Originally published at: Pfizer vaccine likely to be approved for for kids 5-12 by early winter | Boing Boing
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One appreciates an abundance of caution; yet with the looming school year and several close friends having to arrange that one of their kids has to be home educated while their very slightly older sibling (one case of six months difference (adoption)) goes back to school. So given “emergency protocols” and with no general indications of added risk to the youngers, shouldn’t it be that 5 and above could be approved now…? …can’t find any such apparently arbitrary 12 year old to 13 year old divide with any prior critical vaccination programs [e.g. polio]
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And just to add confusion it’s available to 12 year olds here. Not 11 though.
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1 2 3 Qnuts/Gop’ers brains explode.
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Fingers crossed for that 2-5 approval to come through soon! Looking forward to vaccinating a grandbaby in preschool.
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The problem is that parents and policymakers relied on earlier assurances that adult vaccination would be enough to slow community transmission and that elementary kids would be able to get shots in Sep-Oct. Then FDA delayed to ask for more data on myocarditis, but not in a way most researchers think is likely to yield useful info or be proportionate to the risks unvaxed kids face with covid. So kids won’t get shots before winter break.
Meanwhile, state health departments are citing a model commissioned by state of NC and CDC that says that at a minimum 22% of elementary kids will be infected before that. It’s at least 75% the schools not doing regular random testing and full masking (vast majority of schools). We don’t have hospital capacity for this. The US has 48 million kids under 12 with 5000 pediatric ICU beds unevenly distributed across the country. Small chances of bad outcomes are significant if multiplied by 48 million.
This leaves us three choices:
- Restore mask mandates, shut down large gatherings and indoor dining, put in serious mitigation in schools
- Make school remote again, ensure remote schools don’t lose funding, and extend the federal unemployment program that allows parents to stay home with their kids
3)Expose an entire generation to a vaccine-preventable disease that causes chronic illness, crushing medical bills, orphans, and death. Leave kids to die in hallways and hospital parking lots for lack of staffed ICU beds.
Looks like most parts of the US plan to go with #3
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The are millions of Americans refusing to get vaccinated, that’s the problem…Full stop. We should stop pretending it’s anything OTHER than that.
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Bingo.
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That’s definitely a problem! We need to do more to get adults vaccinated. But you can’t reach a level of vaccination needed to quell outbreaks of something as transmissible as Delta when 15% of the population isn’t even eligible. Especially if you commingle that unvaxed group in cafeterias unmasked five days a week.
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That, I’d argue is THE problem. If we had widespread adult vaccination, mask mandates in schools, or more virtual options, things would be in a better place.
The Delta was able to spread BECAUSE of lack of vaccinations in the first place.
Time to put the blame where it belongs.
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Any time a vaccinated person needs hospitalization and there is no space available, a vaccination-eligible yet unvaccinated person should be ejected to make room. Give them a free bottle of horse paste and send them on their way.
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I’m not a fan of that either. I don’t want ANYONE to die from this.
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I don’t want anyone to die. But that’s not the same thing as idiots self-selecting to die and then expecting society to bend over backwards to save them. Triage - save the patients most likely to survive and maximize the number saved.
Edit: There’s a huge difference between wanting someone to die and simply not feeling any sympathy for someone who dies due to their own choices.
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I’m with you on the blame. Our pandemic response was sabotaged from the start by sociopaths. As a parent, it’s more urgent for me right now to identify what is about to happen in schools and try to avert it.
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Many states have virtual school options. If I had kids of school age I’d go that route if possible. No way would I put any unvaccinated kid in a public school, masks and distancing not withstanding.
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That’s what we ended up doing, but it’s not through my kids’ normal school program. For some reason, Middle and High school kids in my area get the virtual option, but elementary did not until just this past Friday, when the school district allowed a maximum of 150 kids to go virtual. The plan for that was bonkers, though; kids would likely be in mixed grade settings (first through third grade doing math together, for example) depending on who gets selected to be allowed to go virtual. Super frustrating. 
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The free virtual school Connections Academy is available for K-12 in about 30 states.
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Hopefully that’s true, but I don’t know how anyone without access to the trial data could make that statement.
One of these problems is fixable by having institutions that more sensibly weigh costs and benefits; those institutions are already staffed by smart, trained professionals who understand that vaccines are good things. This path allows anyone to wants to protect themselves to immediately reduce there risk of serious illness and death from covid by 1-3 orders of magnitude depending on whose data you look at, while also helping their communities. And it ends the injustice that is treating children as somehow more vulnerable than seniors when they obviosoly aren’t, and seriously curtailing their lives and freedom and schooling as a result.
Solving the other problem would require a massive change of behavior from a large fraction of the country which has no desire to change, and damn the obvious consequences. It also puts the safety of children (most of whom aren’t at much risk, but some of whom are) in the hands of people who have no desire to keep them safe. It would also stop working anyway, should a more-contagious-than-delta variant emerge that is capable of sustaining spread in a population that is by fiat at least 15% unvaccinated.
Last fall, the UK government decided that COVID was going to take a Christmas vacation and therefore all of their protective measures could to. Then in December, they re-instituted a major lockdown because “OMG, the alpha variant is spreading so quickly.”
In June, the US decided that covid was over and we could relax almost all precautions. Then in July “OMG the delta variant is so transmissible”
The rate of spread of a virus is a combination of human behavior, the virus’ innate behavior, and the level of immunity in the population, and environmental factors. The delta variants transmissibility seems to be higher than the original variant. It is also very likely that our current vaccine is less effective at stopping transmission. You can’t neglect the human behavior component.
If more people had been vaccinated and people continue to take reasonable precautions, delta would have spread much slower. A slower spread would also mean that the secondary measures schools are using (cohorting, distancing, masks) would be more effective. Nobody can say how much slower it would have been, but just delaying what is happening now by a few months would likely be enough to start vaccinating at least the school age kids. This would be a huge benefit for reducing transmission and just reduce the number of innocents that anti-vaxxers can kill.
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