The article blow, which appeared in today’s Springfield (MA) Republican, contains a lot of good general information. But notice how neither the question nor the physician’s answer addresses the matter of whether the rapidly-approved pharmaceuticals promoted as protecting people from coronavirus should be injected into children, or whether they are vaccines at all. Among the article’s broader implications may be that online social media posts in general are suspect and need fact checking while establishment organizations, as repositories of truth, don’t need fact checking. Not all people opposed to mass injections for coronavirus are “anti-vaxxers.” (Perhaps some of these things have been tackled in previous articles from the American Academy of Pediatrics.) — MCM

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Do children need all these vaccines?

By Dr. Whitney Casares | Am. Academy of Pediatrics

Q. I read a lot online about vaccines. Do kids really need so many vaccines?

A: Childhood vaccination has been one of modern medicine’s biggest success stories. In fact, vaccines for children have been so successful that we no longer see many of the diseases that used to cause severe illnesses and lasting disabilities.

Thanks to vaccines, most children will never get whooping cough, tetanus, polio or meningitis—so we rarely see how serious these diseases can be. As a result, parents may wonder if their child needs all of the vaccinations on the recommended immunization schedule. The schedule is approved by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and five other health care organizations. It is based on a review of the most recent scientific data for each vaccine. To be on the recommended schedule, the vaccines must be licensed by the Food and Drug Administration.

Perhaps you’ve wondered about vaccines and done Google searches. These days, it’s easy to search online and find answers that support a belief about the risks of vaccines. But the bulk of these claims are inaccurate and unproven. A lot of this information is not just scary, it has caused parents to second-guess the facts they hear from their pediatrician and other trusted sources. And it scares people away from a vaccine that could save their child’s life.

You may be surprised to know that much of the “anti-vaccine” content on social media platforms about kids and vaccines originates from a tiny group of just 12 people. In a 2021 analysis, the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that this tiny group of influencers—it nicknamed the “disinformation dozen”—was the original source of about two-thirds of the anti-vaccine posts and messages. These 12 individuals wanted to draw more traffic to their own websites.

Just like other rumors that go viral on social media platforms, these anti-vaccine posts . . . READ MORE . . .