With children as young as six months now cleared to get COVID vaccine shots under a controversial federal recommendation, President Biden bragged that only the United States was taking such an approach.
Biden and his wife Jill were visiting the COVID Center at the Church of the Holy Communion in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday.
“We’re the only country in the world doing this right now,” Biden boasted. “This is a great day for you all. Thanks for the example you are setting.”
“Everybody knows I like kids better than people,” Biden quipped.
One little boy was “curled up in his mom’s arms crying after his shot,” The Daily Mail reported.
Later, speaking at the White House, Biden bragged again, “The United States is now the first country in the world that offers safe and effective COVID 19 Vaccines for children as young as six months old.”
The Kaiser Family Foundation reported last month polling results among parents about COVID vaccines for their children:
“About one in five parents of children under age 5 (18%) are eager to get their child vaccinated right away, while a larger share (38%) say they plan to wait a while to see how the vaccine is working for others,” Kaiser said in a report. “About four in ten parents of children under 5 are more reluctant to get their child vaccinated with 27% saying they will “definitely not” get their child vaccinated and 11% saying they will only do so if they are required. ”
Over the weekend, a federal advisory panel strongly recommended that young children get COVID-19 vaccines. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky celebrated. “We know millions of parents and caregivers are eager to get their young children vaccinated, and with today’s decision, they can,” Walensky said.
COVID expert Dr. Marty Makary, a public policy researcher at Johns Hopkins University, blasted the CDC decision.
“If the FDA is trying to take its already shattered reputation with the public and make it even worse, they’re doing that today,” Makary said.
“They’re about to authorize this COVID vaccine for 16 million children, 90-plus percent of whom have already had COVID, based on a small study of kids who did not have COVID,” he noted. “That was the condition to be in that study. So ignoring natural immunity is actually having significant implications now. And even that small study that showed that it works in kids, shows it didn’t work very well, as low as 30% effective in the first few months. And that goes down the drain after a few months.”