Vaccinating Pregnant Women And Kids Against COVID: Suspicion vs Science
06/08/2025
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“There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.”
-Hippocrates
Background. The announcement in May on X by Health Secretary RFK, Jr. that the CDC will no longer recommend COVID vaccinations for children over 6 months and pregnant women took the entire CDC by surprise. Kennedy’s decree represents a profound policy shift as well as a major assault on science-based medicine. It completely abandons established procedures for vaccine policy development. Normally, recommendations for vaccines are made by the CDC director based on votes by the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD), and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which meet in public with independent experts who review the evidence for vaccine safety and efficacy in order to make appropriate recommendations on their use. This review process was entirely bypassed. Kennedy made a solo decision without this sort of expert advice, public input, or peer review, which have long guided vaccine policy. This unvetted policy shift endangers vulnerable people, namely soon to be moms and their newborns who do not have a fully formed immune system, and young children. This surprise policy shift reflects Kennedy’s long-standing antipathy toward any vaccine. He is on record for claiming that there are no safe or effective vaccines. None.
Then, just days after Kennedy’s unilateral policy shift, the CDC came out with its own announcement that countermanded part of RFK, Jr’s. anti-vaccine mandate. The agency kept COVID shots on its schedule for kids 6 months to 17 years old, but did not change the vaccine denial for pregnant women even though the FDA has just cited pregnancy as a high-risk condition for severe COVID disease, and the CDC website continues to encourage pregnant women to get the vaccine. At this point, it is not clear which policy, Kennedy’s or the partial pushback policy from the CDC will rule.
Is Kennedy’s solo policy wise?
The evidence for vaccinating pregnant women. The scientific foundation supporting COVID-19 vaccination in pregnancy is overwhelming and unambiguous despite Kennedy’s notions. Consider the comprehensive systematic review of vaccinating over 17 million pregnant women, which found no safety concerns for COVID vaccination during pregnancy. Nada. This massive body of evidence, gathered across multiple countries and healthcare systems, demonstrates consistent COVID vax safety through all trimesters of pregnancy, with no increased risk for stillbirth, preterm birth, congenital malformations, or pre-eclampsia. This conclusion is further bolstered by numerous other studies, too. What is missing is any scientific evidence that the vaccine is dangerous for pregnant women or their fetuses. On the other hand, in contrast to the vaccine, COVID itself increases a pregnant woman’s chance for stillbirth, preterm birth, hospitalization, and death. This is because the pregnant woman is relatively immunosuppressed and more susceptible to various respiratory diseases including COVID. All countries, except the US now, believe that pregnancy is a risk factor for COVID. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) agrees with the FDA that pregnancy is one of the significant risk factors for serious COVID outcomes. For this reason, they too strongly recommend that pregnant women receive a COVID vaccine.
Furthermore, maternal vaccination is doubly effective: it not only protects the mother from high-risk COVID complications, it also provides crucial protection over her newborn’s first six months via antibodies that are transferred from the mother to the fetus across the placenta. These antibodies from COVID-immunized women protect the newborn while it develops its own immune system so it can make its own antibodies. Specifically, ACOG released the following statement in response to Kennedy’s zealous policy manifesto:
“ACOG is concerned about and extremely disappointed by the announcement that HHS will no longer recommend COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy. As ob-gyns who treat patients every day, we have seen firsthand how dangerous COVID-19 infection can be during pregnancy and for newborns who depend on maternal antibodies from the vaccine for protection. We also understand that despite the change in recommendations from HHS, the science has not changed. It is very clear that COVID-19 infection during pregnancy can be catastrophic and lead to major disability, and…. (t)he COVID-19 vaccine is safe during pregnancy, and…can protect our patients and their infants after birth.”
Thus, all the science shows that vaccination of pregnant women is a very good idea. Kennedy’s anti-science policy is not.
What about newborns who can’t be vaccinated because their immune systems are not developed? Kennedy’s policy change excluding soon-to-be mothers from vaccination creates an especially dangerous gap in protection for infants younger than 6 months old, who were previously protected by maternal vaccination during pregnancy. These babies, too young to be vaccinated themselves, relied entirely on antibodies transferred from vaccinated mothers for protection during their most vulnerable early months of life. By removing recommendations for maternal vaccination, the policy eliminates this critical shield for newborns who lack an immune system, leaving them exposed to a disease that can cause severe respiratory illness, multisystem inflammatory syndrome, and other serious complications. These newborns will have to wait until they develop their own immune systems in order to be able to fight off infections like that which causes COVID.
The evidence for vaccinating kids older than 6 months. Kennedy’s policy reversal against COVID vaccination in older children poses particularly grave risks for kids from the COVID complications described below.
The rational for not vaccinating kids is that since children are at less risk than seniors from significant COVID health problems, they don’t need vaccination against the CoV-2 virus, which causes the disease. However, data show that this benign notion is flawed. As of 2022, at least 1,800 children have died of COVID in the United States (that is the equivalent of six jumbo jet crashes). In other words, about 600 kids died each year from COVID, while the flu death rate in children only ranged from 39-199 per year since 2004. Thus COVID is much more lethal than influenza in children. Beyond these fully preventable COVID deaths, many more kids required hospitalization, including intensive care. In 2023, one million kids, or about 1.4% of children, came down with long COVID, the chronic problem that bedevils many COVID sufferers well after contracting the disease. In kids, long COVID problems include headache, fatigue, loss of IQ points, a variety of GI issues, and memory and other neurological problems. Neuroscience research has shown that young people who have recovered from COVID often show distinct changes in their brain activity as measured by scans while performing cognitive tasks.
Furthermore, kids can also develop a nasty multi-organ pathology known as Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome, or MIS. MIS occurs post-infection and can lead to organ failure and other long-term health problems. The condition is reminiscent of toxic shock syndrome where different organs, including the heart, brain, lungs, kidneys, skin, eyes and GI system can become inflamed and/or fail. More than half of COVID MIS cases are under nine years old.
All together, these facts provide sobering reminders that this disease is not benign in pediatric populations. Vaccination protects kids against serious COVID disease and death as well as against these complications of long COVID and MIS.
Despite these substantial problems kids can face from COVID, I keep encountering people who totally dismiss the disease in children simply because its effects are more devastating on older people with other co-morbidities. But, it really is a very poor reason to brush aside the effect of the disease in children simply because another demographic fares worse. It is even worse to use this argument to say that kids need not be vaccinated as Kennedy just did. In children, the mRNA vaccines are about 90% effective in preventing the disease and its complications, and this protection is durable. Other studies show that keeping kids up to date on COVID vaccines helps reduce illnesses, doctor visits, missed school, and complications from long COVID and MIS. Unvaccinated children were up to 20-times more likely to develop long COVID than those who were vaxed.
Bottom line. People who think that it is unnecessary to vaccinate pregnant women and young kids totally ignore well established science. As an immunology student, I remember learning some 50 years ago that maternal immunization provides important passive immunity for newborns from their mothers, giving babies time to develop their own immune systems. Furthermore, there is absolutely no credible evidence that such maternal vaccination harms the mother or the fetus. It also is abundantly clear that children over 6 months of age benefit in very important ways from COVID vaccination. Sure they seldom die from the virus, but all these deaths are preventable. Also, many more kids can and do succumb to serious complications from COVID that vaccination protects them from.
What rational person could be against protecting kids from a preventable disease?