Ben Carson writes for the Washington Examiner about the Centers for Disease Control’s misguided ideas.
Last week, a CDC advisory council voted unanimously to add the novel COVID-19 mRNA vaccine to the childhood vaccination schedule. The schedule serves as a guideline for states and their schools. The decision means that, for much of the country, the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine will likely be a requirement for children to continue attending school, day care, after-school activities, and the like.
This is another egregious overreach from the federal government, once again justified under the name of “public health.” Over the last 2 1/2 years, Americans saw their most sacred liberties stripped away, such as the right to worship, the right to work for one’s living, and the right to speak one’s mind in the public square under this same justification.
Ultimately, it should be up to parents and children, not government officials and federal bureaucrats, to make the health decisions that are right for them. In fact, there are some very good reasons that parents might choose to forgo vaccination for their children. For example, the COVID-19 vaccine has been shown to cause myocarditis and other heart issues in young men, and it can even disrupt women’s menstrual cycles. But this isn’t just about freedom alone; it’s a bad policy decision, too.
For years now, we have known that COVID-19 poses little to no threat to young children — thank God. One study from England found that the risk of death for people under 18 years old was about 2 per million, or 0.0002%. The study also found that in total, 99.995% of young people with a positive COVID-19 test survived — and that doesn’t even include those who didn’t test or were asymptomatic! The truth is that this disease poses almost no risk to children.
