I’ll Have What She’s Having
First off, good news!!! Today the CDC officially acknowledged the infinitesimally small risk that vaccinated people pose to themselves and to other people! Vaccinated people can now remove their masks — indoors and outdoors — except in certain situations like public transportation, crowded bus stations, or doctor’s offices and hospitals.
This is a WATERSHED MOMENT in the pandemic.
Next on my wishlist to the CDC? Unmasking unvaccinated kids outside. Thanks for the kind response to my opinion piece in The Atlantic about this very issue. I hope you will share it widely!
On the subject of kids, it’s great that the 12 to 15-year-old crowd is now eligible for the vaccine. My 15-year-old daughter got her first dose today!
(Even if you don’t have one of these sassy-’n’-savvy individuals roaming around your own house, teen vaccination still affects all of us.)
It wasn’t a simple decision. I'll explain our reasoning here:
We decided to get her vaccinated because:
Like every other child and adolescent, my daughter isn’t immune to the worry we’ve been marinating in for 14 months. In other words, she really wanted the vaccine. She wants to live her life — go to school, camp, and social activities — without fear. The data is clear that the current vaccines (Pfizer for 12-15 year olds) are highly effective — even against the currently circulating variants. Let’s face it: vaccination is the fast-track to normalcy.
My daughter witnesses her parents and older brothers reaping the rewards of vaccination — socializing more liberally, taking masks off indoors (as of 2 pm-ish today) and outdoors, and abandoning fear about getting seriously ill from COVID-19. At least in our house, family *equity* matters. My kids battle over the brownie pan; the vaccine is an even tastier prize.
The vaccine has been proven safe so far. While the trials in this age group only involved 2200 kids, there were no safety issues, and I take comfort in the fact that approximately 120 million Americans have taken an mRNA vaccine (Pfizer or Moderna) without incident. It’s important to recognize that indeed we don’t know about long-term safety of these shots. However, there's also no biologically or medically plausible reason that these vaccines wouldn't be safe. Moreover, most adverse effects from vaccines show up in the first 4-6 weeks after administration — not after. In other words, we likely would have seen problems if there were going to be any. Could there turn out to be a safety issue? Of course. It’s just highly unlikely.
The vaccine has not been shown to cause infertility, nor is there any mechanism by which I can imagine this to be true. Women have become pregnant while enrolled in the vaccine trials and after having had the vaccine. Also recall that pregnant women are at higher risk for COVID than non-pregnant women. The rumor about vaccine-induced infertility is straight-up misinformation.
Vaccinating my daughter helps protect our community. Unvaccinated people are at risk for COVID-19 and can transmit the virus to others. Kids are at very low risk for COVID-19 themselves; the bigger concern is that they can transmit the virus to more vulnerable, unvaccinated folks. As I explained a few weeks ago, kids certainly CAN get sick from COVID — and even die from it; the risk is vanishingly small.
Containing the virus (aka limiting its spread) through vaccination also chokes off the virus’ ability to mutate and produce variants that could potentially escape the immune protection from the vaccines. Currently the vaccines offer strong protection against the circulating variants, but this could certainly change as the virus enjoys spreading through unvaccinated populations.
Next I’ll answer some of the questions we asked ourselves — as potential reasons for not vaccinating our daughter:
Q: Since kids are generally at very low risk for COVID-19, why bother vaccinating an adolescent with a new vaccine when the risks to her are so small?
A: Even though she is low risk herself, protecting her means protecting others while liberating herself from pandemic restrictions. (Here is my take on framing kids' risks and putting data into context to help make healthy decisions for our families.)
Q: Why should we vaccinate our child when there are so many adults who refuse to be vaccinated? Aren’t we just offering up our child as a sacrificial lamb? And are we disincentivizing vaccinate-hesitant adults from getting vaccinated by offering up our kids’ arms?
A: Most people who are skeptical about getting vaccinated aren't anti-vaxxers; their hesitancy is rooted in misinformation, fear about vaccine side effects, historic abuse by our medical system, denial about their vulnerability to disease or lack of a trusted messenger to deliver nuanced guidance. The upshot? These issues won’t change overnight. Meanwhile, Stella wanted the vaccine now.
Q: Aren’t we just feeding the fear narrative by vaccinating low-risk kids when the real problem is our societal overestimation of risk in young people and vaccine hesitancy?
A: In many ways, this is true. I have been flapping my wings for 14 months about putting facts in the driver’s seat of our thoughts, behaviors, and public policies — and moving fear out of our way. The problems? We’re human. And this is the United States of America. We have anxieties, fears, opinions, political ideologies, and individualism like nowhere else in the world! I’d LOVE to think we’d all come together to form a collective trust tree — to believe in science and truth and equity and care for our neighbors like we care for ourselves — but that isn’t happening overnight, either. But SURE — if we could tamp down the national fear narrative about kids and COVID, and then vaccinate every adult in the US real quick, we likely wouldn’t need to vaccinate the youngsters at all.
Q: If kids are so low risk, wouldn’t it be smarter and more equitable to send the vaccine doses allotted to kids ages 12-15 to India where it’s desperately needed.
A: India and parts of Latin America are on fire. Vaccinating our global allies would help contain the virus; it’s also arguably the right thing to do. We’ve already sent vaccine doses overseas. Could we do more? My friends Monica Gandhi, Tracy Hoeg, and Vinay Prasad penned an incredible piece about global vaccine equity in the Atlantic yesterday (alongside mine!) It’s well worth a read. They make a great case, but the reality is this: without control of US foreign policy myself, I couldn’t ship Stella’s vaccine dose overseas even if I wanted to.
The upshot?
There’s no one-size-fits all prescription for parenting. We all have different risks and risk tolerances. We should do what is right for our kids, families, and communities. We should talk to our pediatricians for nuanced advice.
Transitioning from an abundance of caution in our personal and public lives will take time, major policy changes, and a whole lot of therapy. We need to let kids be kids now. The vaccine is their ticket.
In the meantime, unmasking all kids outside (whether they’re vaccinated or not), getting them moving, and reconnecting them with their friends is the evidence-based path toward restoring their health and well-being.
At a later date, I’ll be sure to talk about the younger kids, masking indoors, and some predictions for the fall. Spoiler alert: kids won’t be masked forever, and we are going to be okay.
I will see you next week. Until then, be well.