Rand Paul COVID vaccine theories aren’t helping to bridge public health divide | Opinion
- Partisan attacks on public health initiatives are undermining efforts to control COVID-19.
- Claims linking COVID-19 vaccines to pediatric deaths are disputed, citing data on hospitalizations and long COVID in children.
- The U.S. needs a unified, non-partisan approach to public health to effectively combat the virus.
The hyperpartisan assault on public health has to stop. If not, tens of thousands of lives and livelihoods will be lost. However, there appears to be no end in sight with discrediting vaccines and public health initiatives.
Currently, there appears to be an ongoing attempt to link the COVID-19 vaccine to pediatric deaths. At least 25 childhood deaths from vaccines have been reported in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). As I have previously described, VAERS is as reliable as Facebook, an assessment mirrored by MedPage Today Editor Jeremy Faust who recently compared it to Yelp reviews. However, in just one year, between July 2024 and June 2025, the CDC reported that ninety pediatric fatalities had COVID-19 infection listed as an underlying cause, half of these cases were under the age of 2 years.
Sen. Rand Paul continues the assault on COVID vaccines
Sen. Rand Paul continued this assault on vaccines during the Sept. 17, 2025, Senate hearing by stating that the reason you cannot prove vaccinations reduce COVID-19 hospitalization is that “so few people under 18 that go to the hospital. The numbers are extraordinarily small … . A few thousand went to the hospital in 2020 and 2021. And since then, the numbers have dropped precipitously.” However, the American Academy of Pediatrics has reported that approximately 234,000 children have been hospitalized in the United States with COVID-19, and last winter’s weekly peak was 1,496 pediatric admissions. As usual, admissions decreased during the summer months. This also does not consider the approximately 300,000 children living with symptoms of long COVID; or the recent research indicating that pediatric COVID-19 reinfections may double the chances of developing long COVID.
Research has also found that vaccinations do lower the rates of pediatric hospitalization and long COVID. Although COVID infections appear to provide longer lasting immunity than vaccines, neither provides durable immunity and most individuals become susceptible to reinfection, and all should stay up to date on their boosters.
The benefits of vaccines outweigh any risks
Sen. Paul was also concerned about the risk of myocarditis from vaccination. Which he described as having an incidence “somewhere between 6 and 8 in 10,000.” A rate “much greater than the risk of hospitalization or death, which are not even measurable because they’re so small.”
However, these high rates of myocarditis are found in older male children (post puberty) and young male adults. Rates are much lower in females and other pediatric age groups. The FDA’s Trump-appointed vaccine chief, Dr. Vinay Prasad, co-authored a paper which reviewed compelling data that showed, with the exception of the second dose of the Moderna Spikevax Vaccine, post-vaccine myocarditis in young males was less frequent than with infections. In addition, post-vaccine myocarditis is rarely severe and generally mild. In younger children, aged 5 to 11 years, the incidence of post-vaccine myocarditis was much lower at 1.8 cases per million. And there are other benefits from vaccines, such as helping to prevent pediatric long COVID.
Sen. Paul is right about one thing
Understating the dangers of COVID-19 and overstating the dangers of the vaccine discourages vaccination and will cause severe harm to our children. It is of utmost importance for children to be vaccinated before their first exposure to a virus. However, Sen. Paul is correct with another health advisement regarding the inadequate protection which is afforded by cloth masks. Many aerosol experts agree that a respirator or N95 mask is required to have protection. And even with masking, prolonged exposure times or high viral concentrations can overcome the protection, a layered approach is needed. The CDC’s not recommending widespread use of respirators early on in the pandemic and not recognizing that the COVID-19 virus was spread through the air was one of the greatest failings during the pandemic. The CDC has still not fully corrected this mistake.
Democrats have made their own public health mistakes
Lockdowns occurred under the Trump Administration. Granted President Trump’s COVID advisors were not libertarian or MAGA Republicans, but many were Republican appointees. During this time, the greatest success of the pandemic occurred — President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed — with the rapid production and deployment of the COVID-19 vaccines. In my opinion, the Biden administration initially went too far in the other direction, with the disbandment of the COVID-19 scientific advisory panel on day one of his administration and the declaration that July 4, 2021 was to “Mark independence” from the Coronavirus. We were then crushed by the Delta Variant. During the devastating Delta wave, the Biden Administration imposed vaccine mandates.
Unfortunately, until we cease this partisan bickering and realize there is plenty of misinformation to go around, we will not be able to confront and reverse this public health disaster. We need our leaders to uniformly agree on a course of action, otherwise the public will not form a consensus and widely adopt effective countermeasures. Having half of our society doing one thing and the other half another will not stop the spread of a pathogen. It is a setup for disaster.
Kevin Kavanagh is a retired physician from Somerset, Kentucky and chairman of Health Watch USA.
