The Swedish Public Health Agency's decision to vaccinate 12-year-olds against COVID-19 is contrary to established science and could lead to drastic health consequences, a group of 24 doctors have claimed in an opinion piece in the medical newspaper Läkartidningen.
The doctors called the decision to inoculate “hundreds of thousands of healthy children” against a disease “that in most people only gives mild symptoms or is asymptomatic” “incomprehensible”, emphasising that the risk of children dying from COVID-19, or its complications like multi-inflammatory syndrome, is “virtually non-existent”. The decision to vaccinate was therefore called “unscientific” and “contrary to proven experience”.
By 20 September 2021, 76,295 reports on the side effects of COVID-19 vaccines had been received in Sweden, of which 6,017 have so far been judged to be serious, the doctors emphasised, urging the authorities not to repeat the mistakes from historic botched vaccinations.
“Under no circumstances should we repeat the tragedies of recent decades that can be linked to vaccines. Pandemrix against swine flu caused narcolepsy in at least 350 Swedish children. Dengvaxia, a vaccine against dengue fever, was like the COVID-19 vaccines introduced before the trials ended. 19 children died before the vaccinations were stopped,” the 24 doctors wrote.
They also pointed out that a recent infection provides immunity that is significantly better and lasts longer than the one obtained from vaccination. As many children already have immunity, and children belonging to risk groups have already been offered vaccines, the vaccination appears to be unnecessary, they argued.
Lastly, the emphasised that all COVID-19 vaccines only have conditional approval.
“This means that we are in a phase 3 study of a drug trial. Regarding safety data, we only have a limited amount of short-term data and no long-term data for adults. In addition, a new technology is used, the mRNA vaccine, which has never before been approved for use in humans. The vaccines now being used on a large scale may not even be approved in the end,” the doctors suggested.
“There is a big difference between vaccinating a 70-year-old and a 12-year-old child, whose immunological and neurological systems are still developing. This makes children potentially more vulnerable and susceptible to side effects than adults. All known and unknown risks must be weighed against the benefits of vaccination, and for us it is incomprehensible that one could have argued in favour of mass vaccination against COVID-19 in healthy children.”, the signatories concluded.
Last week, the Swedish Public Health Agency recommended general vaccination against COVID-19 for children starting from the age of 12. The authority stressed that the decision is based on the assessment that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the disadvantages.
Numerous nations across the globe, including France, Italy and Germany, are now in the process of inoculating children against COVID-19.