The CDC, early morning on January 20, 2021 (i.e., the last few hours of the Trump Dictatorship; via archive.org):
From an epidemiologist’s point of view, the best “reference group” for a disease that kills 82-year-olds is 18-29-year-olds. If you’re old, you have a 63,000% chance of dying (“630x higher”).
From February 18, 2021:
After just one month scientific government by President Biden, Dr. Jill Biden, M.D., and President Harris, an old person has a 790,000% chance of dying (“7900x”). Get the great-grandkids to dig 7,900 graves in the backyard.
(Of course, the frightening 12.5X increase in the deadliness of COVID-19 is a result of changing the comparison group for this killer of the elderly to 5-17-year-olds.)
The latest version of the page: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-age.html
(Thanks to a reader, whose identity I must protect from the virtue police, for pointing me to this page.)
See also “With Vaccination Goal in Doubt, Biden Warns of Variant’s Threat” (NYT, June 18):
State health officials are trying to persuade the hesitant. In West Virginia, where just over a third of the population is fully vaccinated, Dr. Clay Marsh, the state’s coronavirus czar, said young people were proving especially difficult to win over.
“There was a narrative earlier in the pandemic that is really haunting us, which is that young people are really protected,” he said. “There’s a false belief that for many young people who are otherwise healthy that they still have a relatively free ride with this, and if they get infected, they’ll be fine.”
Dr. Joe Biden, M.D., Ph.D., to the rescue:
“The best way to protect yourself against these variants is to get vaccinated,” the president declared.
That should persuade healthy 16-year-olds that they need to take a few days off to get two injections, recover from the flu-style symptoms, etc.! Certainly they won’t continue to hold the “false belief” that they are roughly 1/8,000th as likely to die from COVID-19 as an old person.
In December 2020, The Penn Medicine Center for Evidence-based Practice advised that “Because no clinical trials involving children have been reported yet, and children have less risk of serious illness or death
from COVID-19, vaccination of children is not recommended”
http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/cep/COVID/mRNA%20vaccine%20review%20final.pdf
Alternate headline: “Coronavirus became 12X more deadly as deaths increased among the already vaccinated”.
Important update: it looks like hell just froze over, because as of today the WHO is recommending against COVID vaccinations for children below the age of 18. #ScienceIsSettled #FollowTheScience.
RS: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/covid-19-vaccines/advice is what you found? “Children should not be vaccinated for the moment. There is not yet enough evidence on the use of vaccines against COVID-19 in children to make recommendations for children to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Children and adolescents tend to have milder disease compared to adults. However, children should continue to have the recommended childhood vaccines.”
They imply that for over-18s it is “safe” to be vaccinated, but don’t address the ethical issue in https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2021/01/07/is-it-ethical-for-a-physician-to-vaccinate-a-healthy-20-year-old-against-covid-19/ (even if something is “safe”, it isn’t obvious that a doctor should apply a medicine to a patient unless there is some potential benefit to him/her/zir/them (the actual patient, not society at large))
I do wonder how long it will take for the WHO to #FollowTheScience. Scientists at the FDA approved the Pfizer shot for 12-15-year-olds on May 10, 2021. The shot was approved on December 11, 2020 for 16- and 17-year-olds. The WHO web page was updated at least through June 3, 2021. As you point out, the Science is Settled so this is indeed confusing.