We know that the vaccine is safe for this age group, O’Leary told me. The vaccine approval process “is very deliberate and very careful in terms of safety, and that process has been followed to a ‘T’ throughout.”
Opinion Conversation
Questions surrounding the Covid-19 vaccine and its rollout.
I asked him about the risk of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, for this age group — something parents have expressed concerns about. Myocarditis is a rare Covid vaccine side effect. A study from Israel based on health records of about two million people, published in September, found that Covid-19 is more likely to cause myocarditis than the Pfizer vaccine and, as The Times reported, that “the median age of people who developed the condition after vaccination was 25, and 19 of the 21 cases were in males.” O’Leary said that based on the epidemiology of classic myocarditis, unrelated to Covid or Covid vaccines, which also appears to be most common in young men, he doesn’t think there should be an increased risk for little kids who get vaccinated.Some experts, like Dr. Jeremy Faust, are concerned that pushing for emergency use authorization too soon, rather than waiting for, perhaps, a few extra weeks, might turn some parents off from getting their under-5 children vaccinated. “Allowing parents to vaccinate their children under age 5 now will certainly increase the number of vaccinated kids between now and March,” he wrote in the newsletter Inside Medicine. “That will feel like progress. But will it really be? This strategy could come at a cost if other parents lose faith in the scientific process. I’m worried that if we rush now, there will be fewer young children vaccinated by next fall than if we wait a few more weeks.”I had this concern as well when I first saw the news about the F.D.A.’s move. And I agree with Dr. Faust that the messaging around the vaccine for young children has been a mess. But it’s likely that we’re already talking about a relatively small percentage of parents who are going to run out to get the shot for their under-5s in the first place. Though vaccines have been available for them since November, “just 31 percent of kids 5-11 have gotten a shot, compared with 75 percent of the total population,” Jonathan Levin pointed out in Bloomberg News, and the seven-day average for vaccinations among this age group fell to its lowest level the week of Jan. 28.Most parents in America aren’t paying attention to every Pfizer news release. My guess is that once the vaccine is available for children under 5, it will be individual pediatricians and other local organizations, such as schools, that will be most effective in persuading parents to get Covid shots for their kids. As I’ve mentioned before, the Kaiser Family Foundation found that when schools encouraged it, parents were more likely to report that they got their children vaccinated. Kaiser also found that “pediatricians remain parents’ most trusted source of information on the Covid-19 vaccine for children.”