Dr. Leana Wen Recommends Covid Shot for Kids Under 5

CLAY: Our old friend Dr. Leana Wen, who — if I remember correctly — didn’t want people to be able to leave their state as a part of lockdowns, she now wants you to know, “Hey, the experts say it’s all gonna be fine. What are you worried about? Go get your kids this under 5-year-old covid shot.” Here it is.

BUCK: I just want to ask Dr. Wen if she doesn’t allow the children to leave the house — I mean leave the house at all — when there’s a thunderstorm, because they could get struck by lightning. That is a fact. That is a scientific reality.

CLAY: Yep.

BUCK: Your little 5-year-old — little Timmy or little Susie or whatever — could be struck by lightning, but I did not know any parent who is emotionally well and psychologically stable who says, “Oh, my gosh. I can’t walk you to the car to take to you the grocery store. There’s thunder and lightning and you’re gonna get hit by lightning.”

CLAY: By the way, that’s all true. My phone is blowing up. I said it was Wednesday, you didn’t even notice. It’s Tuesday.

BUCK: Did I say that?

CLAY: I said Wednesday.

BUCK: You say it with such confidence, though, Clay.

CLAY: It’s actually Tuesday. So for anybody out there who’s like, “Oh, my God, I got to go pick up my kids. They had camp today,” no. It’s on me. It’s Tuesday. Tomorrow it will be Wednesday, though, if that works. But yes, like, so the Leana Wen argument there that kids under 5 should get this covid shot. First of all, we know by the data, Buck, that over 75% now of kids have already had covid.

So they already have had this virus and came through it fine. And I think personally if you are getting your under 5-year-old this covid shot, I think you are an imbecile who is not paying attention to any of the data that is out there, personally. You can make your own decisions for your own kids. My young kids are not getting the covid shot. They’re just not doing it. My 7- and 11-year-old, zero percent chance. The kids who get older, I understand sometimes you have to make choices as they get to high school or college age in order to be able to go to events that you wants ’em to go to, but young kids? No way possible.

BUCK: I think that we’ve seen this has gone full circle where in the beginning some of us were saying, “Hey, you know how we handle the flu, where just society continues and people who are older and high risk get a flu shot, “which, by the way, helps, not always, but, you know, it’s not a guarantee. It depends on whether they get the right strain, we should have known all along and they completely downplayed this.

The scientists and the medical community has done a lot of damage to its credibility. When I mean the community, I don’t mean your personal physician or practitioner but public health experts who are at that bridge between policy and medicine has been disastrous. And none of them admit that they were wrong on any of this stuff. Even the things that we mock and make fun of, they feel some need to protect.

Even the mask up as you walk to your table at a restaurant so you can sit down unmasked, you’ll come across a lot of MDs, “Well, it was the right mentality.” No, it wasn’t. It was moronic, and the doctors who sat back and said, “Yeah, we should do this,” they were cowards. And they know it deep down. But we look at now what’s going on with the vaccines for kids, and I think, Clay, unfortunately, they’re now gonna try to fold this in to, well, it’s just like getting, you know, NMR vaccine.

But the virus mutates rapidly. So you’re gonna have to get boosters. It’s not a one-and-done, and it’s not highly effective, and it’s not even dangerous to kids so all that is just ignored here. But you’re gonna have to keep getting your kids vaccinated every year for this. And they won’t want to stop it because the year they stop vaccinating their kids will be the year they realize, “Why did I vaccinate them for the last four years or 10 years or whatever it is?”

CLAY: And the scary part of this is at some point are you going to treat them so much that you’re making ’em more susceptible to covid than they otherwise would have been? Because the thing here is we have the data, Buck. Almost all kids have gotten it, and almost all kids are fine. Chances are your kids had it and you didn’t even know that they had it, and now you’re going to get them a shot for something that basically is a statistical zero-percent danger to them?

BUCK: Yeah.

CLAY: Crazy.

BUCK: Omicron has become also less dangerous. As viruses tend to do in its mutations, it is now less lethal. That has been widely agreed upon, everyone says it, and for most people it’s like a cold, if that. So what are we even doing anymore?

CLAY: No, I think it’s a hundred percent right.