Jeff Coller, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of RNA Biology and Therapeutics at Johns Hopkins University, shared on LinkedIn:
“On Sunday, the Secretary of Health and Human Services asked a CNN anchor to show him one study demonstrating that children were protected by the COVID-19 vaccine.
I can show him four. All four were published before the interview aired. Two of them came out of his own department.
1.Zambrano et al., MMWR, 2022
Among 445 hospitalized adolescents, 180 of whom required intensive care, vaccination was 94% effective against hospitalization and 98% effective against the need for life support. All 7 deaths in the study occurred in unvaccinated patients.
2.Irving et al., MMWR, December 11, 2025
CDC’s VISION Network, data running through September 2025. Effectiveness of 76% against medically attended COVID-19 in children 9 months to 4 years of age.
3.Canadian Immunization Research Network, Vaccine, 2024
More than one million children aged 5 to 11. Effectiveness against hospitalization of 93% shortly after the second dose, declining to 63% at four months.
4.Meta-analysis, Pediatric Rheumatology, 2023
Pooled odds ratio of 0.04 for multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children among vaccinated children.
Now the harder half, which I have no interest in pretending away. Myocarditis after mRNA vaccination is real. In males aged 12 to 17, the highest-risk group, rates ranged from 70.3 to 105.9 cases per million second doses. That is roughly 1 in 9,400 to 1 in 14,200, the same order of magnitude as an American’s lifetime odds of being struck by lightning, which the National Weather Service puts at 1 in 15,300. Like a lightning strike, it is an event the great majority of people survive. The post-approval study behind FDA’s 2025 label expansion found abnormal cardiac MRI findings persisting at a median of roughly 5 months. Clinical recovery has been the norm, radiographic recovery is still being characterized, and follow-up continues. That risk belongs on the label, and it is on the label.
Here is what a parent is actually weighing. The same condition, myocarditis, follows SARS-CoV-2 infection at roughly 7 to 15 times the rate seen after vaccination, across multiple independent analyses including a cohort of nearly 43 million people. And the children at greatest risk from the disease, infants 6 to 23 months, are the children at lowest risk of the cardiac side effect. That age group accounts for 41% of pediatric COVID-19 hospitalizations, and 54% of those infants had no underlying medical condition.
The ask was one study. The literature holds hundreds. Wanting to see the evidence is a fair demand from any parent, and a peculiar one from the official who runs the agency that produced it.”
You can also read:
New Analysis Challenges the Claim That COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines Improve Immunotherapy Outcomes