Even at high spread, kids need Life-Expectancy of 3,000 years to make COVID injections cost-effective
Sensitivity Analysis of Cost Effectiveness Data
In a recent Substack, I used an estimated annual COVID attack rate of 25% to arrive at an estimate of the cost-effectiveness of COVID injections per life-saved. For non-adults, COVID injections had a cost of $333 million for each life saved.
Here is a sensitivity analysis with an increase in the attack rate, due to research indicating that Omicron annual attack rates can approach 40%:
[click on image above to enlarge it]
Even at the higher attack rates, in order for COVID injections to be cost-effective in children, children would have to be expected to live, on average, for 3,000 years.
Note also how, even at high spread, the annual chance of a kid dying from COVID is in the same ballpark as the chance of a kid being struck by lightning.
Even with high levels of spread, over $200 million must be spent on vaccinating children before you’ve even saved one life.
If the money spent on COVID injections were diverted away toward other measures which are much more effective at keeping kids alive, then more children would be allowed to live a full life.
Diverting money away from childhood COVID injections — toward things that can really help kids — is one of the best ways to improve the health of our children.
Reference
[CDC presentation showing that vaccine effectiveness is always below 40% before 150 days post-dose (before 5 months have passed since your last dose)] — Updates on COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness during Omicron. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2022-09-01/04-covid-link-gelles-508.pdf
[new study showing that COVID was never worse than bad flu for the non-elderly] — Age-stratified infection fatality rate of COVID-19 in the non-elderly informedfrom pre-vaccination national seroprevalence studies. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.11.22280963v1.full.pdf
[study showing how to properly estimate cost-effectiveness for medical interventions (use twice the income as the cutoff cost for saving a life-year)] — Economic foundations of cost-effectiveness analysis. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10167341/
[median household income is $71,000] — 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
[128 million total US households] — U.S. Census Bureau, Total Households [TTLHH], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TTLHH
[264 million US civilians (2 per household)] — U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Population Level [CNP16OV], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CNP16OV
[evidence-based medical practice requires estimation/publication of ARR] — Using absolute risk reduction to guide the equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. https://ebm.bmj.com/content/ebmed/early/2022/03/27/bmjebm-2021-111789.full.pdf