New York Times Lies That COVID-19 Vaccines Are FDA Approved for Young Children

I have long been observing that when the mainstream media spread vaccine misinformation, they are simply following the example set by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Sure, both the government and media incessantly warn us about so-called “anti-vaxxers” spreading so-called “misinformation”, but the pejorative label “anti-vaccine” is just a euphemism meaning “pro-informed consent”, and “misinformation” is the usual euphemism for any information, no matter how factual, that does not align with the policy goal of achieving a high vaccination rate.

The reality is that there are no greater purveyors of vaccine misinformation and disinformation than the government and mainstream media.

An illuminating example of this is a recent article from the New York Times about the updated versions of both the Pfizer-BioNTech and the Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, intended to protect against the SARS‑CoV‑2 “Omicron” subvariant known as “KP.2”.

Titled “New Covid Shots Were Approved. But Who Will Get Them?”, the lead paragraph of Times article states,

The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved the latest slate of annual Covid vaccines, clearing the way for Americans 6 months and older to receive updated shots in the midst of a prolonged summer surge of the virus.

Thus, according to the Times, mRNA COVID‑19 vaccines for children aged 6 months and up are FDA “approved”.

But that is a lie.

The fact is that these pharmaceutical products have not been FDA approved for children aged 6 months through 11 years.

The professional journalists and editors at the Times should certainly know better, but it’s possible they actually believe their own propaganda because the government itself has been spreading official disinformation to obfuscate the experimental nature of these products since the start, as I have long been documenting.

The government continues to try to obfuscate this matter. Heading to the CDC’s website, we can find a webpage last reviewed on August 23 stating that “FDA has approved and authorized 2024–2025 Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines.” (Emphasis added.)

Anyone not already aware of the truth might consider the phrase “approved and authorized” to be redundant, two different words being used to mean the same thing. And the CDC makes no effort to explicitly clarify the important distinction.

Instead, the CDC leaves it only for the particularly attentive reader to deduce that there is a difference between “approved” and “authorized” by picking up on the clue left in the CDC’s statement that “This page will be updated if FDA approves or authorizes additional 2024–2025 COVID-19 vaccines.” (Emphasis added.)

The “or” in that sentence implies that “approves” and “authorizes” indeed have different meanings, but the only additional indication the CDC gives to site visitors that the words are not synonymous is further down the page, where the agency, under the heading “Overview of COVID‑19 vaccination”, states the following among a list of other bullet points:

COVID-19 vaccine approval (licensure) under a Biologics License Application (BLA) or authorization under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

Hence, only the very attentive website visitor will understand that for the FDA to have “approved” a product means that it has been licensed for use, whereas “authorized” means that it is being distributed under the different status of “Emergency Use Authorization (EUA)”.

Heading over the website of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), we can find the page on COVID‑10 “biologics”, i.e., vaccines. There, we can find links for more information about both the Pfizer-BioNTech and the Moderna mRNA COVID‑19 vaccines.

Both of those pages state that the FDA on August 22 “amended the emergency use authorization (EUA)” for the respective vaccine for children aged 6 months through 11 years (emphasis added).

On each of those respective pages, we can find the FDA’s “Fact Sheet for Recipients and Caregivers” for the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, each of which states explicitly that the respective COVID‑19 vaccine “is not an FDA-approved vaccine” (bold emphasis added).

An explanatory note at the end of each document states, “A product authorized for emergency use has not undergone the same type of review by FDA as an FDA-approved product.” (Bold emphasis added.)

So, for children aged 6 months through 11 years, the mRNA COVID‑19 vaccines are not FDA approved but are instead administered under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), which is a regulatory status explicitly for FDA-unapproved products that are still considered “experimental”.

Again, by lying that the vaccines are “approved” by the FDA, the New York Times is just following the example set by government officials. But that’s hardly an excuse. I have sent the following message to the editors requesting a correction:

In your article dated August 22 titled “New Covid Shots Were Approved. But Who Will Get Them?”, the lead paragraph states the following:

“The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved the latest slate of annual Covid vaccines, clearing the way for Americans 6 months and older to receive updated shots in the midst of a prolonged summer surge of the virus.”

Thus, the Times is telling readers that the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are FDA approved for children aged 6 months and up, but that is false. For children aged 6 months through 11 years, these products are being distributed under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), which is a status explicitly for FDA unapproved products. You can see this right in the FDA’s information sheets for recipients and providers:

https:/www.fda.gov/media/167212/download  

https:/www.fda.gov/media/167209/download

Please acknowledge and correct the error so that parents can have properly informed consent and understand that these products are not FDA approved for children under 12 years old.

So, what do you think? Will the Times acknowledge and correct its error?

Or will it persist in the lie just like the Washington Post did when I confronted its resident propagandist Lena Sun and her editors for falsely claiming that the CDC’s whole vaccine schedule, as opposed to individual vaccines on that schedule, has been studied for safety?

Here is what the Post claimed:

The effectiveness of the vaccine schedule is tested extensively to ensure that the vaccines in the combination don’t interfere with one another and can be easily handled by the infant and the child’s immune system. No new immunization is added to the schedule until it has been evaluated both alone and when given with the other current immunizations.

The truth, as acknowledged by the Institute of Medicine in a 2013 review, is that “existing research has not been designed to test the entire immunization schedule”, that “studies designed to examine the long-term effects of the cumulative number of vaccines or other aspects of the immunization schedule have not been conducted.”

I showed Sun and her editors that review so they could see that Sun’s claim is false. But they refused to acknowledge the error and persisted in lying to their readers, the target audience in this case being parents of school-aged children.

Share your own prediction in the comments below, and if you check to see whether they’ve issued the correction yet, please be sure to let us know. Additionally, if you feel like writing to the Times editors to help push them to do the right thing, I encourage you to do so, and you can send your correction request to nytnews@nytimes.com!

Also learn how the FDA’s authorization of COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use in infants and toddlers was based on outright scientific fraud by signing up for my newsletter and downloading my free e-book The FDA, COVID-19 Vaccines, and Scientific Fraud: How the US Government Puts Children’s Health at Risk in Service to the Pharmaceutical Industry.