Why do some people think that a Johns Hopkins study found zero deaths among healthy kids?
The usual suspects…
Did a Johns Hopkins Study Find Zero Deaths Among Healthy Kids?
Like the infamous Harvard study, this idea of a Johns Hopkins study of COVID deaths in kids is a great illustration of how anti-vaccine folks create propaganda about vaccines.
To begin with, there is no Johns Hopkins study!
Although Marty Makary, MD, MPH, the author, is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, that doesn’t make this a Johns Hopkins study.
Instead, what these folks are talking about is a study report, Risk Factors for COVID-19 Mortality among Privately Insured Patients, that was published posted by FAIR Health, the West Health Institute, and Marty Makary, a Surgical Oncologist and Fox News medical contributor.
What did his report find?
Marty Makary, who had predicted we would reach herd immunity levels of COVID protection by last April, has made grand claims for his report, saying it is evidence that COVID only kills kids with pre-existing conditions, like leukemia.
While he has been going so far as to try and use it to influence our childhood COVID vaccination strategy, it is very important to note that it is based on a very tiny dataset.
Unlike a CDC study which found that 25% of children who died with COVID had no pre-existing conditions among 121 deaths, as Jonathan Howard points out, Makary’s report only included three children who died!
That certainly doesn’t mean that only three children have died with COVID.
After all, the CDC lists at least 493 pediatric COVID deaths, which makes it very hard to understand why some people continue to downplay the effects of COVID on kids.
Think about it.
Not only was COVID a leading cause of death in pediatrics in 2020, it is killing many more kids than most other vaccine preventable diseases!
Sure, the numbers of COVID deaths in children are far lower than than those in adults, but that isn’t a reason to push the idea that kids shouldn’t be vaccinated, especially when a safe and effective vaccine is available for teens and will hopefully soon be available for younger kids.
Parents should think twice before listening to these folks when deciding on whether or not to vaccinate and protect their kids.
The Marty Makary Johns Hopkins Study Fact Check
Putting aside the fact that this isn’t even a study put out by Johns Hopkins, the Fair Health report by Marty Makary doesn’t really say anything about COVID deaths in children because of its severely limited dataset.
More on COVID Deaths in Children
- Are Kids Dying With COVID-19?
- Did the WHO Say That Children Should Not Be Vaccinated Against COVID?
- COVID Vaccines for Teens
- Kids and Young Adults Should Get a COVID-19 Vaccine
- About Those Urgent COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Warnings
- The Truth About COVID-19 Vaccines
- I’m Not Anti-Vaccine, I Just Don’t Believe in the COVID-19 Vaccine
- Inappropriate Use of Vaccine Studies
- Kids deserve the vaccine, too. It will keep them — and adults — safe.
- COVID-19 and Kids: Impacts, Uncertainties and the Role of Vaccines
- Session 1: The Impacts of COVID-19 on Children and Families
- AAP – Children and COVID-19: State-Level Data Report
- MMWR – SARS-CoV-2–Associated Deaths Among Persons Aged <21 Years — United States, February 12–July 31, 2020
- The Impact of Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic on U.S. and Canadian PICUs
- MMWR – Coronavirus Disease 2019 in Children — United States, February 12–April 2, 2020
- MMWR – Hospitalization Rates and Characteristics of Children Aged <18 Years Hospitalized with Laboratory-Confirmed COVID-19 — COVID-NET, 14 States, March 1–July 25, 2020
- MMWR – Hospitalization of Adolescents Aged 12–17 Years with Laboratory-Confirmed COVID-19 — COVID-NET, 14 States, March 1, 2020–April 24, 2021
- Myocarditis and COVID-19: A Tale of Two Articles
- Are COVID-19 Hospitalizations for Children Inflated?
- Should COVID-19 vaccines be administered to children under an emergency use authorization?
- COVID-19 and balancing the risks: The vaccine or the virus
- COVID-19 is Deadlier Than the Flu for Children
- Risk Factors for COVID-19 Mortality among Privately Insured Patients
- Misleading Wall Street Journal opinion piece makes the unsubstantiated claim that the U.S. will have herd immunity by April 2021
Makary > Howard
The difference between any pediatric aged patient dying “with” COVID as you mention above, or actually dying “of” COVID is another important distinction. Since the CDC has withdrawn the request to the FDA for emergency approval of the PCR test utilized since February 2020 (effective after 12-31-2021), there are questions as to the validity of the diagnosis of pediatric patients having COVID or another entity – such as influenza – over the last 18 months.
In the third paragraph of the Lab Alert from the CDC dated 7-21-2021, the CDC specifically recommends that any new testing protocol used by lab facilities have the ability for “detection and differentiation of SARS-Cov-2 and influenza viruses”. This was a “back-door” admission that they now realize the PCR test, for the past year, was ineffectively distinguishing a flu, or other infection, from actual COVID.
I anticipate a significant rise in cases and deaths from the flu when there is an accounting of actual mortality numbers in the (hopefully) near future. Not only for pediatric patients, but also for adults of all ages.
Actually you need to read the footnotes of the CDC’s COVID Data Tracker. The CDC’s chart “Deaths by Age Group” includes *probable* COVID-19 deaths where no confirmatory laboratory testing was performed. The CDC does not disclose how many deaths were confirmed with COVID-19 and how many were probable.
This is a really stupid post. The official CDC Infection Fatality Rate for children is .003. The 500 or so deaths is statistically close to zero. Compare COVID to pertussis or Small Pox as a reality check. The reason there is vaccine hesitation is that is not very deadly and the FDA does a really poor job. No vaccine is approved for children after 2 years.
FYI: Charts just listing deaths without the context of both: Total cases (not just “confirmed cases”) and Comorbidities, is useless. Overall death rates are extremely low when put in perspective (something the Covid hysteria can’t do).
Even “IF” you assumed all 500 children were “healthy” kids, it works out to this: 500/70M= 0.00071% (.71 per 100K). Rounded to 2 decimal places it’s statistically zero.
–> Would put it as the # 6, 5, 7 killer, respectfully, among ages 1-4, 5-14, 15-19. Yet they act like it’s the #1 killer/threat.
In reality “at least” 95% of those deaths will have a comorbidity. Therefore “healthy” children’s death rate is: ~25/70M= 0.000035% (<.035 per 100K) (<0.35 per 1M).
Children WITH health issues should absolutely be encouraged, via parents, to get vaccinated but…
HEALTHY KIDS absolutely do not need it…
I'm not being insensitive to death, just using pure objective math (some call it "science").
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