We’re Failing to Make Basic Risk Assessments for Kids

BUCK: Why should kids get the shot? It’s a fair question, right? I think we’re allowed to ask the question. I don’t know. They’ll probably come after me for just asking. But why should children — given the risk parameters — get the shot, right? This is something that we should all ask. The push for that is gonna be even more.

Last week they were talking — on Friday, even — about Omicron might be more dangerous to kids, and then they said, “Well, hold on. Where is the data on that?” Turns out there really isn’t any, no meaningful data. They found a cluster of one place where there seemed to be a slight uptick in child hospitalizations. But we’re talking about a handful of children, a small number.

I think it might even been in the single digits. It’s not a lot. So you say, “Okay. Well, then why would they even say that?” Ah, well, if they have to lead you in the direction of every man, woman, and child in the country and in fact the world… And remember that. They want the whole world vaccinated. I mean, all — what are we at — seven billion people? And everyone who doesn’t do it is, according to the consensus in this country, the likely petri dish.

They have actually no idea, right? They can never really track this stuff to one individual but they’re putting people at risk for more variants if you don’t get the shot. That is the consensus opinion from the Fauciites, including children I would suppose. I don’t know. There’s so much here that’s still underway and under discussion. But at what level of risk are kids?

Marc Lamont Hill is a Democrat, he’s a friend of mine, and he does a show called UpFront. Well, he, because he’s a Democrat, can actually get access to people that will not come on this show. And he asked Francis Collins a real question about why should children…? Remember, the NIH chief (for anyone who wants to know) is the head of the National Institutes of Health. Here is what this bureaucrat says.

COLLINS: I’m not sure when you give that percentage that that really conveys what most people are worried about: Is my kid at risk? I mean, go to any pediatric ICU in the country and you will see kids there with covid, some of whom are on respirators as a result, and we have seen 145 children die — uhhh, these are kids between the age of 5 and 11 — of covid-19, many of them without any predisposing medical condition that made you think they’d be vulnerable. So it may be uncommon, but it’s certainly not unheard of for kids to get really sick.

BUCK: Clay, I know you’re fired up about this and have all the data. I just wanted to say Marc, Marc Lamont Hill there said, I think, .05 or .005, I forget — a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage — end up even in the hospital when you’re talking about children. And that was his response. And to me it’s like saying, “Are you really gonna get in a car? I’ll show you a car accident victim when the car caught on fire. You’ll never get in a car again.”

CLAY: It is, to me, the most insufferable and indefensible part of the covid monstrosity that people have tried to take advantage of parental fears. I am a parent, 13-year-old, 11-year-old, 7-year-old. I know like every parent does your worst nightmare is something happening to your kid of a negative health consequence, and I hope most people out there haven’t had to deal with it.

But anybody that has knows that is a feeling in the pit of your stomach that never goes away. So when the director of the NIH talks about kids on ventilators railroad kids struggling to respond to don’t have, he did to his credit share the numbers around 130 kids have died with covid. Almost all those kids have severe comorbidities. But in the age of 5 to 11, Buck, there are 28 million kids in this country.

And I’m just gonna keep hammering it home because I think this is significant. Your kids are under more danger when you drive them to and from school, of death. Your kids are under more danger of dying of the seasonal flu. Your kids are under more danger of drowning than they are of covid. Your kids are under more danger-of-being murdered. Okay? So let’s use murder as an example.

If you were sending your kid to school every day in a full suit of body-proofing armor, they would be less likely to die if they got shot. But they also would be wildly uncomfortable, and most parents would say, “Hey, I think that’s an overreaction to the risk.” If you insisted that your kids wear arm floaties everywhere we went in case they might come in contact with a pool of water and otherwise drown, most people would say, “Hey, I don’t know that you need to have the kid in arm floaties all day long.”

If you put your kid in bubble wrap when they rode in the car with you to and from any destination, I think most people would say, “Hey, I don’t know that the bubble wrap and the helmet is necessary.” All of those things are more dangerous to your kids than covid. So when you put your kid in a mask — which does nothing to protect the kid, by the way — you are basically putting your kid in arm floaties and telling him to wear them everywhere in case he comes in contact at some point with water so he doesn’t drown.

Okay? All of this is madness. And again, murder is incredibly rare of young children; it is far more common. Dying of the seasonal flu is incredibly rare. The doctor could have said this every year. Well, you may not take the flu seriously, but if you go to any pediatric hospital in America, there are kids who are close to death from the flu. I wish no kid ever died. I wish we could eliminate it forever. We can’t.

The role of a parent, Buck, is to analyze risk and to use that risk analysis in an intelligent fashion. Credit to Marc Lamont Hill for asking that question. There’s no reason for kids to get vaccinated. They aren’t under danger from covid. Many of them, maybe even half of them or more have already had covid. You just didn’t know because most of them have it and don’t even have any symptoms, or experience it like a small cold. This is a form of madness that we have gotten focused on children and the covid vaccine at all.

BUCK: It just strikes me that the head of the National Institutes of Health essentially makes an emotional appeal to people with go look at children in the ICU and tell me they shouldn’t get the shot.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: To which I would just say, “Okay, well, would you feel comfortable getting into a car if you see what happens to some people who get into a car, some children who get into a car accident and have terrible, lifelong injuries?” Of course that’s going to scare you. But you can’t live your life that way. This is a little bit like the doctors… Clay, you played sports growing up. I played sports growing up. There are always doctors you’d go to who’d say, “Look, if you never want to sprain that ankle again or pull that hamstring again, just don’t play sports.”

The are doctors will tell you, “Look, the only way to be safe is just not to do the thing.” So maybe just take up golf and do indoor swimming or something. But a lot of people say, “No, I actually… Even if it means I tear my ACL, even if it means that I’m gonna have some risk, I want to make that decision.” It’s like the doctors that want everyone to live in hermetically sealed bubbles all the time are the ones that are making the decisions at the top of the government right now.

At a philosophical level, that’s the problem. Their risk assessment is horrible. And it’s because the left and the Democrat Party created this outsized fear during Trump because it was useful politically and now they can’t control it. Now you got people double masking outside by themselves. And just one more thing. Why can’t Fauci and Collins and the others come out and say, “Hey, everybody, some of this stuff you’re doing is actually excessive?”

They never do that. They could calm people down so much. Think of the benefit it would have in New York, San Francisco, L.A., Chicago — all these cities where people walk around double masked outside — if they just said, “Guys, get the vaccine.” This is what they could say. “Everybody should get the vaccine without exception,” right? We put that aside for a second just say, “But you don’t have to wear masks outside, guys.” They could just dial the temperature down a little bit. They have no interest in doing that, ever.

CLAY: Even if they just said, “Get the vaccine and you really don’t have to worry about covid. It could still impact you —

BUCK: Yes.

CLAY: “– but statically it’s very small chance.”

BUCK: Even better example.

CLAY: And did you see, by the way, London Breed, the mayor of San Francisco, was out partying without a mask indoors again; proving that many of the people who are putting restrictions on all of us are not willing to follow their own restrictions?