My NEW op-ed is out in @usnews!
Mandating 12-18 year old kids get 2 doses of COVID19 vaccine & throwing them out of school if they don't is one of the most regressive, dangerous, and misguided policies in recent years, and I condemn it

Some thoughts 🧡
usnews.com/opinion/articl…
1. How can LA mandate 2 doses for boys aged 12 to 22 when our peer nations do not support 2 doses, given risk of myocarditis?

Same science
Same data
Mandate 2 vs. optional 1?
You can't use power of mandate for science that is not settled
2. The current policies are so restrictive that you can't even space the doses out to 12 weeks, as Norway is attempting to lower risk of myocarditis.

Why is there no flexibility in these policies?
3. The former FDA commissioner and Board member of Pfizer, Scott Gottlieb, urges that parents should have some say in when and how to vaccinate kids

What about kids s/p covid w/ natural immunity?

Yet these policies preclude it!
4. Throwing kids out of school for not complying
will mean throwing some of the poorest kids in USA out

After society failed these children by WRONGLY depriving them of a year of school

Shame on us...
Punishing kids in LA is not solution to adult vaccine hesitancy elsewhere
5. This is not like other vaccines
Kids 12 to 15 is under auspices of EUA only
Peer nations are making different choices
Information on safety changes by the day
This is not like other mandates
6. Americans have repeatedly taken out their rage and frustration on children with prolonged school closure, and now this.

When the dust settles our country & this generation is going to be so broken from these actions.

I pray they forgive us; we failed them.
7. I am pro vaccination, and have personally Rx countless vaccines (they are used in post transplant setting)

Also Listen to my 1 hour defense of vaccination

But let me be clear, this policy risks serious harm to these kids.

It is regressive.

honestlypod.com/podcast/episod…
8. I have been a progressive my entire adult life; I believe government can be a powerful force of good if policies & incentives are constructed correctly. I believe society must help the least well off.
The theme of my 2 books.
Sadly, I no longer recognize many progressives.
9. Now this gentleman πŸ‘‡πŸ‘‡
Anthony LaMesa is a must follow on schools
He consistently understands what progressive policy means, and what putting kids first means

β€’ β€’ β€’

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
γ€€

Keep Current with Vinay Prasad, MD MPH πŸŽ™οΈπŸ“·

Vinay Prasad, MD MPH πŸŽ™οΈπŸ“· Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @VPrasadMDMPH

29 Sep
Just like the examples in this article, celebrating that working class people are being fired over vaccine mandates is not my idea of progressivism

Losing a job in America is a serious punishment and many of these people worked hard for many years...

vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/progressivis…
... many of these people who are losing their jobs right now risk their own personal safety to work in the hospital before there was a vaccine. When you needed them.

These people don't disappear from America either, and their fate is tied to all our fate.
Pressuring people to get vaccinated will increase vaccination rate some fraction and that will provide some marginal extra protection to people who've already chosen to be vaccinated, but it will also lead to firings and that will provide negative countervailing results..
Read 4 tweets
24 Sep
The CDC director, a political appointee, siding with the President, & his pre-ordained plan, against the advice of the ACIP advisors, with 0 RCTs measuring clinical outcomes & no idea of adverse events is not "doing one's job" it is politics > science, precisely what we feared 🧡
The process that led up to Pfizer booster is someday going to be seen as what many dreaded during the Trump administration.

The White House decided during the week of Sept 20, boosters will be made available, and all gears of drug regulation made it happen
Consider the 24 year old male health care aid living in Seattle who received 2 doses of Pfizer vax, and is now granted a path to take dose 3.

Can any medical expert answer 2 questions:
Do the benefits exceed the harms to this individual?
Is he a 'safer' employee?
Read 16 tweets
17 Sep
The path back to normal will be rocky

Much of it is the fault of distorted news/ social media

People need to realize a few things
[thread]

nytimes.com/2021/09/07/us/…
First, the best thing an adult can do to lower their own risk of bad covid outcomes is get vaccinated

Second, over the next decade it is inevitable that all people on earth will encounter the virus. Just a matter of time, but cannot be avoided
Third, after vaccination, you will have as good chances as you can possibly have

Fourth, life is not zero risk; never has been, never will be
We have always accepted risk, and we will yet again (many already are)
Read 11 tweets
16 Sep
Asymptomatic testing of highly vaccinated young populations (e.g college) serves no purpose.
1. No one will follow similar restrictions off campus (aka pointless)
2. These kids are going to get SarsCOV 2 eventually (endemic)
3. It will disrupt their life
4. Policies...
In response make no sense
Masking outdoors
5. Most of the regions doing this are not the regions suffering from delta wave. In fact the place suffering from delta wave won't do it, and the places with high vaccination will do it.
6 mostly signaling
7. College kids protested Vietnam b/c they understood how pointless it was; They have not yet protested this b/c they have been deceived into thinking it helps. Sad times.
Read 4 tweets
15 Sep
This NEJM booster paper DOES NOT justify mass population boosting

4 issues
1. People who get boosters and those who do not are TOTALLY different people. Look at table 1.
This is confounding by indication/ diff. people/ diff behavior
2. The effect size for severe disease is RR 20!
Too good to be true.
An RCT will be fast to exclude a benefit of this size (its just resid. confounding)
3. The benefit on any disease is smaller than on severe disease, which makes less sense from an Ab point of view (should be opposite), and more from the type of people getting booster point of view.
Read 6 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(