Most restrictions in Ontario are to be lifted on Thursday, vaccine passports to be removed on March 1st. Masking stays in place for “a while longer”.
“This awful pandemic will soon be behind us.”
Doug Ford, Premier of Ontario, Feb 14, 2022
Such bold optimism has been expressed before…Of eligible Ontarians, 89% have two vaccine doses, and about half have had booster shots. The situation is better. I can’t seem to escape a vague whiff of politics in the air, nonetheless…
Meanwhile, more parents (including us) are asking why teenagers generally are not eligible for a booster shot when Ontario has a huge unused vaccination capacity. One of my kids’ classes suddenly went to being mostly on-line last week; we were left to speculate as to why. Not good…
If it’s any consolation, there are a number of long-time childhood vaccine advocates out there who believe that healthy teenagers generally don’t need boosters. Dr Paul Offit, for example, is Director of the Vaccine Education Center, helped create a rotavirus vaccine, is a member of the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee, and has written books criticizing anti-vaxers such as Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All.. So he’s definitely not an anti-vaxer, yet he recently penned an Op-Ed explaining why he advised his own son not to get the booster.
Points acknowledged. His op-ed was pre-Omicron, and (although it seems to be “so far not disastrous”) we don’t have good Long COVID info for Omicron. If the key risk there is any infection, as it has been in the past, and Omicron is so much more infectious, my interest is not only in keeping the kids from getting it at all, but not having it sweep through the household. For one person the odds are fine, for a household, dealing with one disabled individual is a big cost, especially if that’s the breadwinner.
I’m not risk averse but I do calculate my risks as best I can. Dr. Offit’s points include better vaccine allocation, which is fair. That’s not what is happening in Ontario where capacity is currently at least 50% under-utilized.