Key points:
Covid vaccines last less than six months; booster: 15 weeks or less
Healthy teen risk of covid death is only 2 in a million
Healthy teen risk of hospitalisation is far less than 2 per cent
Biggest risk of death is being over 70 years old
Biggest hospitalisation risk is being overweight or obese. Stop eating sugar
Australia’s Federal Government has now enthusiastically promoted a third Pfizer injection for 16- and 17-year-old teenagers to “keep them safe” from covid.
But healthy teens have an immune system to deal with a coronavirus that overwhelmingly attacks the elderly and obese – so do they need a vaccine at all?
The risk of death for a healthy unvaccinated child under 18
A team of 15 researchers in the UK analysed all under-18 covid deaths in England from March 2020 to February 2021, before the vaccine was available to them.
The researchers differentiated those who died of covid from those who died of something else such as injury, who incidentally tested positive to covid.
Their study found the risk of death was only 2 per million.
That is only slightly higher than the risk of drowning in the bath, which is 1.5 per million according to an Australian risk calculator.
“SARS-CoV-2 is very rarely fatal in CYP (children and young people), even among those with underlying comorbidities,” the study said.
Healthy teenagers do not need a covid vaccine to save their lives as their lives are not in danger.
The pre-print study has not yet been peer-reviewed, but the extraordinarily low risk for young people is not in doubt as it has been confirmed repeatedly elsewhere.
The best unvaccinated data comes from the UK because 2.7 million people were infected in 2020 before vaccines were available, and the Office of National Statistics (ONS) collects excellent figures.
Only four adolescents aged 16 to 18 died with covid in England and Wales during 2020 compared with more than 62,500 aged over 65, according to ONS data.
A separate ONS report covering March to June, 2020, found more than 90 percent of the 50,335 people who died in England and Wales had at least one other health problem. Only 8.9 percent had no problem other than covid.
The average age of someone dying with covid from October 2020 to January 2021 in England and Wales was 80.7 years, the ONS reports, while the median was 83 years – just under the average 83.25 year life expectancy in Australia.
Australia’s own ABS statistics show a negligible risk of death for teenagers.
Vaccines fail against infection within 6 months, boosters less
The vaccines do not slow transmission enough to make any difference to the pandemic spread.
Omicron was increasing at a rate of 31,064 new cases in the 24 hours to 9pm on February 9, even though 94 per cent of Australians over 16 are fully vaccinated.
It is not possible now to argue: “get the vaccine to keep others safe” because fully vaccinated people are spreading it everywhere.
Some argued vaccinated people have smaller viral loads than unvaccinated people so they spread covid less – but peer-reviewed research published in The Lancet shows this is not true.
Others say because the vaccines reduce symptomatic infection they can reduce transmission slightly. This is so small it makes no difference.
Studies show this protection wanes within six months and there are diminishing returns with the booster.
A new study from Sweden published last week in The Lancet shows the double Pfizer jab has no effectiveness against symptomatic infection from seven months onwards.
The UK Health Security Agency (HSA) covid surveillance report for January 27 reveals in detail how long it takes for the vaccines to fail against symptomatic Omicron.
AstraZeneca starts at 45-50 per cent effectiveness, but drops to “almost no effect” from 20 weeks after the second dose, the report said.
Pfizer and Moderna start at 65-70 per cent but drop to 10 per cent by 25 weeks from the second injection.
A booster dose of Pfizer lifts that back up to 60-75 per cent protection from symptomatic infection - but drops as low as 25-40 per cent after 15 weeks.
An earlier UK HSA briefing paper analysed 147,597 Delta and 68,489 Omicron cases.
It found Pfizer’s booster protection for Omicron started at 70 per cent effectiveness then dropped to 45 per cent after 10 weeks in those originally jabbed with Pfizer.
The Pfizer booster was even less effective in those who originally took AstraZeneca with protection from symptomatic infection peaking only at 60 per cent before falling to 35 per cent within 10 weeks.
Risk of severe covid hospitalisation for healthy teens
That leaves the risk of severe illness and hospitalisation as the only remaining reason for a teen to get either the vaccine or the booster.
But what is the risk for a healthy teen?
The division of Australia’s Health Department that advises on vaccines is the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI).
ATAGI recommended the teen booster last Thursday, while incongruently acknowledging that: “COVID-19 remains predominantly a mild disease in adolescents aged 16-17 years”.
The World Health Organisation defines “mild” covid as not requiring extra oxygen or hospitalisation, with the patient able to recover at home.
So why do healthy adolescents need a vaccination for a mild illness?
No 16- or 17-year-old died during the 11 months of Delta from 1 January, 2021, to 21 November, 2021, ATAGI said, and they made up only 3.2 per cent of the covid cases requiring hospitalisation.
But there’s nothing “only” about a 3.2 per cent hospitalisation rate. That is huge. It’s even larger for indigenous teenagers at 6.3 per cent. It makes it sound like covid is an enormous danger to healthy teens - until you realise the number is massively inflated.
The figures come from a federal Health Department covid epidemiology report in December showing 164 out of 5160 covid-infected teens aged 16 and 17 were hospitalised. But the report does not clarify if the youths were incidental cases admitted for other reasons such as a broken leg, who then tested positive for covid.
The figures also include all the morbidly obese, the insulin resistant, the late-stage cancer patients and those on death’s door whose other health problems predispose them to severe covid – so the unknown risk for healthy 16- and 17-year-olds from covid is far lower than the percentage figure given.
Obesity is the biggest covid risk after age
The report did give some comorbidity information, but only for the sickest adults admitted to intensive care - among whom 64 per cent had at least one other health problem with the most common being obesity, followed by diabetes.
The enormous obesity risk is confirmed in other data.
The US Centres for Disease Control found more than 78 per cent of 148,494 adults hospitalised with covid from March to December 2020 were either overweight or obese.
ATAGI’s release showed Indigenous teenagers had almost double the headline risk of covid hospitalisation at 6.3 per cent - but it’s not a mystery why.
According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), indigenous youths have almost double the rate of obesity due to consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks and poor diet.
In their 2020 report Overweight and Obesity among Australian Children and Adolescents, the AIHW found 8.2 per cent of children aged 2 to 17 were obese, but indigenous rates were almost double at 14 per cent obesity.
From this, it’s reasonable to infer healthy teens who are not obese – including indigenous teens - would have far less than half the 3.2 per cent hospitalisation risk from Delta.
But Delta is no longer even the circulating strain, it has been replaced by the milder Omicron, reducing risk further.
Hospitalisations have fallen to 2 per cent among covid-infected 10- to 19-year-olds, ATAGI said.
Again, this 2 per cent figure lumps the healthy in with those suffering serious health problems and obesity, a fact which ATAGI acknowledged in its release.
“Most adolescents hospitalised had underlying conditions that increase their risk of severe COVID-19 compared to healthy individuals,” ATAGI said.
Further, it is not known whether the 2 per cent figure, from a NSW Health surveillance update, refers to teens admitted to hospital because of covid, or incidentally with covid.
Letters From Australia has asked NSW Health to clarify this point several times but has had no response. The story will be updated if they respond.
All of this reduces the real hospitalisation risk for healthy 16- and 17-year-olds with covid to a much smaller number than 2 per cent, which ATAGI did not give.
Instead, ATAGI said “severe disease or death” occurred in 0.01 per cent of vaccinated adolescents compared with 0.05 per cent who were unvaccinated, a figure sourced from the NSW Health surveillance update.
A 0.05 per cent figure – a risk of five in 10,000 - for “severe disease or death” in unvaccinated teens still sounds way too high, especially when “death” is conflated in - and again, it is not known if this figure includes all those with obesity and other health problems.
For this miniscule risk of hospitalisation and death, Australia has injected more than 90 per cent of all 16 and 17-year-olds as of January 23 with two doses of a medical product they never needed, and is now promoting a third injection.
The vaccines, which produce billion-dollar profits for pharmaceutical companies, have been heavily promoted by the government - and yet there has been hardly a murmur about reducing obesity and cutting sugar from the teenage diet.
What is the harm of taking an unnecessary covid vaccine?
It’s a simple rule of thumb: you don’t take medicine you don’t need.
All medication has side-effects.
The covid vaccines can cause myocarditis, a swelling of the heart that even when “mild” leaves scarring to cause later problems, as UK-based cardiologist and campaigner Aseem Malhotra has warned.
Every new dose gets your teenage son another ticket in the myocarditis lottery, with different rates for first shots, second shots and boosters.
The TGA reported on January 6 that the rate of vaccine-induced myocarditis for Moderna is 16.8 cases per 100,000 second doses in boys aged 12 to 17. For Pfizer, the rate is 11.6 cases per 100,000 second doses.
NewsGP, the news site for Australia’s general practitioners, reported 125 adolescents aged 12 to 17 have so far been confirmed with myocarditis and about half were hospitalised.
A European Medicines Agency safety review from December found Pfizer vaccines increased the risk of myocarditis in males aged 12 to 29 by two to six extra cases of myocarditis per 100,000 over unvaccinated youths.
For Moderna’s product that increased to 13 to 19 cases per 100,000 extra cases over unvaccinated individuals.
Pfizer myocarditis killed 26-year-old New Zealand plumber Rory Nairn.
The vaccine paralysed 12-year-old Maddie de Garay who suffered a seizure during the Pfizer trial, and she is now confined to a wheelchair.
The Pfizer vaccine is known to interfere with women’s menstrual cycles, something previously overlooked. A recent Israeli Health Ministry study found 10 per cent of women who took a third booster shot had irregularity, the Jerusalem Post reported on Wednesday. The reproductive significance of this is unknown as no studies have yet been done on reproductive toxicity.
Vaccine-injured people have been ignored and censored, and have taken to the US support website Real Not Rare to tell their stories.
The vaccine benefit is thought to outweigh the risks for vulnerable and elderly people who have a much higher risk of complications and death from covid - so the vaccine is useful for them.
But it’s not useful for everyone - healthy teenagers who have almost zero risk from covid get no benefit from the vaccine, only risk.
Denial of natural immunity from prior infection
Even if the covid vaccines had no side-effects at all, vaccinating a healthy teen prevents their immune system from learning through a first encounter with covid.
When challenged by the whole virus, the immune system develops a complex response to more than 29 proteins, not just two from the obsolete Wuhan spike encoded by the mRNA vaccines.
Those who recover from covid have broader, more robust and longer lasting natural immunity than those who are vaccinated.
This is well-established.
For studies and discussion on the immune response from natural infection, see: here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
Prior infection acts as a vaccine, greatly reducing the chance of future infections and protecting against disease severity.
This was demonstrated again on January 28 by data from the US Centres for Disease Control, in a study on hospitalisation rates and vaccine status from May to November last year during the Delta outbreak.
“By early October, persons who survived a previous infection had lower case rates than persons who were vaccinated alone,” the study found.
Tennis star Novak Djokovic had natural immunity from prior infection and thus no need of a vaccine - but this was reportedly not recognised by ATAGI, and he was deported.
Just like Novak, teenagers who have had covid and recovered do not need a covid vaccine as they already have robust immunity.
Common sense and data, love your work.
Well Allison, this Professor agrees that under 50's should probably not be vaccinated https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_nKoybyMGg