How Many Children's Lives Did COVID Vaccines Actually Save? The Answer Might Be Surprising

The Department of Health and Human Services announced this week that they were changing the childhood vaccination schedule. One of the more prominent adjustments was to remove the recommendation that all children, regardless of risk, receive COVID vaccines, starting at 6-months-old. 

As expected, this decision was met with anger and outrage from the "expert" community. Many of the same "experts" who made absurdly wrong predictions and gave woefully inaccurate advice during the pandemic chimed in to give their opinions in 2026, despite being thoroughly discredited. State departments of public health issued their own "guidance," saying they would continue with the current recommendations.

And yet, as always, none of those who routinely pound the table about the importance of COVID vaccines ever seem to check how effective they actually are. They never actually read the studies or the data, they simply repeat whatever like-minded, politically motivated experts think.

RELATED: No, This Viral Study Doesn’t Prove The COVID Vaccine Worked To Prevent Deaths

This trend reached a crescendo during the pandemic, when politicians like California Gov. Gavin Newsom instituted a COVID vaccine mandate for schoolchildren, based on the recommendations of his incompetent team of medical advisors. Well, hopefully some of them read the latest research to find out how little they actually accomplished.

Ashish Jha, White House COVID-19 response coordinator, from left, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Vivek Murthy, US surgeon general, and Xavier Becerra, secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). Photographer: Al Drago/Pool/Sipa USA

COVID Vaccines For Kids One Of The Most Unnecessary Interventions In History

There have been numerous studies conducted on the actual risk to children from COVID-19, virtually all of which have concluded that the virus poses little risk. In fact, one study published out of the UK earlier in 2025 found that there were so few severe outcomes among children that it made it impossible to calculate a "rate ratio" comparing unvaccinated to vaccinated kids.

RELATED: COVID Vaccines For Children Carry Significant Risks, Few Benefits

Now we can add another one to the list. 

A new study published in December out of Spain examined the effectiveness of mRNA vaccines on COVID-19 hospitalization among children. It examined nearly 1.1 million children aged 6 to 11-years-old, along with over 1.6 million kids between 12 to 17. There's plenty of interesting data to look at, but, as usual, the most remarkable is that the COVID vaccines had virtually zero effectiveness against most severe outcomes among younger age groups. 

"In 183,273 vaccinated and 916,365 controls 6–11 years old, the estimated risk difference (95% CI) of COVID-19 hospitalization was −1.2 per 100,000 (−6.6 to 4.0) for vaccinated versus controls; effectiveness 9.0% (−36 to 49)," the study explains.

So, essentially, their estimate of vaccine efficacy among 6 to 11-year-olds against hospitalizations was one per 100,000. Even that is likely an overestimate, given the massive confidence intervals that show efficacy could have been as low as -6.6 percent. Their "effectiveness" estimate had an even wider range of potential outcomes, showing how few examples of hospitalized children they could even examine. While they say it's "9.0 percent," the confidence interval goes from -36 to 49%. COVID vaccines could have had negative 36 percent efficacy, or 49% positive. They're just guessing. And even with that, the best they could do is 9 percent. And this isn't against infection, it's against actual hospitalization.

In this study, the vast majority of children were unvaccinated, roughly 83.4 percent. Yet out of over 2.3 million unvaccinated young children, there was not a single COVID-related death reported. You know what that sounds like? That same study from the United Kingdom, where among all young children they examined, there wasn't a single COVID-related death. 

So between the two studies, covering roughly 3.5 million young children, over long periods of follow-up from medical records, there were zero total reported COVID-related deaths. 

Obviously, this is wonderful news. As the authors of the Spanish study explained, all non-fatal COVID outcomes among children were "rare." Similar to the UK study finding that there were so few negative COVID outcomes that they literally could not calculate a risk reduction from COVID vaccination. Both studies found zero COVID-related deaths among any group. You'd think this would be cause for celebration; there's no significant risk, and no need to give children mRNA shots.

Instead, we get endless argument and criticism. Efforts to remove recommendations based on outdated, inaccurate assumptions from incompetent experts are treated as an attack on science. Even though the scientific data overwhelmingly shows that there's no need for COVID shots targeted at children. The insane push for vaccine mandates was based on nothing. And it's been quietly ignored and forgotten in the post-pandemic period to avoid dealing with the much-deserved humiliation.

But yet again, the outsiders were proven right. COVID was never a threat to children, and the vaccines had little-to-no efficacy in younger age groups. And the "experts" involved have never admitted they were wrong.