Are COVID vaccines safe for kids?

In an interview on the Tucker Carlson Show, Dr. Mary Talley Bowden claims that COVID-19 vaccines cause mass deaths, are unsafe for kids, and lack proper approval.

Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, an ENT and sleep specialist, is the founder of Americans for Health Freedom, a group that often shares ideas that contradict medical science and have been proven wrong.

In this case, she claims that COVID vaccines have caused 38,000 deaths and that they should have been removed from the market. But that number comes from VAERS, a public system where anyone can report health problems after getting a vaccine—even if the vaccine didn’t actually cause the problem. The CDC and FDA check out serious reports, but just being listed in VAERS doesn’t mean the vaccine caused a death or adverse event. Many reports are missing information, haven’t been confirmed, or have nothing to do with the vaccine.

We know that COVID vaccination has saved millions of lives in the United States. One study found that, by November 2022, vaccines helped prevent more than 3 million deaths and 18 million hospitalizations across the country. Vaccines are vital in reducing serious illness and saving lives.

The video also claims that the FDA and CDC added COVID vaccines to the schedule of vaccines for kids even though they aren’t fully approved for children under 12. That’s not true. These vaccines have gone through careful testing, and some versions are fully approved for certain age groups. If a vaccine is allowed under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), it still means the FDA checked a lot of data to make sure it’s safe and works for children. EUA is often used during health emergencies when time is important, but it still requires strong safety testing.

Although COVID often causes milder symptoms in children compared to adults, it can still lead to severe illness. From December 19, 2021, to February 19, 2022, hospitalization rates for children aged 0–4 years reached 14.5 per 100,000, and babies younger than 6 months accounted for 44% of these hospitalizations. About 63% of hospitalized children had no underlying health conditions. COVID can be serious for children, which we can prevent by vaccinating children over 6 months old and through maternal vaccination during pregnancy to protect infants who are too young to be vaccinated.