Pushed Hard for Child-Vaccination Despite own Research Showing it was Needless

Two Icelandic doctors were instrumental in pushing for the vaccination of young children in late 2021 and early 2022, while their own research data had already shown it wasn't needed.

According to a study recently published in the Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, the risk of Covid-19 to children is truly minuscule. The study tracks the outcomes for Icelandic children with a verified Covid-19 infection, all the children tested positive during the study period, and the conclusion is that out of the 1,749 children tracked, none had severe symptoms and no child needed hospitalization. A fifth of the children showed no symptoms.

It is interesting therefore, that as Icelandic health-authorities decided to offer Covid-19 vaccination to 5-11 year old children, starting early this year, two of the four authors were among the most vocal advocates of the policy.

At the time, the health risks related to Covid-19 vaccines were becoming increasingly clear, with the rate of reported serious adverse effects in Iceland 75-fold the rate for flu vaccines in 2019. The French Medical Academy had recommended against vaccinating healthy young children, Swedish authorities had decided not to offer them vaccination and the JCVI had recommended against it. But Icelandic authorities decided to go ahead with an organized campaign. 

Earlier, the new study’s lead researcher, Dr. Valtyr Thors, a prominent pediatrician, had said vaccination was not needed for young children, but in January 2022 he suddenly reversed his opinion, and strongly recommended vaccination to “protect children against infection and serious illness”. At that time, the Omicron variant had already taken over in Iceland, and numbers already showed vaccine protection against infection to be negative.

Late December 2021, another author, pediatrician Dr. Asgeir Haraldsson, professor of medicine at the University of Iceland, said 5-10 out of every thousand healthy children would need hospitalization after Covid-19 infection and strongly recommended vaccination, claiming new variants, both Delta and Omicron, posed a considerably higher threat to children than previous variants.

The study shows only 12% of infections among children occured in school. However, in late 2021 the importance of keeping schools open was repeatedly mentioned as an additional justification for the vaccination of children. In December 2021 Dr. Thors claimed infections in schools were a major problem and chief epidemiologist Dr. Thorolfur Gudnason suggested lifting quarantine requirements for vaccinated children under 16, while keeping them in place for the unvaccinated.

The new study was conducted between February 20th 2020 and August 31st 2021. It may thus be assumed that by December 2021, as they pushed for the vaccination of young children, the two authors already knew severe illness was extremely rare among children in this age-group, and that the estimate of 5-10 hospitalizations per 1,000 children was far off the mark. Even further off than before, as at the time it was already clear how much milder the Omicron variant was in general. And in early January it was clear also how little protection against the Omicron variant the vaccines provided, if any at all.