To Vaxx or Not to Vaxx

Now that vaccines have been approved for children many parents are faced with a difficult decision: Should they get their child vaccinated?

Two eminent physicians, Nicole Saphier and Marty Makary, offer parents some helpful information in a Wall Street Journal (subscription required) article.

Dr. Saphier is an assistant professor at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Weill Cornell Medical College. Dr. Makary is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and editor-in-chief of MedPage Today. They begin with a few interesting facts:

If you’re agonizing about whether to have your young child vaccinated against Covid-19, be reassured: The risk is extremely low either way. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 42% of U.S. children 5 to 11 had Covid by June 2021, before the Delta wave—a prevalence that is likely greater than 50% today.

Of 28 million children in that age range, 94 have died of Covid since the pandemic began (including deaths before newer treatments), and 562 have been hospitalized with Covid infections.

Five hundred and sixty two hospitalizations and 94 deaths are tragic, but out of a population of 28 million it's statistically miniscule. The risk is so low that it causes one to wonder why, if we're "following the science," children in schools across the country are required to wear masks all day and why the Biden administration hasn't ruled out a mandate that children be vaccinated before they can come to school.

The authors of this op-ed aren't opposed to vaccinating children. In fact, they state that "If your child has a medical risk factor for Covid illness (including obesity), or lives with someone who does, the vaccine’s benefit outweighs the risk." What they argue is that there's no scientific basis for mandating vaccination of children.

Nor is there need to vaccinate the 50% of children who've already had Covid:

If a child already had Covid, there’s no scientific basis for vaccination. Deep within the 80-page Pfizer report is this crucial line: “No cases of COVID-19 were observed in either the vaccine group or the placebo group in participants with evidence of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection.”

That’s consistent with the largest population-based study on the topic, which found that natural immunity was 27 times as effective as vaccinated immunity in preventing symptomatic Covid. Natural immunity is likely even more robust in children, given their stronger immune systems. An indiscriminate Covid vaccine mandate may result in unintended harm among children with natural immunity.

In any case, unless children have a medical risk factor there seems to be little reason for elementary school children to be subjected to some of the measures that adults are imposing upon them.

Speaking of the vaccine, there's a good short video going viral (no pun intended) on twitter that shows how they work. You can watch it here.