Should My Child Get Vaccinated?
The answer is yes but here's why
Children getting vaccinated should be an uncontroversial issue. Given the numerous vaccines, we have received as children from polio to the measles vaccine, childhood vaccinations are an essential part of public health practice.
For the purpose of preventing infectious disease, reducing childhood mortality, and improving health infrastructure childhood vaccinations are essential.
However, due to the state of our current political climate, misinformation online, and overall pandemic… this once widely supported campaign is being undermined.
My point is simple, the mRNA vaccines are effective against covid-19 even for children.
Let’s go over some of the details as to why.
Covid Is A Leading Cause of Death
We are more so concerned with the age range of 5 to 17 years olds.
Covid related deaths account for 714 deaths in the age range between 5-18 years old. The total death rate for children aged 5-14 was 5,623 in 2020. Furthermore, if we break these deaths down by leading causes a picture emerges.
Based on these previous leading causes of death, covid-19 would currently fit into the third leading cause of death for children within the age range of 5-14.
I know some of you might state this chart showcases covid-19 as the 12th leading cause of death, but there are a few limitations to keep in mind:
These mortality statistics are based on 2020 so they probably do not take into account the omicron surge.
Covid-19 death statistics by age take into account those aged 5 to 18, these mortality statistics are excluding those aged 15-18 years old.
Approximately one-third of pediatric deaths happened during the omicron wave.
The numbers for older adolescents are grouped a bit differently and have different numbers. So, the comparison might not be so easy given total mortality statistics and covid-19 statistics are grouped a bit differently by age.
Nevertheless, I hope this demonstrates the fact that covid-19 is not benign for children. Children have died from covid-19 and not vaccinating them leaves them vulnerable.
The Vaccine is Safe and Effective
The mRNA vaccine from Pfizer is safe and effective at preventing symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection.
The two doses of the mRNA Pfizer vaccine lower the risk of emergency department and urgent care encounters among children and adolescents as well as hospitalizations, However, the new omicron variant seems to have lowered this efficacy.
Nevertheless, it is difficult for any medical intervention to be without risk. Vaccines are not 100% risk-free, no medicine or medical intervention is, but people have seemed to forget this.
The risk of myocarditis, inflammation of the heart, seemingly stemming from the vaccine needs to be put in proper context. We need to consider the base rate of myocarditis in the population, myocarditis associated with covid-19 infection itself.
Current evidence suggests myocarditis is more common for covid-19 patients than not. You can read more about the debate and evidence here.
But the main argument still stands the vaccine is safe and effective.
Risk-Benefit Analysis
A recent observational study by the Lancet looked at the two vaccine reporting system VAERS and v-safe. There is a lot of contention with the VAERS system as I’ve outlined previously.
Keep in mind more than 300 million doses of mRNA vaccines have been given in the US alone, so this study has a lot of sifting through.
VAERS received and processed 340 522 reports: 164 669 following BNT162b2 and 175 816 following mRNA-1273 vaccination (table 1). Of these reports, 313 499 (92·1%) were classified as non-serious; 22 527 (6·6%) were serious, not resulting in death; and 4496 (1·3%) were deaths (table 1).
Now, the 4,496 deaths might sound scary for my parents out there considering whether to vaccinate their children. But keep in mind most of those deaths were in the older population (>60) who have higher background mortality.
The vaccine is not associated with an increased rate of mortality. Remember what I said earlier about the base rate, we need to consider the average rate of mortality within a specific age group. When you do, we see no major difference.
In plain language, most people have non-serious side effects from the vaccine, serious side effects are mostly transient, and regular covid-19 infection seems riskier in comparison.
Final Thoughts
Covid-19 poses considerable risk to children. The mRNA vaccines are safe and effective against covid-19. Getting children vaccinated is an important consideration for ending this pandemic.
There are limited downsides to getting your child vaccinated, but there seem to be plenty of potential downsides by allowing your child to get infected.
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