New Podcast Episode & Some Interesting Facts
If you haven’t checked out my new podcast, we just released a new episode today where we share some rants on the latest COVID insanity.
I also wanted to share a couple of other stories that I came across this week:
New Study Claims Children’s Vaccines are Only 12% Effective
There was a recent pre-print study released regarding the effectiveness of children’s vaccines in the US. It wasn’t getting too much attention as it doesn’t really fit the current narrative that no one should question vaccines.
But this week some mainstream news outlets started talking about it. Here is a good summary from The Hill.
The study from researchers at the New York State Department of Health found that vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19 infection among children 5 to 11 declined from 68 percent to just 12 percent over the period of Dec. 13 to Jan. 30.
If you do a bit of research on how vaccine effectiveness is calculated you will see that a 12% effectiveness is virtually equal to giving someone a skittle. Essentially it’s providing no protection. This is likely due to the fact that Omicron is vaccine resistant. But it’s also likely due to the fact that kids are already naturally very well protected against symptomatic COVID so the study might of had a hard time finding an advantage in those who were vaccinated compared to those who weren’t
Anyhow, the study still claims that they think the vaccine still provides protection against hospitalization for kids but that is a very difficult claim to support or substantially prove as kids rarely need hospitalization regardless of vaccine status. It’s important to remember that in Pfizer’s original study to get their children’s vaccine approved they could not make a claim on hospitalization risk as there was not a single child hospitalized in the study among the 3000 combined vaccinated and placebo children. Even in this study there clearly wasn’t enough hospitalizations for them to draw a meaningful conclusion but they still claimed that the vaccine provided 48% effectiveness (a pretty low number for effectiveness) against hospitalization. But their range of possible effectiveness is between -12% (actually leading to more hospitalization) and 75 % effective. So we legitimately have no idea if the vaccine provides any protection against hospitalization
So it seems we have a vaccine that provides virtually no protection against spread and that we are hoping might offer protection against hospitalization (without any proof yet).
I haven't seen any shocking data that claims the children’s vaccine is dangerous in the short term (we won’t know about long term effects for some time) but it appears we shouldn’t tolerate any risk whatsoever or any uncertainty if we are talking about a product that:
-Is designed for a virus that is less harmful to kids than the seasonal flu
-Does not reduce spread, so doesn’t protect grandma.
-Does not reduce the chance of hospitalization.
I don’t judge those parents that decided the COVID vaccine was right for their children but we keep hearing politicians (the Liberals in Ontario) pushing to make this vaccine mandatory for kids in school and that needs to stop.
This vaccine may not be bad but in my opinion it’s just a skittle and we shouldn’t debate or judge parents who choose to take it or not.
Only 35% of Ukrainians Have Chosen to Be Vaccinated
I discussed this in this week's podcast episode but I thought it would be an interesting statistic to share as many are unaware.
I’ve heard many critics of the truckers protests (that want to see vaccine mandates removed to preserve freedom in our country) say that protesters should stop because what they are asking for is not real freedom compared to what the Ukrainians want.
The problem with statements like this is that we need to understand that we can sympathize with Ukraine, maybe even protest on Ukrainians behalf to try and end the war but still want basic freedoms restored in our country at the same time.
There has been lots of talk lately by some politicians about expediting refugee applications for Ukrainians stuck in the conflict zones. I think that is the right thing to do but we must remember that 65% of Ukrainians have continued to choose not to be vaccinated. So most people we would welcome in our country likely can’t get in. And if we do make an exception, they won’t be able to get a job and could be coming to a country that will treat them as a second class citizen (barring them from planes or even leaving the country).
So my stance is, yes I support Ukrainians’ right to freedom in their own country but I believe the Ukrainians are on my side as well as on the side of Truckers. They likely fully support the Truckers Convoy and want to see all vaccine mandates eliminated. They definitely would not tolerate such rules in their country and they won’t tolerate them here either.