Nearly 100 Doctors and medical professors signed their names to a letter requesting that the Israeli health system refrains from vaccinating children under any scenario unless the disease were to become dangerous to them.

According to a report by Channel 12 News, the doctors explained that “there is no room to vaccinate children at this time.” The doctors added that based on agreed-upon medical values, including “caution, humility, and do no harm” that there is not enough evidence or threat to vaccinate children against the disease. The doctors explained further that not enough is known about the disease and the various vaccines that have been produced to combat it.

Among the signatories of the letter are such well-renown Doctors as Dr. Amir Shachar, director of the emergency room at Laniado Hospital, Dr. Yoav Yehezkeli, an expert in internal medicine and a lecturer at Tel Aviv University, and Dr. Avi Mizrahi, director of the intensive care unit at Kaplan Hospital.

In the letter that was addressed to “the chiefs of the Israeli Ministry of Health, to our fellow doctors around the country, and to the entire public.”

They noted that “the increasingly prevalent opinion within the scientific community is that the vaccine cannot lead to herd immunity, therefore there is currently no ‘altruistic’ justification for vaccinating children to protect at-risk populations.”

They added that even today it is unclear whether the vaccine prevents the spread of the virus and for how long it confers protection and noted that new variants “that may be more resistant to vaccination are popping up all the time.”

The letter continues, “We believe that not even a handful of children should be endangered through mass vaccination against a disease that is not dangerous to them. Furthermore, it cannot be ruled out that the vaccine will have long-term adverse effects that have not yet been discovered at this time, including on growth, reproductive system, or fertility. Children should be allowed a quick return to routine; the many tests and broad isolation cycles should be stopped, and no separation between the vaccinated and unvaccinated should be created in the public sphere. Vaccination of at-risk populations should be allowed, and under the almost complete vaccination of this population – it is possible to return to full routine (with periodic adjustments) even in the presence of COVID-19 virus.”

“Therefore, we fear that at this point in time, there is under-reporting of side effects. Moreover, a causal link between events – if any – will only emerge in due course, as more and more events of a certain type accumulate. For example, if there is a serious health event that happens to 12 young people a year in Israel (ie – an average of 1 per month), while the vaccine also causes this serious event infrequently, it will take many months until it is clear that there is an increase in the incidence of the event, and that there is a connection between the vaccine and its appearance.”

“Do not rush to vaccinate children as long as the full picture is not clear. Coronavirus disease does not endanger children, and the first rule in medicine is, do no harm. The full picture is expected in many months, and possibly years. Moreover, one must wait for such documentation not only from Israeli data but from global data. In this context, it is worthy to add that black box warnings – about severe or life-threatening side effects – accumulate months and years after drug approval, due to the fact that severe but rare toxins appear, naturally, only over time.”

“We believe it is not appropriate to impose the inconvenience of vaccination on the pediatric population, where coronavirus is not dangerous, especially at this stage when the efficiency, in the long run, is not at all clear. Pediatrics in Israel is one of the best in the world, and pediatric intensive care – above all. It is extremely rare for a child to die of a viral disease, and this can happen, unfortunately, as a result of various types of viruses. We do not think it is right to manage private life and public health policy as a result of an ongoing fear of a viral illness that is very rarely liable to harm our children’s lives. ”

“In view of the fact that the vaccination of the vulnerable population reduces hospitalizations and mortality from Covid – we believe that the negative effects of the virus will be much smaller when the majority of the at-risk population is vaccinated, as begins to appear to be the case in the country, and this without the need to vaccinate children,” they explained.

“We believe that our children should be allowed to return to the routine of their blessed lives immediately, and should not be vaccinated against Covid-19. Asymptomatic children’s tests, which have no clinical significance but cause widespread indirect damage, and the mass isolation cycles in education frameworks, should be stopped immediately. It should be emphasized to the public that even vaccinated people can be infected and infect others, and that the same rules of conduct apply to everyone without connection to vaccination status. We must stop pointing the finger of blame at the unvaccinated, and we must stop violating the rights of the individual. We must immediately stop all forms of exclusion and separation between people in the public sphere.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)