| Hundreds of children have died of Covid in the USA out of tens of millions infected. This is obviously much lower than the risk to the unvaccinated elderly (like 3+ orders of magnitude lower), but every dead child is still a tragedy. A larger number of children (still relatively low compared to adults) experience chronic post-viral sequelae significantly harming their quality of life. Covid is among the riskiest diseases faced this year by young children in developed countries. As I mentioned (see linked CDC document), as far as we can tell zero children 5–11 have died from the vaccine out of ~9 million vaccinated. There were 11 cases of myocarditis, all recovered or recovering. As far as anyone can tell the vaccine has caused no long-term harm to any young child. This is a truly remarkable safety record, better than many vaccines we mandate for all children for diseases less dangerous than Covid. Vaccines do partially prevent transmission, both for a vaccinated index infected person (viral load goes down faster and course of infection is shortened) and when their contacts are vaccinated (reduces likelihood of being infected at all). But it’s not perfect, especially with the omicron variant which partially evades antibodies (but does not evade T cell immunity). > what benefit is there for children (and their families) The benefits are: (a) There is some protection against initial infection (very effective with the original and alpha/beta variants, very effective after a booster for delta, only partially effective for omicron; perhaps in the future there will be a variant-agnostic booster), which should get still more effective after a mild Covid infection. Eventually almost every person on the planet will be vaccinated and/or infected multiple times by Covid, and this population immunity is the only way out of the pandemic. (b) Vaccination decreases risk of hospitalization and death vs. current Covid variants across all age groups including children by 2+ orders of magnitude. The adaptive immune system is extremely effective but it takes a while to learn to recognize new pathogens, making diseases much more dangerous to the immunologically naïve. Vaccines induce this learning up-front without the need for an accompanying high-risk infection. (c) The omicron variant is putting more children in hospitals than previous variants, and an even more risky-to-children variant might become dominant in the future. T cell immunity induced by vaccines should continue to offer strong protection vs. future variants, because there is limited evolutionary pressure on the virus to evade it (whereas there is significant evolutionary pressure to evade antibodies). (d) Children eventually grow up, and Covid is going to be circulating forever. An immunologically naïve person who encounters it at some later time (maybe decades in the future) is going to be hit much harder. An immunization for everyone now is a great insurance policy for the future. |