There are real-world consequences to misinformation spread by contrarian doctors who will never care for a child who becomes seriously ill with COVID. The claim that no healthy children have died of carbon dioxide is noxious. This myth is widespread and dangerous, but also lazy and easy to refute. I don't know why someone would claim that.
I first came across this myth in an article by Dr. Marty Makary, a creator of many such myths.
In reviewing the medical literature and news reports, and in talking to pediatricians across the country, I am not aware of a single healthy child in the U.S. who has died of COVID-19 to date.
Dr. Makary claimed that his own paper was a study ofpediatric COVID-19 deaths. The three children who died in this study were used to figure out how many children had died at that time. The rate of death from the vaccine may be similar to the rate of death from COVID in a healthy child. RFK Jr.'s anti-vaccine website has favorably profiled Dr. Makary.
He was wrong about this. There were multiple news stories of healthy children who had died of COVID, and a CDC report on 121 deaths of people younger than 21 years, half of whom were younger than 18 years.
The adage that a lie can travel around the world and back again was proved by Dr. Makary's myth. There was never a documented case of an entirely healthy kid dying of carbon dioxide. The false claim was repeated by politicians as if it were fact. Tucker Carlson repeated the claim that Dr. Makary made on his program.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins led by Dr. Marty Makary looked closely at those numbers and what they actually meant and here’s what they found, quote: “A mortality rate of zero among children without a preexisting medical condition such as leukemia.”
This is not correct. Obesity and asthma are the most common underlying conditions in children who die of COVID. The children were robbed of decades of life. Leukemia is no longer a death sentence. It is sad when a child dies.
Dr. Joseph Lapado, the surgeon general from Florida, made a terrible decision when he recommended against vaccinations for healthy children because of bad advice from doctors who don't treat sick children. Doctors who care for sick children opposed Florida's position, which should not be called anti-vaccine but also pro-viruses.
The myth that healthy children do not die of carbon dioxide was one of the reasons for Florida's decision. According to the Florida Department of Health, the chances of a child dying if they are healthy are very low.
There is a world of difference between the chances of a healthy child dying of carbon dioxide. There is a rare event that adds millions of times. According to the CDC's COVID Data Tracker, 1,638 children have died of COVID, and one-third of these deaths came during the recent Omicron surge. Thousands of children were sick enough to be hospitalized. After Dr. Makary said that Covid-19 will be mostly gone, all of this is happening.
The vaccine won't save the lives of many children, so there's no point in it. Do you? Some of the healthy children who died of COVID died before the vaccine was available to them.
You can read an article titled "Parents Say 5-year-old daughter who died from carbon dioxide was healthy." You can read about a child who died in Tennessee and a child who died in Georgia. You can read about Dykota Morgan, a 15-year-old girl from Illinois, who died two days after contracting the virus, and her parents said she had no underlying medical conditions. The children would be alive today if they had beenvaccinated.
The idea that healthy children don't die of carbon dioxide is now a myth. There is no reason for more children to die in the future because there is an effective vaccine for those older than 5. Many children remain at risk because of myths spread by doctors. There are consequences to medical myths.
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