Mike Miller, my colleague, wrote Wednesday that the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), would most likely vote to amend its guidance and recommend the addition of COVID vaccines in the child and adult immunization schedules. They unanimously voted for this on Thursday:
Tucker Carlson questioned whether childhood COVID vaccines are safe and effective on Wednesday’s show. He also claimed that the CDC’s decision was a mandate to vax schoolchildren. While he acknowledged that the CDC guidance was not binding on the states, he argued many states follow it so that the effect is the exact same. Watch:
Carlson stated that the CDC sets the standard, and it is then required in all 50 states. The fact-checkers arrived on Thursday to challenge that statement, with the Associated Press and the Washington Post, ABC News and Politico arguing that Carlson is spreading misinformation. The Associated Press:
CLAIM: The CDC will make it mandatory for children to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
FACTS: This false claim gained momentum this week after Tucker Carlson, Fox News host, shared it.
The Associated Press continued by reporting that CDC had written in an email that it “only makes recommendations for vaccine use, while school-entry vaccination regulations are determined and enforced by states or local jurisdictions.”
Carlson claimed that “more than a dozen” states follow the CDC immunization schedule. This schedule is used to establish vaccination requirements for children. Fact-checkers countered by pointing out that Virginia and Massachusetts do not require annual flu shots to allow them to attend school, even though they appear on the CDC schedule.
Dr. William Schaffner is a Vanderbilt University Medical Center professor and a vaccine policy expert. He said that he didn’t know of any states which require all vaccines to be required to attend school. Schaffner stated that these are recommendations that will be sent to family doctors and pediatricians as they care for children. They are only recommendations. There are no mandates.
The CDC was also cheered by other mainstream media outlets, who were equally outraged that anyone would call it a “mandate.”
I have a question: If the new guidance is so insignificant, then why is the CDC is issuing it? Are we supposed to think that this will not have any effect? It will. It will. Blue state governors such as California’s Gavin Newsom or Illinois’ J.B. Pritzker have already read the new vax schedule and are likely to be eager to use it to impose mandates across the state. Parents don’t want to see their children get jabbed. Just look at the 9 per cent vaccination rate for kids under 5.
This is an excellent example of why people distrust institutions
According to the CDC, “Just because we include the Covid vaccine in the vaccination schedule doesn’t mean it is mandatory”
Then they’ll add it to their schedule
And then it will be mandated for millions of kids https://t.co/N1UnslaThX
— PoliMath (@politicalmath) October 20, 2022
Although fact-checkers might be correct in one respect, the CDC update does not mean that there is an automatic nationwide mandate for children to get vaccines to school. What is lost in all the fact-checking is the realization that many future children will have to receive the unneeded, unsafe vaccine in order to be educated. This is wrong.
