Top Doctors Refuse To Give Their Own Kids a Third Shot As Studies Find Chances of Vaxxinated Boys Between 12 and 17 Being Hospitalized Are 0.3 Out of 100,000
By Ronny Reyes
– Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist, and Dr. Paul Offit, of the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee, stood against booster jabs for teen boys
– The CDC had recommended COVID boosters for everyone 12 and up despite vaccinated teen boys only having a 0.3 out of 100,000 chance of hospitalization
– Teen boys, however, had a 10 out of 100,000 chance of getting myocarditis, a rare heart inflammation, due to the boosters
– The two doctors told journalist David Zweig in a piece published by Bari Weiss’s Substack, Common Sense, that they would not give their sons booster shots
– From May 12 to December 19, 2021, the CDC reported 265 cases of myocarditis among children ages 12 to 15, where all but 10 were discharged from the hospital
– The remaining 10 were listed in improved condition or resolved symptoms
– Within that same timeframe, the CDC recorded 13 cases of myocarditis among people ages 16 to 24, with only four hospitalizations were all four recovered
– Despite the rarity of myocarditis, health experts claimed the CDC was too premature in making its recommendation and did so without safety data
Two of the nation’s top doctors said they refuse to give their own kids a COVID booster shot as vaccinated teenage boys have a low risk of hospitalization, but the likelihood of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart, is higher.
Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of California, and Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee, told journalist David Zweig in a piece published on Bari Weiss’s Substack, Common Sense, that the benefits of a booster for teen males are outweighed by the possible side effects.
One of the most common serious side effects for a teen from a COVID booster jab was myocarditis, a rare heart inflammation case that occurs in males at almost nine-times the rate than females, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The CDC has recorded two such cases among a group of 20,000 and the prevalence is about 10 out of 100,000 in boosted teenagers. In comparison, vaccinated teen boys only had a 0.3 out of 100,000 chance of being hospitalized with COVID, according to the agency’s COVID briefings and Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices report in early January.
Both Gandhi and Offit, who have advocated for the vaccine and gotten themselves and their children vaccinated, claimed the CDC was premature in advising teens to get a COVID booster shot on January 5, with Gandhi saying, ‘I am not giving my 12 and 14-year-old boys boosters.’
Offit said he advised his 20-year-old son to avoid the third dose and said the booster would not be worth the risk for ‘the average healthy 17-year-old boy.’
The doctors’ statements come as other health officials claimed the CDC had made its booster recommendation without proper data on the safety issues.
The U.S. and Germany are among the few countries that have recommended booster shots for everyone 12 and up, with the U.K. and Finland only recommending it for teens with serious medical conditions.
Denmark, Sweden, Japan and Spain have approved boosters for adults only, and in Ireland, no one under the age of 16 can receive a booster.
Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of California, and Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee, said the benefits of a booster shot for teen boys was outweighed by its possible side effects
The CDC reported two cases of myocarditis due to booster shots in teen boys. Both men were released from the hospital and reported in good condition
Of the 265 cases reported in teens ages 12 to 15 last year, 251 were hospitalized and all but 10 were discharged and sent home. The remaining have reported improved or resolved symptoms, but were still under evaluation
Myocarditis was listed as the second most common serious side effect due to vaccination among older teens and young men. There were only 13 cases reported in the age group between May to December 2021, with the four hospitalized reportedly recovered
The CDC had recorded 265 cases of myocarditis among children ages 12 to 15 who received a COVID vaccine between May 12 and December 19, 2021, 90 percent of which were boys, according to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in their January 5 report.
Of the cases, 251 were hospitalized and all but 10 were discharged and sent home. The remaining have reported improved or resolved symptoms, but were still under evaluation.
Within that same timeframe, the CDC recorded 13 cases of myocarditis among people ages 16 to 24, with four being hospitalized and all four recovering.
During a United Nations briefing last week, WHO Chief Scientist Dr. Soumya Swaminathan said: ‘There is no evidence that healthy children or healthy adolescents need boosters. No evidence at all.’
The sentiments were echoed by Dr. Sarah Long, a member of the CDC advisory committee and a infectious disease specialist at Drexel University.
‘We made the decision, in my opinion, without any data on safety,’ she said, referencing the CDC’s decision to ignore a study from Israel that cited two cases of myocarditis in 12 to 15-year-old males because of its small survey size.
The Israeli study warned that the condition could be as high as one in 3,000 males following vaccination.
It echoed the research done in China and Ontario, with the Chinese study concluding that teen boys had a 37 out of 100,000 chance of developing acute myocarditis after their second vaccine dose.
In Ontario, Public Health officials officials reported 636 cases of myocarditis after the distribution of more than 29 million doses from December 2020 to January 2022.
Public Health Ontario concluded that there was there was a 34.8 out of 100,000 chance of a teen boy to experience adverse effects following their second COVID jab.
When the CDC and FDA created committees to research the impact of the booster shots in September 2021, the committees voted against sweeping proposals for the third shots, instead approving the boosters for limited groups.
The CDC’s vote was overruled by its director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky on September 24 as the agency recommended the boosters for not just seniors, but for 18 and up.
On January 5, the agency then voted to recommend the boosters to those 12 to 17 years old.
Despite some concerns over the studies on the booster’s impact on young adults, Long said she ultimately voted to approve the boosters for teens due to the rampant surge of the Omicron variant.
The only member on the advisory committee who voted against the booster recommendation was Dr. Helen Keipp Talbot, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt.
Talbot did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com’s request for comment.
Offit, who has been vocal about the problems with the government’s recommendations for the boosters, told New York Magazine in December that while the boosters were important, they do not yield much benefit to younger people.
‘I’m not opposed to booster dosing. What I think we need to make clearer is why we’re boosting,’ he said.
‘There is certainly a value to boosting people who are older or people who live in long-term-care facilities. The question is, if we’re saying that healthy, young people need a booster dose, which is what we’ve just said, I think we need to explain to the American public that we’re getting prevention, for the most part, against mild illness, and it might not be long-lived.
‘On the one hand you have the CDC recommending a booster dose for everybody over 18, which was rejected twice by the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee and the CDC’s advisory committee, and then on the other hand you have research institutes, universities, colleges, and hospitals that now have three-dose mandates while others have two-dose mandates. We’ve confused people.’
Gandhi told the Atlantic in October that booster recommendation debate was a debacle
‘The entire booster discussion played out in the public eye,’ she said. ‘It played out that we weren’t a ‘together’ country in terms of our health recommendations.’
Dr. Elissa Perkins, an emergency medicine physician at Boston University with an expertise in infectious diseases, told Zweig that the CDC and FDA needed to communicate the recommendation decision better to put parents at ease.
‘If a booster is only offering a temporary benefit against minimally symptomatic infection it is really important that this rationale is clear so parents can weigh the trade offs to determine if, in their individual circumstances, the benefits outweigh the risks,’ she said.
The backlash against the booster recommendation for kids comes as schools grapple with what policies to enforce as COVID cases remain high.
The US recorded 653,120 new cases in the past day and about 4,040 new deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Two weeks ago marked the nation’s highest weekly infection rate of the pandemic, with 5,607,176 cases reported between January 10 to 16. It was also the deadliest week with 23,416 deaths reported.
About 64 percent of eligible Americans are fully vaccinated, more than 80 percent have gotten at least one jab.