This is so so so disappointing Dr Offit. You were so correct last fall when you argued against bi valent boosters for the young and healthy. and now this dreck. Who got to you ?? there are so many mistruths and out right lies stated here. Just a couple examples : 1. "Children can die from COVID; by April 2023, more than 1,700 children had succumbed to the disease." the number is actually closer to 1300 and the vast vast majority of those were children with significant medical issues . any Childs death is sad but to not be honest about this - that the risk of death for a heathy child is literally statistically almost zero is at best disingenuous - at worst purposefully misleading 2. "Although COVID vaccines are a rare cause of myocarditis (inflammation of the heart), the problem appears to be short-lived and self-resolving. Myocarditis following COVID infection, on the other hand, is far more common and far more severe than that following vaccination." first , how about I give YOUR child some MILD AND SELF LIMITING myocarditis. You good with that ??? of course not because there is no such thing as MILD myocarditis - and you KNOW this. It puts anyone suffering from it in danger of future cardiac issues - again you KNOW this . secondly, MULTIPLE good studies have shown that myocarditis post covid infection is actually quite RARE - especially in children . 3. "Children, like adults, can suffer from COVID for months (long COVID)." The latest studies - including a recent one from Finland - show absolutely ZERO correlation between having covid and getting long covid ! think about that ??? in addition there are ZERO lab markers - a study from 2021 showed as only significant correlation for long covid - Middle aged women ! 4. "mRNA vaccines, which are highly effective at preventing severe disease, have now been given safely to more than 10 million young children." how many have been given UN safely ???? I mean most European nations do not even offer the mRNA vaccines to healthy children. esp under 12. but here you are shilling. As I stated. - I am so so disappointed in you.
Dr. Offit, as a pediatrician, who has followed your advice for years, I am greatly disappointed with this assessment. I think you are out of touch with what is happening in the primary care pediatricians office. The debate about Covid vaccines is a debate, and it is not settled science. Your comparison with Covid myocarditis versus myocarditis from the vaccine, is shortsighted. Myocarditis from Covid, included a much broader age group, and seriously ill patients who had a bump in their troponins levels, and not a true myocarditis. The myocarditis with the vaccine, on the other hand, showed a Signal in the young male ages 16 to 30. It also demonstrates a high propensity for scarring six months later. You know that this is a risk factor for sudden, cardiac death, and it dumbfounds me that you were comparing apples to oranges. The other destructive part of this discussion is the vaccine hesitancy that is happening in my patients with routine, tested vaccines. I have never seen this amount of vaccine hesitancy for a routine vaccines in my 23 years of practice. Another point that I’d like to bring up, is that the Covid vaccines were not tested for efficacy in those who already had Covid. You should know this. You should also know about the strength of natural immunity versus vaccine immunity. Omicron became the ultimate vaccine with the majority of children being infected. You also mentioned in MISC however, we only saw that with the first three strains and have not seen it since omicron came on the scene. Finally, your number for the number of Pediatric deaths is over a three year timeframe. It also is likely exaggerated considering the amount of testing that was done as well as studies that have shown hospitalizations for children were estimated to be 60% with Covid and not from Covid. Hospitalizations now are likely more attributable to “coinfections“ in conjunction with another illness like RSV or metapneumovirus. Hospitalizations use PCR. PCR can detect viruses present as far as six weeks prior. You know this. Please use critical thinking in evaluating patients that are testing positive in the hospital and happen to test positive for Covid. This article makes me sad for you and your future opinions that I previously valued so much.
I am asking for the absolute risk reduction and risk of adverse events from the vaccine... a key part of informed consent and risk vs benefit for patients.
Hello, regarding the claim that cardiac injury from the vaccines is mild and self-resolving: this does not seem to be settled. For example, this study published in The Lancet is suggestive that, even months later, there is cardiac damage and symptoms that are ongoing: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PIIS2352-4642(22)00244-9/fulltext
In the study of 519 patients who had vaccine-induced myocarditis, 26% were prescribed medication for their condition. 90 days after onset of the condition, 32% of patients had not been cleared for physical activity. Only 81% of patients were considered ‘recovered’ by their healthcare providers, however this definition was misleading - in the ‘recovered’ group, 23% still experienced chest pain or discomfort while resting, 19% experienced shortness of breath, and 14% experienced heart palpitations while resting.
Additionally, in Australia the anecdotal evidence from injury support groups is that the cardiac conditions do not resolve quickly at all.
In Australia’s largest vaccine injured patient support group, COVERSE, group members report not seeing any improvement in symptoms for an average of seven months. “The figure includes other serious vaccine-induced conditions, and not just myocarditis and perdicarditis,” explains COVERSE co-founder, Dr Rado Faletic. “However, what is most alarming is that our members report no follow up or investigation from our national drug regulator, the TGA, leading us to conclude that the regulator is unaware of the true extent of damage caused by Covid vaccines.”
Unfortunately, as identified by scientist and COVERSE founder Dr Faletic, the regulator has dropped the ball on this one. There has also been difficulty in getting any Australian academic institutions to collect qualitative data to complement the quantitative data. In my experience as an interviewer of the jab injured, in many cases, people's test results come back clear, even when they are severely disabled by their condition.
Hence, I seriously question that vaccine induced cardiac injury is generally mild and self resolving.
I generally liken the argument made by antivaxxers that kids don't need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 because they are so "low risk" of dying from the disease to the very same arguments that antivaxxers used to make routinely about MMR and measles, in which they referred to measles as a "normal childhood disease" that almost never kills any kids. Of course, measles routinely killed between 400-500 children a year in the decade before the first measles vaccine was licensed, a number that, when adjusted for population growth since the early 1960s, is amazingly similar to the yearly death toll of children due to COVID-19 over the last three years.
I like to ask those who consider themselves so "provaccine" who state that children don't need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 because they are at such low risk of death: May I assume that you are also against vaccinating children against measles? The equation, in terms of the number of deaths per year without the vaccine, is pretty darned close to the same So, if you are against vaccinating children for COVID-19, why do you support MMR vaccination? Or do you? Or do you think that 500-600 deaths of children per year are an acceptable toll for a "childhood disease"? 60 years ago, doctors thought that such a death toll was more than reason enough to act by developing a vaccine and then vaccinating as many children as possible. Today? Apparently, too many think that children's lives are expendable.
Just to restate what has been said here; it is simply untrue that myocarditis related to vaccination with SARS-COV-2 vaccine is "short lived and self resolving".
80% of these patients demonstrate persistent changes of late gadolinium enhancement on MRI. This is generally accepted as being indicative of fibrosis and the long term risk of this in terms of arrhythmia and mechanical dysfunction is unknown, but it is a true statement that no LGE is better than LGE. As a pediatrician one cannot tell a parent that this is "self resolving".
I study this area for a living and am NIH funded. When there was a potential that human disease could cause LGE we didn't ignore it. How can we just ignore this? I find this viewpoint to be lacking the nuance and seriousness that parents and children deserve.
Hi and welcome to Substack! I’m excited to have another well-respected, evidence-based, scientifically-fluent voice to listen to. Substack has its share of profitable pandemic quackery.
I’m a family doc and live in Philly, trained at Jefferson (we’ve actually met!), and while I don’t see a lot of peds anymore, I’ll add some anecdotes that I have seen in my unvaccinated pediatric patients:
New onset type 1 diabetes (severe presentation with DKA) 6 weeks after Covid
Pulmonary embolus 3 months after Covid
The world “smelling like garbage” going on 1+ years after infection
Exercise intolerance, dyspnea
Spreading Covid to grandparents and parents from school infections, leading to a range of chronic problems that might have been prevented
Insomnia, depression, suicidality within 2 months after infection (not during lockdown at all)
I could go on, and you’ve obviously seen much more in this population than I have… but I’ve seen enough to aggressively vaccinate my own child, try to persuade and educate my patients, and not abandon a multi-tiered approach to risk reduction that still includes high quality masking in situations like airplanes, crowded museums, etc.
I wrote about how conflicted parents should conceptualize vaccination as the lesser of two risks, and published it through KevinMD.com all the way back in 11/021.
And the original antigenic sin concern does not seem to be playing out in any clinically significant way, and the risk of this seems dwarfed by the benefits of vaccination we’ve seen in real life.
Anyway, excited to listen, and see you around Philly perhaps! We’re in Bella Vista. Go Sixers 🏀
Basic immunology dictates that the vaccine will damage multiple organs including the heart. mRNA/LNP are systemically distributed and taken up in numerous organs. Cells in these organs thus express spike. Activated CD8+ T cells that recognize spike epitopes will KILL ALL THESE CELLS. So all organs including the heart are damaged in EVERYONE.
The FDA estimated a million children need vaccination to prevent one death. The vaccine will maim a million and certainly kill more than one child as a result. There is no way you can claim the benefits outweigh risks.
My kids are vaxxed (and CHOP patients) but after catching it naturally I won't boost them. Thankfully my practitioners at CHOP agree. Kids who are unvaxxed now are unlikely to get it, nothing we can do there. I'm concerned about people boosting kids when it's not necessarily in their best interest, and there is where I'd worry about the risk of myocarditis. I'm sure it is best for some kids but our T Cells "memory" should be all we need for most vaxxed kids IMHO, and I'm a ZDogg follower and have appreciated your nuanced approach in this.
You are a monster for recommending this junk to kids. how many heart attacks do you think the lies you repeat have caused? Even fda's own disclosures (https://www.fda.gov/media/154869/download) suggest no benefit and great, life long, permanent harm. 1 in 50 children & young men, on the low end, that took this garbage on your bad advice will have heart problems and may die early due to your arrogance.
You and all the people at the 3 letter "public health" agencies defending this crap make me sick. What happened to "first, do no harm."
This is so so so disappointing Dr Offit. You were so correct last fall when you argued against bi valent boosters for the young and healthy. and now this dreck. Who got to you ?? there are so many mistruths and out right lies stated here. Just a couple examples : 1. "Children can die from COVID; by April 2023, more than 1,700 children had succumbed to the disease." the number is actually closer to 1300 and the vast vast majority of those were children with significant medical issues . any Childs death is sad but to not be honest about this - that the risk of death for a heathy child is literally statistically almost zero is at best disingenuous - at worst purposefully misleading 2. "Although COVID vaccines are a rare cause of myocarditis (inflammation of the heart), the problem appears to be short-lived and self-resolving. Myocarditis following COVID infection, on the other hand, is far more common and far more severe than that following vaccination." first , how about I give YOUR child some MILD AND SELF LIMITING myocarditis. You good with that ??? of course not because there is no such thing as MILD myocarditis - and you KNOW this. It puts anyone suffering from it in danger of future cardiac issues - again you KNOW this . secondly, MULTIPLE good studies have shown that myocarditis post covid infection is actually quite RARE - especially in children . 3. "Children, like adults, can suffer from COVID for months (long COVID)." The latest studies - including a recent one from Finland - show absolutely ZERO correlation between having covid and getting long covid ! think about that ??? in addition there are ZERO lab markers - a study from 2021 showed as only significant correlation for long covid - Middle aged women ! 4. "mRNA vaccines, which are highly effective at preventing severe disease, have now been given safely to more than 10 million young children." how many have been given UN safely ???? I mean most European nations do not even offer the mRNA vaccines to healthy children. esp under 12. but here you are shilling. As I stated. - I am so so disappointed in you.
Dr. Offit, as a pediatrician, who has followed your advice for years, I am greatly disappointed with this assessment. I think you are out of touch with what is happening in the primary care pediatricians office. The debate about Covid vaccines is a debate, and it is not settled science. Your comparison with Covid myocarditis versus myocarditis from the vaccine, is shortsighted. Myocarditis from Covid, included a much broader age group, and seriously ill patients who had a bump in their troponins levels, and not a true myocarditis. The myocarditis with the vaccine, on the other hand, showed a Signal in the young male ages 16 to 30. It also demonstrates a high propensity for scarring six months later. You know that this is a risk factor for sudden, cardiac death, and it dumbfounds me that you were comparing apples to oranges. The other destructive part of this discussion is the vaccine hesitancy that is happening in my patients with routine, tested vaccines. I have never seen this amount of vaccine hesitancy for a routine vaccines in my 23 years of practice. Another point that I’d like to bring up, is that the Covid vaccines were not tested for efficacy in those who already had Covid. You should know this. You should also know about the strength of natural immunity versus vaccine immunity. Omicron became the ultimate vaccine with the majority of children being infected. You also mentioned in MISC however, we only saw that with the first three strains and have not seen it since omicron came on the scene. Finally, your number for the number of Pediatric deaths is over a three year timeframe. It also is likely exaggerated considering the amount of testing that was done as well as studies that have shown hospitalizations for children were estimated to be 60% with Covid and not from Covid. Hospitalizations now are likely more attributable to “coinfections“ in conjunction with another illness like RSV or metapneumovirus. Hospitalizations use PCR. PCR can detect viruses present as far as six weeks prior. You know this. Please use critical thinking in evaluating patients that are testing positive in the hospital and happen to test positive for Covid. This article makes me sad for you and your future opinions that I previously valued so much.
I am asking for the absolute risk reduction and risk of adverse events from the vaccine... a key part of informed consent and risk vs benefit for patients.
Hello, regarding the claim that cardiac injury from the vaccines is mild and self-resolving: this does not seem to be settled. For example, this study published in The Lancet is suggestive that, even months later, there is cardiac damage and symptoms that are ongoing: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PIIS2352-4642(22)00244-9/fulltext
In the study of 519 patients who had vaccine-induced myocarditis, 26% were prescribed medication for their condition. 90 days after onset of the condition, 32% of patients had not been cleared for physical activity. Only 81% of patients were considered ‘recovered’ by their healthcare providers, however this definition was misleading - in the ‘recovered’ group, 23% still experienced chest pain or discomfort while resting, 19% experienced shortness of breath, and 14% experienced heart palpitations while resting.
Additionally, in Australia the anecdotal evidence from injury support groups is that the cardiac conditions do not resolve quickly at all.
In Australia’s largest vaccine injured patient support group, COVERSE, group members report not seeing any improvement in symptoms for an average of seven months. “The figure includes other serious vaccine-induced conditions, and not just myocarditis and perdicarditis,” explains COVERSE co-founder, Dr Rado Faletic. “However, what is most alarming is that our members report no follow up or investigation from our national drug regulator, the TGA, leading us to conclude that the regulator is unaware of the true extent of damage caused by Covid vaccines.”
Unfortunately, as identified by scientist and COVERSE founder Dr Faletic, the regulator has dropped the ball on this one. There has also been difficulty in getting any Australian academic institutions to collect qualitative data to complement the quantitative data. In my experience as an interviewer of the jab injured, in many cases, people's test results come back clear, even when they are severely disabled by their condition.
Hence, I seriously question that vaccine induced cardiac injury is generally mild and self resolving.
I generally liken the argument made by antivaxxers that kids don't need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 because they are so "low risk" of dying from the disease to the very same arguments that antivaxxers used to make routinely about MMR and measles, in which they referred to measles as a "normal childhood disease" that almost never kills any kids. Of course, measles routinely killed between 400-500 children a year in the decade before the first measles vaccine was licensed, a number that, when adjusted for population growth since the early 1960s, is amazingly similar to the yearly death toll of children due to COVID-19 over the last three years.
I like to ask those who consider themselves so "provaccine" who state that children don't need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 because they are at such low risk of death: May I assume that you are also against vaccinating children against measles? The equation, in terms of the number of deaths per year without the vaccine, is pretty darned close to the same So, if you are against vaccinating children for COVID-19, why do you support MMR vaccination? Or do you? Or do you think that 500-600 deaths of children per year are an acceptable toll for a "childhood disease"? 60 years ago, doctors thought that such a death toll was more than reason enough to act by developing a vaccine and then vaccinating as many children as possible. Today? Apparently, too many think that children's lives are expendable.
Just to restate what has been said here; it is simply untrue that myocarditis related to vaccination with SARS-COV-2 vaccine is "short lived and self resolving".
80% of these patients demonstrate persistent changes of late gadolinium enhancement on MRI. This is generally accepted as being indicative of fibrosis and the long term risk of this in terms of arrhythmia and mechanical dysfunction is unknown, but it is a true statement that no LGE is better than LGE. As a pediatrician one cannot tell a parent that this is "self resolving".
I study this area for a living and am NIH funded. When there was a potential that human disease could cause LGE we didn't ignore it. How can we just ignore this? I find this viewpoint to be lacking the nuance and seriousness that parents and children deserve.
Dr. Offit, are your children all covid vaccinated and boosted with at least 3 doses?
"Myocarditis following COVID infection, on the other hand, is far more common and far more severe than that following vaccination."
This is a CDC lie.
"Myocarditis post pfizer-moderna combo was 28x more common than post covid in 16-24 yo males in this massive Nordic study published in @JAMACardio"
https://twitter.com/DrAseemMalhotra/status/1614865099654676480
How many of the children who died were vaccinated?
Does "succumbed to the disease" mean it was the sole cause of death, or does it mean they died with a positive PCR test?
Hi and welcome to Substack! I’m excited to have another well-respected, evidence-based, scientifically-fluent voice to listen to. Substack has its share of profitable pandemic quackery.
I’m a family doc and live in Philly, trained at Jefferson (we’ve actually met!), and while I don’t see a lot of peds anymore, I’ll add some anecdotes that I have seen in my unvaccinated pediatric patients:
New onset type 1 diabetes (severe presentation with DKA) 6 weeks after Covid
Pulmonary embolus 3 months after Covid
The world “smelling like garbage” going on 1+ years after infection
Exercise intolerance, dyspnea
Spreading Covid to grandparents and parents from school infections, leading to a range of chronic problems that might have been prevented
Insomnia, depression, suicidality within 2 months after infection (not during lockdown at all)
And the ubiquity of measurable lung damage as seen in that study using MRI to study pediatric patients after covid still haunts me: https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/radiol.221250
I could go on, and you’ve obviously seen much more in this population than I have… but I’ve seen enough to aggressively vaccinate my own child, try to persuade and educate my patients, and not abandon a multi-tiered approach to risk reduction that still includes high quality masking in situations like airplanes, crowded museums, etc.
I wrote about how conflicted parents should conceptualize vaccination as the lesser of two risks, and published it through KevinMD.com all the way back in 11/021.
And the original antigenic sin concern does not seem to be playing out in any clinically significant way, and the risk of this seems dwarfed by the benefits of vaccination we’ve seen in real life.
Anyway, excited to listen, and see you around Philly perhaps! We’re in Bella Vista. Go Sixers 🏀
14 year old, latest to be killed by the killer shot.
https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1642884146203852801?s=20
Basic immunology dictates that the vaccine will damage multiple organs including the heart. mRNA/LNP are systemically distributed and taken up in numerous organs. Cells in these organs thus express spike. Activated CD8+ T cells that recognize spike epitopes will KILL ALL THESE CELLS. So all organs including the heart are damaged in EVERYONE.
The FDA estimated a million children need vaccination to prevent one death. The vaccine will maim a million and certainly kill more than one child as a result. There is no way you can claim the benefits outweigh risks.
https://vinuarumugham.substack.com/p/mrna-vaccines-will-kill-3800-children
My kids are vaxxed (and CHOP patients) but after catching it naturally I won't boost them. Thankfully my practitioners at CHOP agree. Kids who are unvaxxed now are unlikely to get it, nothing we can do there. I'm concerned about people boosting kids when it's not necessarily in their best interest, and there is where I'd worry about the risk of myocarditis. I'm sure it is best for some kids but our T Cells "memory" should be all we need for most vaxxed kids IMHO, and I'm a ZDogg follower and have appreciated your nuanced approach in this.
So then, if children under 12 get COVID vaccine will there be no more serious illnesses in that age group from COVID (as rare as they are)?
You are a monster for recommending this junk to kids. how many heart attacks do you think the lies you repeat have caused? Even fda's own disclosures (https://www.fda.gov/media/154869/download) suggest no benefit and great, life long, permanent harm. 1 in 50 children & young men, on the low end, that took this garbage on your bad advice will have heart problems and may die early due to your arrogance.
You and all the people at the 3 letter "public health" agencies defending this crap make me sick. What happened to "first, do no harm."
It’s Turtles all the Way Down without good science.
Check this out!https://a.co/d/4xiZpKK