Young boys are showing higher rates of adverse health reactions after Covid-19 vaccination compared to girls and older individuals. This study looked at hospitalization rates for non-vaccinated children ages 12-17 and compared this to hospitalization rates after a first, second and third dose of the Pfizer BNT152b2 vaccine. After receiving their second vaccination, boys age 12-15 were 2.8 times more likely to be hospitalized than boys not receiving the vaccine. This demonstrates the benefit of vaccination is clearly not supported in this younger age-group and apparently detrimental. However, boys with comorbidities did show some risk benefit - continue reading below..
...........................................................
Boys with at least one comorbidity (obesity, diabetes etc), do appear to have a reduced risk of hospitalization. It was also stated that if the child at any point did have a natural infection (which can be quantified by natural antibodies), there was no benefit seen from vaccination, thereby suggesting no medical reason to vaccinate a child who has previously had a natural COVID-19 infection.
ABSTRACT
Male patients ages 12–17 years have an elevated risk of mRNA vaccination-associated myo/pericarditis. A risk-benefit analysis of first and second doses of mRNA vaccination in adolescent boys by health status and history of SARS-CoV-2 infection has not been performed.
Methods
Using the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), we identified BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech) myo/pericarditis occurrence according to CDC criteria. Main outcomes were as follows: 1) post-vaccination myo/pericarditis crude incidence in adolescents aged 12–15 and 16–17; and 2) two risk-benefit analyses by age, sex, comorbidity, variant and history of infection.
Results
Cases of myo/pericarditis (n = 253) included 129 after dose 1 and 124 after dose 2, 86.9% were hospitalized. Incidence per million after dose two in male patients aged 12–15 and 16–17 was 162.2 and 93.0, respectively. Weighing post-vaccination myo/pericarditis against COVID-19 hospitalization during delta, our risk-benefit analysis suggests that among 12–17-year-olds, two-dose vaccination was uniformly favourable only in nonimmune girls with a comorbidity. In boys with prior infection and no comorbidities, even one dose carried more risk than benefit according to international estimates. In the setting of omicron, one dose may be protective in nonimmune children, but dose two does not appear to confer additional benefit at a population level.
Conclusions
Our findings strongly support individualized paediatric COVID-19 vaccination strategies which weigh protection against severe disease vs. risks of vaccine-associated myo/pericarditis. Research is needed into the nature and implications of this adverse effect as well as immunization strategies which reduce harms in this overall low-risk cohort.