Children vaccinated against Covid are infectious for the same amount of time as their non-vaccinated peers, a new study out of California has found. The Mail has more.
Whether or not students had received their bivalent Covid booster made no difference to the length of time they shed pieces of the virus after testing positive.
Both groups of kids aged seven to 18 were infectious for three days on average, according to the results from April to September 2022.
The study adds more doubt about the importance of giving Covid booster shots to children. Until earlier this year, several states including California and Illinois mandated the vaccines in schools.
Experts from Stanford University and the University of California, Los Angeles, who carried out the study: “Return-to-school policies may not need to discriminate by vaccine or booster status.”
Crucially, though, lead author Dr. Neeraj Sood said the team did not look at the vaccines’ abilities to prevent infection in the first place. …
The report was published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.
The 76 children involved in the study were from the Los Angeles-area included in the study ranged in age children seven to 18 years old.
The goal was to measure the impact of the virus on the children’s cells to better understand how it behaves and for how long it is contagious.
The researchers studied their level of viral shedding, the number of virus particles that a child emits through coughing, sneezing, or talking that are then spread throughout the environment.
Every child tested positive for the COVID-19 Omicron variant. Of the 76 children, including 41 seven to 12-year-olds, 52 were vaccinated.
Children who had been vaccinated were infectious for three days, the same duration as children who were not vaccinated.
Researchers did not say whether they were surprised by their results. But what they found was similar to a study in adults with the Omicron variant, which also could not find an association between the length of time that a person is contagious and their vaccination status.
Worth reading in full.
Meanwhile, the FDA has found that the Covid vaccine may be linked to an increase in stroke risk of up to 35% when given alongside a high-dose flu shot – though oddly say the blame may lie with the flu shot! From the Mail.
A new analysis by the Food and Drug Administration found the link was clearest in adults over 85 and only applied to the Pfizer and Moderna bivalent Covid booster vaccines.
The FDA said the risk might stem from the flu vaccine alone and be completely unrelated to the Covid shots. Regardless, the report said the risk is still very small.
There were roughly three strokes or stroke-like events called transient ischemic attacks for every 100,000 doses given.
For comparison, in 2022 the death rate from Covid in over-85s was 1,224 per 100,000, with U.S. health experts saying vaccination still outweighs the small risk.
It is the second analysis by health officials to flag a possible association with strokes and seniors after getting the combination of seasonal vaccines. …
The group that received a high-dose flu shot and the Moderna bivalent booster had an increased risk of a transient or ‘mini’ stroke of 35%.
The group that got a flu shot and the bivalent Pfizer booster had a 20% increased risk.
Further analysis into the link between stroke and flu vaccines alone among more than 6.9 million seniors found that shot increased their risk of stroke by about nine percent, a small yet significant rise.
Because researchers could not find a statistically significant link between stroke and Covid boosters alone, this finding suggested to researchers that it was perhaps the flu vaccine alone that was driving stroke risk.
So the experimental Covid jabs are safe, but the established flu shots may be dangerous – even though vaccine adverse event reports for the Covid years were 30-40 times higher than in previous years? Methinks there is something wrong with this analysis.
Stop Press: The WHO has said healthy children and teens don’t need Covid vaccinations. Well, its a start.
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