Thought of the Day - November 23 2021 - Vaccine for Kids

Last Friday Canada approved Pfizer vaccines for kids 5 through 11. While I am not surprised I must admit I am a bit shocked.

As far as I can find only one child between 5-11 has died from COVID in Canada, yet we are now poised to vaccinate over a million of them. On one side, vaccines do decrease the chance of severe disease and death by over an order of magnitude. On the other, there is still a small vaccine risk. Currently, over 25,000 Canadians have had significant side-effects (a little over 1 in 1,000), over 6,000 (a little over 1 in 4,000) were serious, and 222 people have died (about 1 in 125,000). While it is natural to assume that children will do better than the average, unfortunately, I have yet to find any published trial data on the subject. As you know there is a hot debate in the US at present where people are trying to get the Pfizer FDA approval application made public. The good news is that from a side effect perspective youth 12-17 seem to be doing twice as well as the Canadian average.

Thus all we can hope is that children do take better to the vaccine than even the youth. If not this looks like it may be a toss-up.

The other reason given is to "to stop the spread". While we know, vaccines do very well in decreasing the likelihood of serious illness and death, there is no evidence that overall they decrease the rate of spread ( Thought of the Day - October 8 2021 - Delta Spreaders ). Take a look at Europe. They are the most vaccinated continent in the world, yet they now have the highest number of new cases ever; almost seven times the world average. Indeed, they currently account for over half of all the active COVID cases worldwide ( Thought of the Day - November 21 2021 - By the Numbers ). The problem, as I see it, is somehow we relate "children were the major cause of our last wave" with "so we need to vaccinate".

All this to say, it must be a stressful time for many parents. On one hand, you want to give your kids the best chance of surviving COVID, on the other hand, there is little concrete data on which to base your decision (if you have any good sources, please pass them on). That said, as reported before, here in BC given the Mature Minor amendment ( Thought of the Day - September 16 2021 - BC Prepares for Child Vaccinations ) there is a good chance it will not be your decision anyway.

Cheers

Cliff