When doing cost-effectiveness analysis, many assumptions are made, but you try to get close to the reality on the ground.
Even professional cost-effective studies often contain unfounded assumptions, such as Table A1 from [ PMC7832653 ], where the predicted COVID mortality probability of a healthy person in their late 60's (0.12%) was only 3 times higher than that of a healthy 9 year-old (0.04%).
But it’s scientifically-unfounded to use a model that sets child COVID mortality at one-third of that of the elderly — even if it is the “youngest” bracket of the elderly.
Six key assumptions made in the analysis below are as follows:
Pfizer will try to set their price to $130 within a year or two
the pre-vaccination IFRs yield a conservative estimate of true IFRs now
it takes over 330,000 COVID infections to kill one child
forthcoming annual spread is estimated with a 25% annual attack rate
the best average 6-month “vaccine” protection from COVID death will be 40%
a cost-effective intervention saves a life-year for less than $70,000
The first assumption is pessimistic but one cannot be blamed for being pessimistic in the times we are in. The second assumption is solid: no IFRs now are as high as the pre-vaccine era. The third assumption follows from the second: At most 3 in every million child infections will lead to death.
The fourth assumption is justifiable by way of naturally-acquired immunity. Though Omicron spreads faster than previous variants, the pool of those susceptible has fallen.
The fifth assumption comes directly from a CDC presentation showing waning protection against severe COVID outcomes such as hospitalization (and death):
The final assumption comes from valuation research, showing how it is that people are willing to pay twice their income for each gained life-year from interventions.
The Excel spreadsheet below shows that, with the assumptions above, it costs almost $900 million to prevent one COVID death in children. The child life-expectancy required to make that intervention cost-effective is more than 12,000 years of remaining life.
And, due to how long of a remaining life is required for cost-effectiveness to exist, COVID shots are not cost-effective for those under the age of 55 (for 70% of the USA):
[click on image above to enlarge it]
Reference
[Children's Health Defense Defender article announcing expected Pfizer price hike] -- https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/covid-nw-pfizer-expects-hike-us-vaccine-price/
[updated infection fatality rates (IFRs) from the pre-vaccine era] -- https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.11.22280963v1.full.pdf
[primer on how to apply Absolute Risk Reduction, or ARR, to COVID] -- https://ebm.bmj.com/content/ebmed/early/2022/03/27/bmjebm-2021-111789.full.pdf
[research showing that twice your income is the appropriate cut-off for “cost-effectiveness”] — Garber AM, Phelps CE. Economic foundations of cost-effectiveness analysis. J Health Econ. 1997 Feb;16(1):1-31. doi: 10.1016/s0167-6296(96)00506-1. PMID: 10167341. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10167341/
[Perspective: professional cost-effectiveness analysis showing how unfounded assumptions can creep in on you] — Kohli M, Maschio M, Becker D, Weinstein MC. The potential public health and economic value of a hypothetical COVID-19 vaccine in the United States: Use of cost-effectiveness modeling to inform vaccination prioritization. Vaccine. 2021 Feb 12;39(7):1157-1164. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2020.12.078. Epub 2021 Jan 6. PMID: 33483216; PMCID: PMC7832653. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7832653/
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Population Level - 55 Yrs. & over [LNU00024230], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU00024230
U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Population [POPTHM], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/POPTHM
U.S. Census Bureau, Median Household Income in the United States [MEHOINUSA646N], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA646N
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Population Level [CNP16OV], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CNP16OV
U.S. Census Bureau, Total Households [TTLHH], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TTLHH