CDC published a study in Clinical Infectious Diseases on Aug 4, purporting to show that the Pfizer Covid vaccine reduces the chances of MIS-C (Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome) in children.

This substack post will show that the above study overstated the benefit of “Covid vaccines”, purposely undercounted Covid vaccinated children who had MIS-C, and used incorrect calculations to arrive at the purported benefit. When calculated properly, children who received Covid vaccines have a greater, not lower risk of MIS-C, compared to unvaccinated children.

Two extremely important warnings:

This substack post is long and may be difficult to understand because it discusses a complicated article. Some sentences may seem heavy and redundant due to the need to be precise. I will do my best to make it understandable.
I feel somewhat intimidated dissecting and showing the shortcomings of an article written by dozens of professionals working at the CDC. Therefore, I realize that some or all of my conclusions may be incorrect, despite my efforts to verify everything. If you feel that I am wrong, please post a top-level message in the comments section explaining what I got wrong.

What is MIS-C?

Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome is defined by the CDC as:

Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) is a condition where different body parts can become inflamed, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes, or gastrointestinal organs. We do not yet know what causes MIS-C. However, we know that many children with MIS-C had the virus that causes COVID-19, or had been around someone with COVID-19. MIS-C can be serious, even deadly, but most children who were diagnosed with this condition have gotten better with medical care.

MIS-C is a very severe illness with several organs of the affected child failing, with the kids needing hospitalization or even ICU care.

The above-mentioned CDC article only considered cases of MIS-C where a confirmed Covid infection was recorded. Therefore, this article would not consider cases of MIS-C caused by the vaccination alone, without a confirmed case of Covid. More on this later.

Let’s start with the easy, visual stuff.

MIS-C Most Frequent Shortly After Vaccination

Take a look at Supplemental Figure 2 from the article. I annotated it. It shows cases of MIS-C, following a documented Covid infection, laid out in accordance with when they happened post-vaccination.

The above graph shows cases of MIS-C, happening at least 14 days after Covid vaccination, with a confirmed Covid infection. Also, note that the chart does not show (hides) any cases of MIS-C occurring within 14 days of the second dose.

Does anything look strange?

If you are like me, you would notice that cases of MIS-C are most frequent in the days 14-40 following the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine (a case every 2 days), then MIS-C becomes less frequent in days 40-120 after the second dose (a case every 7 days), and becomes infrequent in days 120-200 after the second dose (a case every 11 days).

We see that most cases of MIS-C happen shortly after vaccination (with the 14-day-post-dose-2 immediate period removed from our view by the CDC). How is that compatible with “vaccine protecting against MIS-C”?

It is simply not compatible with vaccines providing protection from MIS-C!

Let me draw how this graph would look if the vaccine provided protection, which would wane over time. Waning protection, over time, would result in an increased, not reduced, frequency of MIS-C. This is an imaginary illustration from me, not a CDC graph, showing the shape of waning protection:

The original CDC chart (the first chart) shows the opposite of “waning protection”: in actuality, the risk of MIS-C is highest soon after the vaccine, and cases of MIS-C become LESS frequent as time passes after vaccination.

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MIS-C Case Counting

There is something strange with the way the CDC counts the number of cases.

This looks great for the vaccine, right? CDC found 24 vaccinated cases of MIS-C and 280 unvaccinated cases. So, the vaccinated cases make up only 8% of the total!

However, the only reason why these numbers look so great, is that the CDC was extremely aggressive in EXCLUDING cases of MIS-C in vaccinated children. Let’s look.

First, the CDC eliminated 5 cases that we saw on the previous graph because they happened between 14 and 27 days after the second dose:

Then the CDC removed ALL cases in children who were vaccinated with Moderna or J&J vaccine or even mixed and matched doses:

Overall they excluded 210 children:

The only unvaccinated children who were excluded, are the 53 “age-ineligible children” who could not be vaccinated due to young age. These do not belong to the study’s age range.

The most questionable (but small) part of the exclusion is 12 vaccinated children, where the CDC did not believe the parents’ assurances that they were vaccinated, or “verification [of vaccine status - IC] not completed” by health care workers. I decided to count them as vaccinated. This small number of 12 does not change my conclusions very much.

These excluded cases received Covid vaccines but were removed from the CDC’s count of vaccinated children because of CDC’s arbitrary and aggressive elimination of vaccinated cases. Even children who received a booster dose were excluded!

Read this again: the CDC excluded children who received a Covid vaccine booster! Why? For only one obvious reason: to undercount the vaccinated. They thought we would not notice.

So, out of 210 excluded children, after subtracting the 53 age-ineligible children who do not belong, 210-53 = 157 excluded children were VACCINATED (partially vaccinated, vaccinated with Moderna of J&J, or fully vaccinated before 28 days past the second dose, or had a booster dose, etc).

No unvaccinated children of eligible ages were excluded.

“Fully vaccinated” vs. “All who received vaccines”

The CDC counts, as vaccinated, only the 24 children who received the Pfizer vaccine, were over 28 days after the second dose, did not receive boosters, Moderna or J&J, etc etc. Thus, the CDC excluded 157 children who received a dose of Covid vaccine and went on to develop MIS-C, leaving only 24 such children for their analysis.

So, the CDC excluded 157 kids — and then victoriously reported that only 24 children in the study with MIS-C were vaccinated!

We should compare unvaccinated children (who never received any vaccines) with vaccinated children (who received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine).

If a parent is deciding whether to vaccinate a child, then that parent should consider all risks pertaining to vaccination, not just risks 28 days after the second dose. The “riskier” (for MIS-C) period between the day of the first vaccination through 14 days after the second vaccination, should be counted as part of the decision to vaccinate, as it cannot be avoided.

A vaccinated child cannot magically travel in time and skip that period when most cases of MIS-C happen in vaccinated children. So, outcomes for the entire period after the first shot need to be considered, instead of being disregarded.

El Gato explained this a year ago:

bad cattitude

why "vaccinated covid deaths/hospitalizations" are being counted incorrectly

let’s start with an example: you’re a soldier pinned down in a foxhole. across the field from you is a bunker. getting into the bunker will greatly reduce your risk of being shot. but the field you m…

a year ago · 233 likes · 89 comments · el gato malo

Most cases of MIS-C happen at elevated rates early in the vaccination process. Look at the numbers again:

the CDC included only 24 post-vaccination cases — those occurring after 28 days past the second vaccine (and excluded boosted kids and many others too).
the CDC excluded 79+26+23+5=133 vaccinated cases — where they actually shared the time post-vaccination with us. (other excluded cases were at uncertain positions on the timeline)

The process of Covid vaccination generally takes about 5 weeks (first Pfizer shot; three weeks wait; second shot; two more weeks post-second-vaccine). Then the child is considered to be fully vaccinated.

During these first five weeks post-first-shot, the CDC study recorded 79+26+23 = 128 cases of MIS-C in vaccinated-in-progress children. After the child is considered “fully vaccinated”, for the next 26 weeks after 14 days post-second-dose, the CDC recorded 29 cases of MIS-C.

So, the group of 128 excluded (but completely real) MIS-C cases occurring in five weeks after vaccination, occurred at the rate of 128/5 = 26 cases per week! For the 24 cases occurring in 28-200 days past the second dose (7.6 weeks), they only happen at the rate of 24/7.6, or 3 cases per week.

Again:

First 5 weeks of vaccination: 26 cases of MIS-C with Covid per week
Subsequent period: 3 cases of MIS-C per week (8 times less often)

Missing Covid Cases Defined by Serology?

The official definition of a case was

A diagnosis of MIS-C
A confirmed (molecularly or serologically) Covid infection

The article does not say how many cases were confirmed by “serology”. Usually, serologic confirmation of Covid-19 is defined by the presence of the so-called “nucleocapsid antibodies”.

But those N-antibodies are often missing in Cars-Cov-2 infections of vaccinated people! So counting cases by serology might undercount the number of vaccinated infections. Since we do not have the data on how many cases were confirmed by serology, I am only mentioning this for completeness and will not dwell on this.

Only Some Cases Captured?

The article makes an interesting statement: because the site investigators worked in ICU units, not all cases of MIS-C could be captured. That is possibly why most MIS-C cases ended up in ICU — because that is where the article investigators worked!

Science at its finest.

This Only Counted MIS-C Associated with a Positive Covid Test

As I mentioned, the study looked at ONLY MIS-C cases with a confirmed Covid diagnosis. Even so, children fully or partially vaccinated were MORE likely to have Covid-associated MIS-C.

But what about MIS-C caused by the vaccine, without a recorded Covid infection accompanying it? They were not analyzed in the CDC study. How many such instances would we need to add, to be able to compare the total risk to vaccinated vs unvaccinated children from ALL causes of MIS-C, Covid or vaccine?

This is really a topic of another article and it is complicated. But it is NOT a trivial amount. I decided not to estimate that, and not to add those cases, so as to not distract my readers and to make my post more defensible for the possibility of being fact-checked.

However, it is important to know how many cases of MIS-C due to vaccination, with no Covid infection, really happened in the same 22 states and 29 hospitals mentioned in the CDC study. Such cases would make the comparison even worse for Covid vaccines.

We will leave it for later.

Were COVID Diagnoses Given to Hide Vaccine Injuries?

The more conspiratorially minded friends of mine would probably point out that they suspect some “Covid diagnoses” were given to very ill, recently-vaccinated hospitalized children having vaccine-caused MIS-C, in order to

Hide their vaccine injuries by calling them “Covid complications”
Get federal Covid support money

Some other people go further and claim, with some evidence too, that the vaccination status of those children is not properly recorded if, for example, they were not vaccinated in the same hospital chain that admitted them. That would artificially reduce the number of recorded vaccinated cases.

While I decided to mention this argument, which I have seen advanced with varying degrees of credibility, I am not using it in any way, shape, or form to write my article or to reach any conclusions. I just stick to what the CDC study provided, in doing my calculations. However, it would be unfair not to mention that possibility as food for thought to give the correct context.

Summary

Again, this is my amateur analysis and I would love my calculations to be challenged.

Is vaccination of children a good idea?

Do you trust the numbers from the CDC?

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