On COVID Vaccines for Kids

I made a few people I greatly respect mad at me for offering up what I tell friends of small kids on the vaccine. Twitter makes it hard to have a nuanced conversation, so I am going to put this here for everyone with the opening caveat that I am not a doctor. I do, however, know a lot of doctors. Based on conversations with the same immunologists, epidemiologists, virologists, and pediatricians that led me to get my teens vaccinated and to encourage my audience to do the same, here is where I am on vaccines for pre-teens.

As a side note, I'll be on local radio in Atlanta 12-3 pm ET today and not on my own show. There’s a World Series parade and I’m participating in the coverage of that for my hometown flagship station, WSB.

Now, to vaccines —

• if your pre-teen is immunocompromised, get your child the vaccine. Protect them;

• if you have healthy children up to twelve years of age and you want the vaccine for them, give it to them;

• if you have healthy children up to twelve years of age and you are not sure, don’ sweat it. You can take a pass.

The situation with the COVID vaccine is different from standard immunizations. The MMR, etc. are about both protecting your child from highly contagious diseases with high risks to their health and protecting other children in school settings from those highly contagious diseases.

The COVID vaccine is, according to the FDA commissioners, mostly about protecting the adults.

I think this is a bad public health policy. We should not be giving our children a vaccine to protect adults when adults themselves can take the vaccine for their own protection. Additionally, between Merck and Pfizer, adults now have supplementary treatments that dramatically cut the severity of infection, hospitalization, and death.

We have two years of data now and almost a year on the Delta variant. Kids are still less likely to get it, less likely to spread it, and less likely to have serious cases or complications. This is not like measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, etc. In fact, children with COVID tend to have less severe symptoms than children with influenza.

Additionally, we now have a growing body of research on how effective natural immunity is against COVID. Some studies suggest natural immunity is stronger than vaccine-induced immunity. Like the flu vaccine, the COVID vaccine will most likely be an annual event for everyone, which again separates it from the mandatory vaccines we make kids go through.

In short, I think it is bad public policy to make kids get a vaccine because the adults are too irresponsible to get it. If you want to get your kids the vaccine, I think the data clearly shows your kids will be fine and you don’t have to worry about long-term effects as some conspiracists speculate. I just don’t think the vaccine for pre-teens is necessary and if you are hesitant, you’re fine. Your kid will be too unless he is immunocompromised. Then, again, you, your child, and everyone in the house should get the vaccine if your child or anyone in your household is immunocompromised

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