Even as the CDC begins pushing for parents to vaccinate their babies and toddlers against COVID, the federal agency was just caught touting false claims about the mortality rate among children from the virus – and making it seem far more deadly to kids than it actually is.
Here’s the background: at a recent meeting of the Advisory on Immunization Practices group, the CDC displayed a graphic claiming that 1,433 children had died from COVID between March 2020 and April 2022, making it the fourth leading cause of death for children under the age of 1 and a supposed reason to start vaccinating infants and toddlers with a shot that hasn't yet been put through rigorous routine safety testing.
The graphic they used came from a not-yet-peer-reviewed pre-print of an analysis by U.K. researchers using a National Center for Health Statistics’ database on COVID deaths, a chart that was then promoted at CDC meetings and touted by pro-vax "experts," including former Planned Parenthood President and media medical darling Dr. Leana Wen, as a “case for vaccinating children <5.”
These CDC ACIP slides make the case for vaccinating children <5.#covid19 may be milder in kids than adults, but it's still a top reason for child fatality.
— Leana Wen, M.D. (@DrLeanaWen) June 18, 2022
We give routine childhood vaccinations for other diseases that cause less deaths--because the point is to prevent them. pic.twitter.com/oGG0OuneWS
But, as it turns out, that graphic wasn't accurate – not by a long shot.
We know that thanks to a Substack writer named Kelley, who took a harder look at the data and pointed out some glaring errors – errors the CDC was either too incompetent or overeager to notice, or which they completely ignored in favor of their latest agenda.
Firstly, the data shows that while the National Center for Health Statistics’ database does report that 1,433 U.S. babies were determined to have died with COVID (meaning the virus was present, but not necessarily the cause of death) between March of 2020 and April 2022, the CDC’s own WONDER database shows only 1,088 died from COVID – a 24% difference.
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Secondly, a closer look shows the CDC used more than two years of COVID data – the 26-month span between March 1 of 2020 and April 30 of 2022 – and compared it to just one year of data for all other causes of death, blowing the COVID mortality statistics wildly out of proportion.
When these two factors are corrected, it turns out COVID is actually the 9th leading cause of death for babies under a year old, ranking after "perinatal conditions, congenital malformations or deformations, accidents, assault, diseases of the heart, malignant neoplasms, suicide, and influenza and pneumonia."
Seth Flaxman, a researcher at Oxford, stated on June 19 that the U.K. team is “planning to update the preprint to take into account some of this feedback, primarily by focusing on Covid as an underlying cause of death using CDC WONDER Provisional Mortality Statistics.”
The study has now been updated to state that "Covid-19 is a leading cause of death in CYP aged 0-19 years in the US, ranking #9 among all causes of deaths."
But it might be too little, too late. True to the famous line, the lie spread faster than fire while the truth was still getting its pants on, and the FDA and the CDC have since greenlit the vaccine for emergency use among toddlers and infants who continue to be at extraordinarily low risk or serious illness or death from COVID.
To the casual observer, it would almost seem that, regardless of the data, this was goal all along.