COVID Vaccines Could Be Linked To Deaths Among Children, Left-Wing Media Furious

A new Washington Post report is unsurprisingly furious that top health officials in the Trump Administration might contradict its views on COVID-19 vaccines for children.

It’s well established that the United States, under the Biden administration, became an extremist outlier internationally on mRNA vaccines for healthy young children. While most European countries do not recommend the shots for those groups, Biden-era officials demanded them.

That posture fueled attempted school COVID vaccine mandates, including from California Gov. Gavin Newsom, which were rescinded or defeated after it became clear Biden, Anthony Fauci and CDC officials had no idea what they were talking about.

But none of that matters to the Post, because its political allies insist healthy young children must get vaccinated—an unassailable gospel in their view. That perspective explains how the Post covered reporting that current health officials may be preparing a new document on the potential dangers of COVID vaccines for children.

Nurses Debbie Black and Rachel Lee double-check a COVID-19 vaccine dose for a child during a vaccine clinic in Hamilton, Massachusetts, on Sept. 9. (© Wicked Local Staff Photo/David Sokol / USA TODAY NETWORK)

Washington Post Rushes To Criticize Current Health Officials, Shockingly 

According to the report, Trump administration officials could connect 25 deaths of young children to COVID vaccines. The Post, before seeing any actual report or details about it, said the link would be based on information reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

Whether that proves true or not, the Post rushed to downplay VAERS, saying it "contains unverified reports of side effects or bad experiences with vaccines."

When contacted for comment, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said the FDA and CDC routinely review VAERS and other safety systems to assess potential side effects, including for COVID vaccines. FDA Commissioner Marty Makary recently said on CNN that "there have been children who have died from the COVID vaccine."

Makary also said in the interview that the FDA is doing a "proper investigation," culminating in a full report in the near future. Sounds reasonable, right? Not to the Post!

The article frames this as a dangerous, alarming investigation—according to the same "career scientists" who were wrong about every other COVID policy—because vaccine manufacturers have "extensively studied" the shots and deemed them safe.

"The plan has alarmed some career scientists who say coronavirus vaccines have been extensively studied, including in children, and that dangers of the virus itself are being underplayed," the article reads. "While Trump health officials are investigating deaths due to vaccines, CDC staff in June presented data to the same vaccine committee showing that at least 25 children died who had covid-associated hospitalizations since July 2023. That number, the staff said, was likely an undercount, and of the 16 old enough for vaccination, none was up-to-date on vaccines."

Heaven forbid we upset the "career scientists"; their track record during and after the pandemic—especially on COVID vaccines—is obviously perfect.

Before tackling the problems with that paragraph, it’s worth noting that the CDC has engaged in misleading communication about the threat of COVID to children for years. It took an outsider, Kelley K on Twitter, to point out that the CDC, for months, had an inaccurate count of COVID deaths among younger age groups.

The CDC then spread inaccurate information in a purposefully produced video in order to scare parents into getting their children vaccinated.

Again, this is not an organization or profession that deserves the kind of blind faith left-wing media outlets grant it. But the Post wasn’t done there. One of the "career scientists" it cites is Noel Brewer, a public health professor at the University of North Carolina.

Brewer, unsurprisingly, was one of the vaccine advisers the new HHS secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., fired when he took over. What a surprise that he opposes any effort to point out the potential harms of COVID vaccines. Who could have guessed he’d see it differently?

Brewer told the Post that "the focus on vaccine harms ignores the harms of the coronavirus."

"They are leveraging this platform to share untruths about vaccines to scare people," Brewer said. "The U.S. government is now in the business of vaccine misinformation."

Ironically, the U.S. government was in the business of vaccine misinformation—it just came under Brewer and his ideology’s leadership. Saying healthy young children needed COVID vaccines, at any point, is vaccine misinformation. Brewer can’t acknowledge that because it would mean admitting he was wrong.

Of course there can be harms from the coronavirus to children—but there can also be harms from COVID vaccination. And it’s clear from data and evidence that the risks of COVID to children are, thankfully, very low. That sets an appropriately high bar for COVID vaccine safety. People like Brewer ignore that, because their position boils down to "do what I say, or else."

The Post also claimed experts have "said vaccines offer children protection against long covid," an unsupported justification for extremist policies. Not to mention the delusion of acting as though "long COVID" is a widespread concern, especially among healthy young kids.

This article is a mess. Like so many others from left-wing media on COVID, it’s hopelessly biased, riddled with inaccuracies, ignores contradictory evidence, relies on disgraced, politically motivated "experts," and downplays risks in favor of advocacy. After five years of harmful misinformation, the Washington Post—like its party—seems committed to many more.