Rand Paul v. Susan Monarez
Post #1379
NOTE: This post uses loose language to refer to those situations when myocarditis is found, and those situations when pericarditis is found, collectively — referring to either situation as “myopericarditis.” But, when taken more literally, that term would actually denote a patient having both conditions, simultaneously.
As reported by The Defender, ex-CDC lead Susan Monarez was grilled by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) at a Senate Hearing. She said COVID shots helped to keep kids out of the hospital, and COVID shots helped to keep kids alive, but do the data back her up?
Child Hospitalization
To find out the yearly risk or rate of hospitalization “from” COVID — rather than hospitalization merely “with” COVID (hospitalization with a positive PCR test) — you can limit yourself to the cases of pneumonia along with COVID. A nationwide study was performed over all of Germany over all of 2020:
Over all of Germany — and for the entire year of 2020 — they found 214 cases of COVID pneumonia hospitalization among those 18 and younger:
To find the yearly rate, you need the size of the population of 18 and younger:
[click to enlarge]
Up to age 19, there were 15.3 million, but you have to subtract the 812,000 who were 19 years old, leaving you with a population of 18-and-under of 14.488 million. Dividing the annual 214 hospitalizations for COVID pneumonia, you get a yearly hospitalization rate of 14.8 per million, which we could round up to 15 per million.
To find out how many kids get put into the hospital because the COVID shot gave them myopericarditis, a UK study with 48,000 child-years of observation was used:
Notice that there were 12 combined cases after the first dose in 47,802.5 child-years, but no cases — even from slightly more follow-up time — in the kids who were “unvaccinated.” After dividing the caused cases into the child-years, you get a yearly rate of excess myopericarditis of 251 per million. We can assume them hospitalized:
The ratio shows that 17 kids are put into the hospital with myopericarditis due to COVID shots for each kid kept out. The rate of acute respiratory distress syndrome or ARDS (i.e., severe COVID pneumonia) is much lower than the general rate of COVID pneumonia — only 13 kids all year, in all of Germany, had severe COVID pneumonia:
The evidence suggests that Sen. Paul was right, and that Susan Monarez was wrong, regarding COVID shots and child hospitalization — and that is already evident using just one type of adverse event from the COVID shots (myopericarditis).
Child Deaths
To get the expected yearly deaths from COVID, you can start by taking the higher annualized attack rate in the placebo groups of the two main COVID shot phase 3 trials:
Using data until 26 March 2021, the annualized attack rate of COVID would be 13.66%, or 13.66 cases per 100 person-years (from 136.6 per 1000 person-years). That let’s you estimate that almost 14% of everyone gets COVID in a year. Then you need the fatality rate from an infection with COVID:
At 0.0003%, that makes for 3 deaths per million infections. Combining that with the expected rate of attack gets you the expected yearly death rate of 0.4 per million, or 4 deaths per 10 million (which is less than the yearly chance to be struck by lightning):
The assumption for 6-month death from myopericarditis is only an educated guess, because prior research revealed that — with adults — the 90-day fatality was 1.1%. The 90-day window of observation was doubled and the rate was shaved down to 1% for kids here, in order to give a rough approximation of the contrast to COVID deaths.
Again, the evidence suggests that Sen. Paul was correct, and that Susan Monarez was wrong, regarding the supposed ability of COVID shots to keep kids alive. The ratio of killed kids to saved kids is more than 6-to-1 (over 6 kids killed by myopercarditis alone for each kid saved — assuming 100% efficacy of the COVID shot in preventing death).
Reference
[15 hospitalizations for COVID pneumonia per million child-years] — https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095461112400355X
[251 excess myopericarditis cases per million child-years] — https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.05.20.24306810v1.full.pdf
[3 deaths per million COVID infections] — Pezzullo AM, Axfors C, Contopoulos-Ioannidis DG, Apostolatos A, Ioannidis JPA. Age-stratified infection fatality rate of COVID-19 in the non-elderly population. Environ Res. 2023 Jan 1;216(Pt 3):114655. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2022.114655. Epub 2022 Oct 28. PMID: 36341800; PMCID: PMC9613797. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9613797/
[~14% yearly attack rate] — El Sahly HM, Baden LR, Essink B, Doblecki-Lewis S, Martin JM, Anderson EJ, Campbell TB, Clark J, Jackson LA, Fichtenbaum CJ, Zervos M, Rankin B, Eder F, Feldman G, Kennelly C, Han-Conrad L, Levin M, Neuzil KM, Corey L, Gilbert P, Janes H, Follmann D, Marovich M, Polakowski L, Mascola JR, Ledgerwood JE, Graham BS, August A, Clouting H, Deng W, Han S, Leav B, Manzo D, Pajon R, Schödel F, Tomassini JE, Zhou H, Miller J; COVE Study Group. Efficacy of the mRNA-1273 SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine at Completion of Blinded Phase. N Engl J Med. 2021 Nov 4;385(19):1774-1785. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa2113017. Epub 2021 Sep 22. PMID: 34551225; PMCID: PMC8482810. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8482810/