HAMILTON, Ontario, July 15, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — Children and teens do not need COVID-19 vaccines and can be harmed by them, argues Dr. Paul Elias Alexander, a former senior adviser to COVID pandemic policy in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In a new testimony signed also by his colleagues, Dr. Howard Tenenbaum of the University of Toronto and Dr. Parvez Dara, Alexander argues that only certain groups — which do not include healthy young people — were ever at risk during the coronavirus pandemic.
How did we arrive at the insane and dangerous idea to mass vaccinate our children with a vaccine that is not tested for safety when they have a near statistical zero risk of severe illness or death from the disease it allegedly prevents?
Let me begin by arguing that this COVID-19 pandemic was not the emergency many claimed it was. This was an illness devastating to elderly high-risk persons, and we cannot discount this. However, we knew very early on who the high-risk groups were, and we created devastation with failed lockdown policies when a focused age-and-risk targeted approach was needed.
Illogically, we locked down the healthy people and failed to protect the vulnerable. In effect, global COVID-19 Task Forces, the medical advisors, and all the television medical experts were flat wrong in all their positions and policies. The lockdowns, the school closures, the masks, the mask mandates, the shelter-in-place, and all of the COVID policies (the so-called ‘non-pharmaceutical interventions’) were catastrophic failures and caused more harm and deaths than anything. The Task Forces and their governments, the bureaucrats, the technocrats, and the now famous media medical doctors: they all failed. Why? Why did our governments continue these punitive unsound lockdown policies when there was clear evidence from summer 2020 that they were very harmful?
We knew very early on, in May or even April 2020, that COVID-19 exploited risk factors and that the virus was amenable to risk stratification. We knew that one’s baseline risk, determined by such factors as age, obesity, renal disease or heart disease, predicted whether or not one would suffer severe illness or death from the virus, and we quickly knew how to manage COVID patients. We have also discovered that children, especially poorer children, have fared badly as a result of the COVID lockdown and school closure polices. Children in the United States and elsewhere have committed suicide, not due to the virus, but due to the lockdown policies. The collateral damage has been devastating.
There is zero benefit to children from the vaccine. If children are infected with the virus, they are typically asymptomatic, and the disease is very mild and non-consequential. However, the potential harm from vaccines is severe. Just look at the cases of myocarditis and pericarditis that have emerged in our teens, especially boys, due to the vaccines.
My position is that there must be no mass-vaccination of our children, teenagers, and young adults with these vaccines. The vaccine roll-out must be stopped immediately. The focus of this vaccine program must be only people at high risk from the disease. These people could derive benefit if the vaccines are effective, even modestly so. Yes, properly developed, the vaccine can be helpful for certain high-risk sub-groups.
It is not that the relative benefits versus risks for the young and healthy remain unclear. No, there are no benefits, and the risks are serious if they materialize. We are witnessing this now with daily reports of adverse effects and deaths due to the temporal links to the vaccines (blood clots, bleeding disorders, myocarditis, and deaths). The balance (and trade-offs) of benefits versus risks differs between children and adults. The potential for serious adverse effects is real, and we cannot rule this out because we did not study it and “excluded” this in the clinical trials. The testing of these vaccines was not followed for the correct duration for such a study. When it comes to studies on the vaccine and children, the same will apply, and this is a major problem. We cannot sidestep the safety data, and I am afraid we did just that. If a vaccine takes approximately 10 to 12 years to completion with a follow-up for safety as a key component, and we did not do this for these vaccines, then how can we ever say that they are safe? This is illogical, irrational, absurd, unscientific, duplicitous, and reckless. It is a lie.
Our position is that the vaccines should be prioritized and given only to the very elderly and other high-risk persons. Based on the CDC's own risk estimates, if a given person is 70 years old or younger and of reasonable health, the risk of survival if infected with the virus is 99.95%. Recent modelling by John Ioannidis of Stanford suggests that the general IFR [infection fatality rate] is 0.15%, and for persons less than 70 years, it is 0.05%.
For parents, the question is really one of risk-management. Do I subject my child, who is healthy and well, to a vaccine that confers no benefit, yet carries the potential for serious harm? Why subject my child to this when vaccine developers like AstraZeneca, public health agencies like the CDC, and regulators like the FDA have not done their due diligence? Moreover, the argument that we need child vaccination to help arrive at population level ‘herd’ immunity is duplicitous, misguided, and actually false. If you decide to disregard cross protection (T-cell cross-reactivity) that exists from prior common cold coronavirus exposures (even in adults), and even pretend that there is no existing immunity from persons who had COVID-19 infection and recovered, then you can make that claim. But it would be a falsehood, and thus there is no need to vaccinate children to achieve herd immunity. Children are not needed to “help protect the adults.” We have never ever placed our children at risk to protect adults; it is supposed to be the other way around. We have never asked our children to risk their lives for adults’ health.
Our position, based on both the initial and the accumulated evidence, has always been that in response to this pandemic we
i) first protect the elderly in their private homes and nursing homes (assisted living and long-term facilities), principally by preventing staff from bringing infection to them);
ii) use early outpatient treatment, including background nutraceuticals such as Vitamin D, Vitamin C, and zinc along with hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin as the anti-viral backbone, budesonide, methylprednisolone, high-dose aspirin, enoxaparin (lovenox), low molecular weight heparin etc. (see Risch, McCullough, Zelenko, Ladapo, Kory etc.), to address the three phases of COVID-19 (i.e., the viral replication phase, the ARDS ‘florid pneumonia’ hyper-immune inflammatory phase, and the vascular blood clotting phase);
iii) publicize the need to get sunlight and/or Vitamin D supplements; and
iv) publicize the need for body weight control.
At the same time, we encourage improved hand-washing hygiene, and we quarantine/isolate and test only people with symptoms of COVID-19.
We never isolate or test asymptomatic people as neither confers a benefit. Isolation is actually very harmful to the person and to society at large. At the same time, we allow the low-risk “healthy” and “well” in our society to live largely unfettered lives with limited disturbance and restrictions, taking only reasonable precautions, so that they can become infected ‘naturally’ and ‘harmlessly’. We never mean to deliberately infect people; we mean only to allow life to go on unimpeded and allow the ‘well’ who are best able to face the pathogen with their robust immune systems to develop immunity naturally. This would, in turn, protect the elderly and other high-risk people. Natural exposure immunity is far more optimal, robust, durable, and long-lasting than any immunity conferred by a vaccine with a very narrow “spike-specific” immunity with a very narrow immune library of antibodies.
We never lock down schools; there was, in fact, no basis for this. We harmed our children by doing this, and it will take decades to recover the losses. In fact, poor children have been extensively harmed due to the school closures, for they often get their only meals at school, and that is where they get their sight and hearing tested. The school offers a level of protection from abuse. Abuse is often brought to the attention for the first time in the school setting. The safest place, in terms of being at very low risk, for both children and teachers is the school setting.
The most up-to-date data by the American Academy of Pediatrics showed that “Children were 0.00%-0.19% of all COVID-19 deaths, and 10 [US] states reported zero child deaths. In states reporting, 0.00%-0.03% of all child COVID-19 cases resulted in death.” This is the data.
Based on the reporting of CDC data, 266 children aged 0 to 17 years in the US have died of COVID-19, and we mourn each death. We cannot even imagine the pain for the grieving parents and family. Each death of a child is devastating. But let us put this in perspective to yearly seasonal influenza. During the 2018-2019 influenza season, 477 children aged 0 to 17 died of the regular flu, and we did not mask the nation, close schools, or seek to mass- vaccinate children. The science is stable and settled globally: children are at near statistical zero risk of dying from COVID-19.
We note also that neither vaccine developers nor anyone involved in advocacy for the vaccines is liable. But without liability, how then can parents trust them? Why would the vaccine developers (Moderna et al.), the FDA, CDC, NIH, Dr. Fauci, Dr. Walensky, and Dr. Collins not put liability protection on the table? We ask, “Come on, you are smart people, very intelligent we are told, so if you people believe that the vaccine is safe for our children, and given their near zero risk of illness, then put liability protection on the table. Allow yourselves to be held legally responsible. If you believe the vaccines are safe enough for our children to be subjected to them, then put liability protection on the table and offer to give it up completely. Then parents will trust you.”
We hope the vaccines are successful and safe — we really do, but we have no confidence in them at this time given what has transpired in the roll-out. We are stepping up here to defend our children. We are outraged and shocked by government leaders and public health officials calling for mass vaccination when there is no need. We support vaccinations in general but not these COVID-19 vaccines in our children, not for this level of near non-existent risk from the virus. The vaccines were sub-optimally developed, and this raises serious questions as their effectiveness and, critically, their safety. Several questions emerge that the CDC, NIH, FDA, and vaccine developers must answer publicly before we proceed. To date, they have provided no case. They have failed to present any case to argue why children must be vaccinated, and we will not poke needles into the arms of our precious children just because a Dr. Fauci or Dr. Walensky says with a smile to do so. They are dangerous and pose a severe threat to our children. We caution these people to act in our children’s best interests.
“COVID-19 spares our children”
What do we know? Well, we know conclusively that COVID-19 spares our children, unlike the seasonal influenza which is far more lethal to children than COVID 19. We know the following points:
i) Children do not acquire the infection readily, e.g. studies show fewer ACE-2 receptors expressed in their nasal epithelia, and we argue this confers a natural form of protection for children and that a vaccine in the deltoid will bypass this natural protection and potentially place children at levels of risk we have seen in adults since the roll-out began; we refer to the emerging reports of the spike protein being itself a pathogen and deleterious to the vascular endothelium;and we insist this cannot be discounted but studied and clarified urgently.
ii) Children do not readily spread the infection to other children.
iii) Children do not spread it readily to adults; it is the other way around.
iv) Children do not readily take it home; infection arises mainly from adults in home clusters.
v) Children do not become severely ill from it.
vi) Children do not die from it.
vii) MISC (multi-symptom inflammatory syndrome), which has been linked by some to COVID infections in children, is very rare, very treatable, and almost all who suffer from it leave the hospital. It is serious, but children rarely die of MISC.
We also wish to draw attention to the issue of informed consent. Although it has not yet been addressed, it really is, along with vaccine safety, the core issue at hand. Children are in no position to give informed consent, and thus their vaccination with an experimental vaccine is highly unethical. Moreover, there are people administering the vaccine who do not properly obtain meaningful consent even from adults, for they do not know their medical history, nor do they explain the benefits or risks of the vaccines. Informed consent is not saying “Hey, roll up your sleeve.” It is far more than that, for there are serious consequences from a vaccine, and the person getting the shot must be informed of them. The upsides and downsides of the vaccine must be fully explained. We argue not one person who has been inoculated in this COVID vaccine roll-out has consented according to ethical guidelines.
In conclusion, we again argue that it is dangerous to rush to vaccinate low-risk children with vaccines untested for safety. This recklessness could result in our children enduring decades of severe disabilities. We are for vaccines and see the need when properly developed; they save lives. But they must be appropriately developed, and the emerging adverse effects and the lack of safety data for these COVID-19 vaccines raise serious concerns about their impact upon children. The benefits just do not outweigh the risks, and to claim that we need kids taking the vaccine is in our view very irresponsible. We conclude that our children must be fully exempt from any of the existing COVID-19 vaccines, at least until proper studies are conducted to collect the proper safety data. But, in fact, the vast majority of children are not appropriate candidates for any of these vaccines, given their low statistical zero risk from COVID-19. Not now, not in the future.
There is no urgency. There is no basis for the vaccine in children, and those advocating for it have presented no evidence to support this. It must not be allowed in any manner, even if shown to be “effective.” There is no need, and there are serious safety concerns. Parents must take the time now to think this through carefully and be prepared to step up and say “no.” Be prepared to fight. This is the cause. This is the hill we are willing to die on. Our children are depending on us now to protect them and wage this battle for them.