From [CHD] An official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) used data from a flawed preprint study that exaggerated the risk of death for children from COVID-19 in her presentations to CDC and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisors who were responsible for recommending Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines for infants and young children.

The study, first published May 25 on the medRxiv preprint server, was authored by a group of U.K. researchers. On June 28, the authors published a revised version of the study, after critics questioned some of their original findings.

“It’s really disturbing that data this poor made its way into the meetings to discuss childhood COVID and that it took me less than a few minutes to find a major flaw (and then I found many more as I looked deeper),” said Kelley K, who was the first to point out some of the study’s flaws on her website COVID-Georgia.com.

After learning of Kelley’s analysis, The Defender reviewed the original preprint, confirmed Kelley’s findings and uncovered additional flaws in the original preprint and also in the June 28 revised version.

Study falsely claimed COVID was leading cause of death in U.S. children

During a June 17 meeting of its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to discuss pediatric COVID-19 vaccines in children under 5, Dr. Katherine Fleming-Dutra, a pediatrician and pediatric emergency medicine physician with the CDC, presented a table that falsely claimed COVID-19 was a leading cause of death in U.S. children.

Fleming-Dutra earlier that week presented the same table during the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee meeting, along with other slides from the original U.K. study that also falsely claimedCOVID-19 as a “top 5 cause of death” in children.

The table, which was sourced from the U.K. study, was disseminated widely by physicians on Twitter who claimed the data “made the case” for vaccinating children under 5.