Dr. Ben Carson, Housing and Urban Development Secretary under President Donald Trump, criticized Covid-19 vaccinations for children ages 5 to 11 as "a giant experiment" during a Sunday appearance on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures."
Asked by anchor Maria Bartiromo whether he agreed with the recent Centers for Disease Control (CDC) decision to allow children to receive Pfizer's Covid vaccine, Carson definitively replied, "absolutely not."
Dr. Ben Carson on vaccinating children: "This is really a giant experiment. Do we want to put our children at risk when we know that the risk of the disease to them is relatively small, but we don't know what the future [vaccine] risks are? Why would we do a thing like that?" ?? pic.twitter.com/jp5MK4iKXm
— Scott Morefield (@SKMorefield) October 31, 2021
Carson, former director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center, went on to explain his reasoning:
The fact of the matter is, the mortality rate for children from COVID-19 is 0.025, which is very similar to the rate for seasonal flu. And we haven't been for years and years going through all these things for seasonal flu.
Plus, we don't know what the long-term impact of these vaccines is. So this is really sort of a giant experiment. Do we want to put our children at risk, when we know that the risk of the disease to them is relatively small, but we don't know what the future risks are? Why would we do a thing like that? It makes no sense whatsoever.
Dr. Eric Rubin, a voting member of a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory committee, admitted last week that the vaccine's ultimate safety profile won't be known fully until it begins being administered to children.
"We're never gonna learn about how safe the vaccine is until we start giving it," said Rubin. "That's just the way it goes."
