It's just waiting for the crowd to call Paul Offit an anti-vaxxer.
The Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia is headed by Dr. Paul Offit, who is a hero to vaccine advocates. He invented the vaccine for rotaviruses. He has faced hatred and threats for his advocacy. He is a nice guy.
He is also not perfect. He predicted at the beginning of the Pandemic that COVID-19 would cause less damage than flu every year in the United States. He said, "If you're going to be wrong, be wrong in front of millions of people." You should make a complete ass of yourself. He is different from other people who underestimated the virus. I still trust him because of that.
Dr. Offit is similar to many of the contrarian doctors I have criticized before. They all think that healthy males would not benefit from a booster vaccine. Dr. Offit advised his own son not to get a booster as he believed that his son was well protected against serious illness with two shots, so a third just isn't necessary. One doctor and critic of our site said that.
Now waiting for the crowd to call Paul Offit an anti-vaxxer. Wait for it.
To increase or decrease it.
I have not commented on boosters for healthy young people. There is evidence that boosters can reduce illness in older people. Two vaccine doses still offer powerful protection against severe illness, even though young, healthy people were at low-risk to begin with. A recent study found that the vaccine was effective in preventing hospitalizations in adolescents.
There is evidence from Israel that a third dose of the vaccine can lower the rate of infections in young people. There were no deaths due to the infections in non-boostered people. It is higher than the rate of vaccine-myocarditis.
I am not aware of any evidence that boosters reduce the risk of disease. There is no evidence that healthy children and adolescents need booster shots, according to the World Health Organization Chief Scientist.
The risk from the third vaccine dose is less than the risk from the second shot. There were just 4 confirmed myocarditis cases, all recovered, in just under 1 million people who received a booster, according to data from the CDC. The third dose causes myocarditis in 1 in 15,000 males. Most cases of suspected COVID-19 vaccine-related myocarditis in people younger than 21 are mild and resolve quickly, according to researchers on vaccine-related myocarditis. Giving a booster to a young male carries a low risk of a condition that is usually mild and fleeting.
There is no definitive answer at the moment. I am sympathetic to regulators who have to make difficult decisions with incomplete information. They will be second guessed by those with no real-world responsibility.
Some doctors want a trial of boosters. This could provide the clearest information, but the results wouldn't be available until 2023, and new variant may render those results obsolete.
The good news is that healthy young males will be fine even if they are twice-vaccinated. The stakes seem low, though it is grossly inequitable that healthy teens in some countries can get a third shot before vulnerable adults elsewhere can get their first dose.
I don't know what the right answer is regarding boosters for young, healthy males, but since I couldn't ship his dose elsewhere, I voted with my feet and got my teenage son a booster. I am more worried about him spreading the virus than I am about waning protection from his first two doses. I am hopeful that this will be his last shot, but if it turns out we all need a periodic booster, this doesn't seem that bad to me.
My son was fine after the injection, even though the pharmacist said it was his most memorable. The first two doses were more beneficial to him than the third one. I understand why Dr. Offit disagrees with my decision. After 9/11, his past prudence against re-introduction of the vaccine turned out to be correct.
Dr. Offit is against the doctors.
I have criticized contrarian doctors before, but Dr. Offit is worth listening to. Dr. Offit does not make blatant factual errors in national media, overstating harms from the vaccine and understating harms of the virus. He hasn't thrown out the first two vaccine doses for kids. The Emergency Use Authorization for kids was never told to parents. He never wrote an editorial objecting to the EUA for children or said that the second dose brings more hospitalizations from myocarditis than can be prevented. He is not against all boosters. He said that he was not opposed to booster dose. I think we need to know why we are boosting.
The vaccine side effects have not been catastrophized. He said that vaccine-myocarditis can be treated with anti-inflammatories or it can be a short-term problem. He is correct. He made a video to inform parents that the risks of the virus were much higher than the risk of vaccine-myocarditis.
He has advocated for children to bevaccinated with the first two doses. He said in October of 2020.
In the last few weeks, you would have 200,000 cases in children a week, or 250,000 cases a week, 2,000 hospitalizations a week. I was on duty at Children's Hospital Philadelphia last week, and I can tell you that we had our share, representing the national average, of an increased number of children with the disease. Yes, the answer to the question can children suffer from this disease. Is it possible for them to be hospitalized and sent to the intensive care unit? Yes. Can they die? More than 500 children have died. I apologize if you can prevent this vaccine. If you can prevent the disease, then you can prevent it.
He said in November 2021.
Covid-19 is a childhood illness. Children accounted for less than 3% of cases when the disease entered the United States in 2020. More than 6 million US children have been affected by the disease. At the end of October, about 100,000 children were affected by the disease. About one-third of the children who have been hospitalized have no known medical conditions, and many have required the intensive care unit. Over 700 children have died from COVID-19, placing it among the top 10 causes of death in the US. There have been no deaths from vaccinations.
This is the information that doctors who write about children should communicate to the public, because these paragraphs summarize half the articles I have written on this site. Calculating the facts like this has never been done by contrarian doctors. When it comes to children, contrarian doctors will almost never share information that casts the vaccine in a bad light. Many parents think the flu is worse for children because of myths spread by doctors.
The vaccine is not perfect, but it is much safer than other vaccines, and Dr. Offit doesn't hide that fact. The strongest signal that someone is both credible and well-intentioned is when anti-vaxxers hate Dr. Offit.
When contrarian doctors discuss Dr. Offit's opposition to the booster, they neglect his main point that it's more important to try to get unvaccinated children their first two vaccine doses. Dr. Offit has treated sick children in the hospital. They have not.
If contrarian doctors had used their large platforms and influence to echo Dr. Offit's beliefs, there would be fewer unvaccinated children, more healthy children, and schools that stay open. The vaccine has been portrayed as more dangerous than the virus for children by some doctors. The first dose was objected to by them. The second dose was objected to by them. They were going to object to the third dose. It is what they do. It is very predictable and boring.
It isn't without consequence just because it's predictable and boring. Child vaccination rates are not good. Only a small percentage of children are fully protected against COVID-19. Fortunately, omicron seems milder than delta for children, as infections and hospitalizations are at their all time high.
Children would be better off if contrarian doctors shared Dr. Offit's fear of the first two doses of the vaccine.
Anyone who is waiting for this site to open will be waiting a long time.
Dr. Offit's current position stems from a thoughtful evaluation of the risks and benefits, not reflexive contrarianism. Dr. Offit has been thinking about these issues his entire career. He didn't just become a vaccine "expert" in the past 6 months, unlike doctors who disagreed with him about the first two doses. He should be taken seriously.
We need to leave room for people to have good faith disagreements and questions.
Future data will show the risks and benefits of a booster in young people. I will do my best to report the data fairly. I am confident that Dr. Offit will do the same.
He is completely different from contrarian doctors who have yet to acknowledge the evidence that the first two vaccine doses protect children.
It is also why anyone who is waiting for me to call him an anti-vaxxer will be waiting a long time.
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