Throwing Our Kids at Covid
Let’s stop jettisoning our joeys into pharma’s pockets
America is still scared. Many of us have been living in a constant state of anxiety for well over a year-and-a-half, prodded on by our government, media, friends and endless social media scroll. Keeping people in a protracted state of fear isn’t wise, because people end up doing strange, otherwise inexplicable things when they’re scared.
Animals, too. Take the kangaroo. Generally speaking, kangaroo mamas are super sweet and chill with their little joeys. I mean, have a look… can you feel the love? Add in a dingo nipping at its heels, though, and we’ve got a different story. Kanga mom now has no qualms, apparently, throwing Joey overboard. She’ll happily lighten her load a bit while simultaneously offering up a little something to the dingo to fend off her own demise. She doesn’t think about it or plan it — it just happens. Fear instinct.
Our failed national response to Covid has turned our country into one giant mama kangaroo. We offer up our collective young to Pfizer in the desperate hope of escaping the worst personal and societal effects of Covid.
Moms (and dads, of course) are hardwired to protect their kids. It’s been a given that people generally do what’s best for their kids… at the very least, what they think is best. Just like in the animal kingdom, in normal times, most parents can be counted on to keep their kids safe. And just like with the kangaroos, throw in a mega-dose of danger and fear, and all bets are off.
At the start of the pandemic (or “panic,” if you prefer, as I do), it was all about isolating to stay safe. Schools went remote and parents made sacrifices, often quitting jobs to stay with little ones now learning at home all day. Lives were majorly disrupted, but a promise gleamed on the horizon: once a vaccine is available and people start getting it, you can get your lives back.
Month after month, sober public health pronouncements and cable news reports featuring Covid death tickers encouraged the fear to continue unabated. When the vaccines did finally arrive, many scrambled for the opportunity to be first in line. As we headed down the age scale, with younger and younger people “doing their part” and getting jabbed, the percentages necessary for the elusive “herd immunity” headed higher and higher. There seemed no way out of the Covid panic short of everyone in the country getting on board the jab train. Only then could the panic abate, and the freaked-out kanga finally regain some “peace of mind.”
Enter the recent FDA Emergency Use Authorization of the Pfizer shot for kids ages 5–11. The kids will save us, they said; they’re the only thing that can. All discussion of recovered immunity is hand-waved away. The up-to-40% of kids in the U.S. who have already had Covid will still need the jab, of course. Vaccinating kids is a great way to protect them from this dangerous disease, after all, and once all the kids are jabbed, then we’ll *really* be able to leave this thing in the dust.
In reality, of course, little Joey has almost no chance (zero, statistically speaking) of getting seriously ill from Covid. There is no actual “emergency” among the age bracket to justify the vaccine’s Emergency Use Authorization. Forget logic and actual public health, though. The built-up reservoir of fear requires a response, a massive push to vaccinate him and all his friends as soon as possible. We can do the right thing for our kids, and the world, and possibly win free college tuition (or cash for candy)? Roll up those sleeves and let them give you that sciency “jab” while we proudly post the moment to Twitter. Even Big Bird is doing it!
To even question the rush to vaccinate the young and healthy is tantamount to declaring you want people to keep dying and the pandemic to continue forever (never mind that some of the most informed minds argue it may actually make things worse…). We don’t need to think about it, they assure us — in fact, it’s best if we don’t. We simply need to listen to the authorities and our similarly fear-addled friends, family and assorted societal nags. We just need to pull Joey out of our pouch and hurl him toward the nearest vax clinic. Because science. We’ll feel lighter and less guilty when we do, like one of the good people. With one aggregate fling, we’ll be doing our part to keep Covid at bay.
Well, as Joey is bouncing in the dirt, perhaps a quick review of the science: it turns out the cranks telling us we may want to slow our collective roll have a point. The precautionary principle exists for a reason, after all. Vaccine-induced myocarditis and pericarditis, especially in boys and young men, appear to be present at multiple times the background rate. (Let’s get right on that problem by… changing the definition. Just like we did for vaccines, herd immunity, anti-vaxxer, unvaccinated, gain-of-function…). There’s evidence that vaccine injuries have been suppressed (12-year-old Maddie de Garay just had a little stomach pain, per Pfizer), and any potential long-term dangers haven’t even begun to surface. Do a little digging and you’ll find plenty of worrying “signal” out there (not that anyone’s keeping track). But, hey, according to FDA advisor Dr. Eric Rubin, “We’re never going to learn about how safe this vaccine is unless we start giving it.” So, what are we waiting for, amirite?
Interestingly, there happens to be a newly added ingredient in the as-yet-untested-on-kids-but-approved-for-kids Pfizer jab formulation. It’s called tromethamene and is typically used to — get this — stabilize people who’ve had heart attacks. Hmm. And, hey, did you know that this past summer the FDA approved the first-ever oral blood-thinning medicine for kids — you know, in case we start to see a huge increase in clotting problems. Oh, and they’ve started PSAs about how strokes are not just an old person thing… kids get them too, silly! Nice timing, huh?
With such clear dangers to children from these vaccines (and no apparent “off-ramps” from a life of continual booster shots, once innate or recovered immunity is compromised), even the claim that, overall, many lives are saved isn’t quite the slam dunk vax defenders suppose. Are we allowed to wonder at the respective ages of the lives saved and lost, and question whether the massive medical experiment being perpetrated on our children has been one huge, disgusting intergenerational life-exchange?
We used to agree, as a society, that young lives are to be protected, even if it means that the old must make a sacrifice. Apparently, that calculus has been turned upside-down. Once the dangers to kids of the Covid shots had been made apparent, they not only had to be downplayed, but normalized: yes, kids may be in slightly more peril from the shots than from the disease itself, but the shots will help us all move on from Covid restrictions and save lives.
Implicit in the argument is that the lives saved will be elderly, and those risked will be young. But, hey, it’s all part of the grand societal bargain, right? Kids risk their lives to protect the old and it’s always been that way, right? You don’t want to kill Grandma, do you? And not only are they protecting the old, their sacrifice is also helping to enrich the pharmaceutical companies and their investors, and what could be more American than that?
Maybe a new expression of appreciation can join the American lexicon, similar to when we run across a veteran and thank them for their service. When we see a child on the street in the coming years, perhaps wheelchair-bound or otherwise struggling, we can say, “Thank you for your service. You and your parents helped 85-year-olds live another 0.3 years and added untold billions to Pfizer’s bottom-line. Joey, a grateful country thanks you for your sacrifice.”
