 128 or more cases. After Memorial Day came five days of 113 or more cases per day. Then 179 on June 6 — graduation? — low compared to 1,312 on Jan. 20.

On Friday, the state reports 20 people hospitalized with Covid, one in intensive care, in Santa Cruz County.

With 54,000+ county residents having had the infection, natural immunity may be a factor.

The county posted three more deaths, all over 65 with medical conditions, all vaccinated.

Santa Cruz County updates the numbers on Mondays and Thursdays.

Santa Cruz County along with much of California is rated “medium” transmission by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on its COVID tracking map. Hotspots are Monterey County, Central Valley and most of Florida, all rated high risk.

Subvariants of omicron (and waning immunity from vaccines) are suspected to be behind the latest wave of cases.

The CDC said BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants are estimated to make up about 8.3% and 13.3% of the coronavirus variants in the U.S.

Hospitalizations from Omicron peaked in January, then plummeted and have been rising albeit slowly.

The state Department of Public Health reports test positivity, 23% in January, has ticked up from 1.7% to 11.4% and hospitalizations — 20,000 in January —dropped to 950 before topping 2,800.

Test to Treat

Santa Cruz County offers “Test to Treat” sites, including the three OptumServe testing sites, open to anyone regardless of insurance or documentation status. Visit https://lhi.care/ covidtesting/ and make an appointment. The closest are the Santa Cruz County Governmental Center in Santa Cruz and the Felton library.

Test positivity has dropped from 12.25% in January to 7.06% on June 22, with 308 cases, according to the Santa Cruz County Office of Education, which has completed 527,400 tests with Inspire Diagnostics..

For those who test positive and are at risk of severe illness, the CDC recommends asking your doctor for a prescription for Paxlovid, pills developed by Pfizer for higher risk individuals age 12 or older and given emergency use authorization by the FDA in December. Lagevrio, produced by Merck, also got emergency use authorization for mild to moderate Covid.

Paxlovid side effects information can be found at: https://www.fda.gov/ media/155051/download

So far, the new subvariants are very easy to spread but do not seem as dangerous as Delta.

There are more people hospitalized — 2,800 in California, double from where it was — but ICU admissions are rising much more slowly, and the number of deaths per day has not spiked up.

The CDC estimates almost 60 percent of the populace — including 76% percent of children over age 5 — have had Omicron or another coronavirus variant.

Omicron Less Deadly

The Omicron variants are less deadly than the Delta variant, which raged in 2021.

Santa Cruz County reported 40 Covid deaths after Omicron, compared to 225 as of Dec. 15, before Omicron.

One statistic is similar: 79% to 81% of those who died had medical conditions.

Why do people fear Omnicron?

They may have a medical condition (diabetes, obesity, asthma, high blood pressure).

Half of Americans do, so they are at higher risk for severe Covid illness.

So are people 85 and older.

California reports 83.8% of residents age 5 and up have had at least one shot.

On the CDC Covid tracker, Santa Cruz County reports 91.2% of residents age 5 and up have at least one shot and 83.3% fully vaccinated.

Fully vaccinated means having two shots (Pfizer or Moderna) or one Johnson & Johnson shot. All were developed for the initial Wuhan Covid-19 strain.

For Omicron, a booster shot is needed after the Pfizer vaccine, because protection against hospitalization wanes after three months, a Kaiser Permanente study of 11,000 hospital admissions and emergency room visits found.

Santa Cruz County Office of Education reports cases in local schools peaked at 4,407 on Jan. 27, dropped to 44 on April 1, rose to 1,025 on May 23 and dropped to 442 on June 11 and now 308.

The 14-day positivity rate, 12.25% on January, dropped to .79%, then rose to 5.4% and 7.06%.

Myocarditis

In a 2022 report in the Journal of American Medical Association online, Dr. Matthew Oster of the CDC reported the government’s VAERS database received 1,991 reports of myocarditis after one dose of mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccine and 1,626 met the CDC’s definition for probable or confirmed myocarditis.

“Covid Update” page 9