A team of Johns Hopkins researchers recently reported that when studying a group of about 48,000 children, they found zero COVID deaths among healthy kids, but the Centers for Disease Control doesn’t care.
Dr. Marty Makary is a medical expert and professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Carey Business School. His research team “worked with the nonprofit FAIR Health to analyze approximately 48,000 children under 18 diagnosed with Covid in health-insurance data from April to August 2020.”
By Audrey Unverferth*
July 21, 2021
After studying comprehensive data on thousands of children, the team “found a mortality rate of zero among children without a pre-existing medical condition such as leukemia.” Rather than acknowledge this scientific reality, Makary says the CDC continues to use “flimsy evidence” to push the COVID vaccine upon children.
As Makary noted in the Wall Street Journal on Monday, the implications of his team’s research are huge. “[If our research] holds, it has significant implications for healthy kids and whether they need two vaccine doses,” Makary says. After all, “The National Education Association has been debating whether to urge schools to require vaccination before returning to school in person. How can they or anyone debate the issue without the right data?”
Makary’s question is obvious, but no less timely. Makary says inflated COVID death counts continue to be corrected and “revised downward.”
But rather than combat institutional distrust with scientific data and discussion, Makary says the CDC is avoiding transparency and rigorous inquiry. He slammed the agency on Monday, saying it “overcounts Covid hospitalizations and deaths and won’t consider if one shot is sufficient.” According to Makary, this problem is systemic.
Makary says “a tremendous number of government and private policies” regarding the vaccination of children are dependent upon one questionable data point. The CDC claims 335 children under the age of 18 have died with a COVID diagnosis in their record. However, Makary reports that, “the CDC, which has 21,000 employees, hasn’t researched each death to find out whether Covid caused it or if it involved a pre-existing medical condition.”
“Without these data, the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices decided in May that the benefits of two-dose vaccination outweigh the risks for all kids 12 to 15,” Makary notes. “I’ve written hundreds of peer-reviewed medical studies, and I can think of no journal editor who would accept the claim that 335 deaths resulted from a virus without data to indicate if the virus was incidental or causal, and without an analysis of relevant risk factors such as obesity.”
According to Makary, the CDC defies medical research norms, by propagating a “flimsy” claim without sufficient research or transparency. And this isn’t an isolated incident. Makary illustrates that it’s part of a pattern.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky claims 200 child hospitalizations and one death can be prevented over four months if one million adolescents are vaccinated. Makary’s unconvinced. He says that, “[T]he agency’s Covid adolescent hospitalization report, like its death count, doesn’t distinguish on the website whether a child is hospitalized for Covid or with Covid.”
This is a problem, because there’s an obvious difference between these patient categories. Hospitals often test patients for COVID as a matter of routine, even if there’s nothing to suggest they’re infected with the virus. But by Walensky’s metrics, Makary says “An asymptomatic child who tests positive after being injured in a bicycle accident would be counted as a ‘Covid hospitalization.’”
Makary says the CDC’s untrustworthy reporting doesn’t stop there. He adds that, “The CDC may also be under[-]capturing data on vaccine complications.” The CDC bases its risk-benefit analysis for vaccinating all children on complication rates from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System database (Vaers). However, Makary argues that this database is composed of self-reported, raw data that “is unverified and likely underreports adverse events.”
All this is just the tip of the iceberg of lapses in CDC data and analysis, the researcher says. To this day, Makary says, the CDC still doesn’t document daily new hospitalizations for COVID sickness. Instead, it reports the inflated rate of hospitalization for any patient who tests positive for the virus. And while the CDC pushes the vaccine upon Americans, Makary says the agency seems completely disinterested in discovering natural-immunity rates.
Rather than pursue transparency, the CDC and other large entities avoid scientific inquiry and silence those who dare to ask inconvenient questions. “Not only has the CDC refused to examine the possibility of a one-dose regimen for minors; Harvard epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff told me he was kicked off the advisory committee working group on Covid-vaccine safety after he expressed a dissenting opinion,” Makary notes.
The CDC and U.S. Food and Drug Administration that approves vaccines employ 39,000 individuals, yet crucial scientific data remains lacking more than a year into crushing COVID lockdowns, Makary notes. Rather than rely upon “unverified data,” Makary says, “The CDC or the Food and Drug Administration should expeditiously assign doctors to research each of the thousands of vaccine complications reported to Vaers.” According to Makary’s findings, the agency should also reevaluate its claims concerning children’s mortality and hospitalization.
The CDC isn’t the only entity whose doctrines are implicated by these findings. While Makary’s team recorded zero COVID deaths for healthy kids, children across the country continue to suffer from draconian mask mandates and other restrictions imposed based on the belief that COVID is highly risky for children.
Inspired by Democrat talking-points, states like Connecticut, New Mexico, Hawaii, Virginia, New York, and Washington all force K-12 students to wear masks, regardless of their vaccination status. Meanwhile, CNN, NBC News, CBS News, and others continue to parrot the narrative that children should “mask up,” or else.
