Just a reminder to everyone who is just scrolling through post like yours and @Otherbrother’s - I assume you both are well aware.
There is a inherent problem with vaccine efficacy studies in children, especially younger children, with SARS-CoV-2 and Covid-19. Very broadly speaking, young children rarely get infected, if infected at least as often as not get sick, if they get sick they very rarely have to be hospitalised, and if they have to be hospitalised, they rarely need intensive care. Deaths due to Covid-19 are very very very rare in the youngest two age groups. That’s all very good (and somewhat old) news. OTH, WDKS about long-term effects, and with every single infection, there is a risk that the virus mutates and the situation changes. (Just FTR, I believe this a risk which can be quantified, and I assume the international scientific community is on that and basically knows their shit. Caveat: with national health systems and national politics, I do not hold the same belief.)
Coming back to vaccine efficacy studies, and to the point of my post: we have to keep in mind that we to compare the benefits for the individual between vaccinated and unvaccinated. So, if we want to find out if there is a benefit, we want to use statistics to find out if the vaccination protects against: death, needing an ICU, needing hospital treatment, severe illness, illness, and infections. For all this, we would need a statistical population large enough, i.e. with a number of cases in all these categories which is large enough to have statistical power.
And this is difficult, because: see above.
However, as far as I understand medical ethics, the benefit assessment for the individual is of primary importance, and protection of the unvaccinated other populations ( i.e. people older than the youngest age groups) is a secondary level of consideration.
TL;DR: if you do it evidence-based, you need to compare very large numbers of young kids with and without vaccination because young kids don’t get killed by Covid-19 very often.
That’s just statistics.
My own opinion on the matter is different. We should have started vaccinating the 4-12yr olds this spring.
I have a family member approaching her 5th birthday who is transplanted and who likely will catch SARS-COV-2 within the next months. Even if we could start to vaccinate the age groups 4-12 and 0-4 right now, today, there is no way she’s not going to get the fucking virus this winter.
That’s also just statistics.