In June, an advisory committee to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention met to discuss, among other topics, vaccine-related cases of myocarditis, which have hospitalized hundreds of adolescents.
Evidence of a correlation between the condition, an inflammation of the heart muscle, and the vaccines had been mounting for months.
Numerous countries had altered or withheld recommendations for pediatric vaccination, with some citing an ambiguous risk-benefit.
One day after the committee meeting, however, CDC director Rochelle Walensky went on TV and calmly reassured viewers that there was nothing to worry about: Vaccinating kids age 12 and up, at the full dosage and same schedule as adults, should continue with alacrity.
Walensky cited a string of statistics that showed “the benefits of vaccination far outweigh any harm.” But epidemiologists, public health experts, pediatricians, cardiologists, and scientists dispute the CDC’s numbers, characterizations, and conclusion.
The agency, they variously contend, is both exaggerating the risks of Covid-19 to young people and underplaying the potential risks of the vaccine to them. Much data that would support the CDC’s declarations are either unknown, unrevealed, or far messier than the agency and its director portray.
The data that are known and clear have been projected through a specific lens with blunt certainty. The absolute risk of the vaccine still appears to be extremely small for young people but, on balance, when the data are seen through a different frame, the relative individual risk from vaccination, particularly for healthy young males, may be higher than it is to not be vaccinated.
https://www.wired.com/story/the-cdc-owes-parents-better-messaging-on-the-vaccine-for-kids/