Vaccinated parents waver on kids’ shots
When a coronavirus vaccine became authorized for emergency use in the United States, Roberta Satill and her husband took it without hesitation.
But as the Food and Drug Administration granted emergency authorization for the use of the PfizerBioNTech vaccine in children 5 to 11 Friday, Satill is wavering on whether to vaccinate her children, who fall within that age group.
The 45-year-old mother from Longwood, Fla., said she has kept her kids up-todate on their other vaccines, but she worries about possible short- and long-term side effects from the coronavirus vaccine and whether it’s worth any perceived risks, especially given that infections have been declining nationwide.
The FDA advisory committee, which voted 17-0 Tuesday to back the vaccine, found that the benefits of the shot for the 28 million children in that age group outweighed the risks of a rare cardiac side effect.
“It’s extremely nerveracking,” Satill said. “You want to make the best decision for your children.”
Some parents, even those like Satill who have been vaccinated themselves, are struggling to decide whether to immunize their children. They wonder whether their kids really need it and worry that it may be riskier than the disease, which is typically much less severe for children — though not always. They said they have a hard time finding reliable information to make an informed decision. And they said they want to make one for the right reasons — to protect their kids against disease, which vaccine company data show the shot does extremely well — not simply to reduce mitigations such as wearing masks.
In a Kaiser Family Foundation survey this month, about 27 percent of parents of children ages 5 to 11 said they planned to get their kids vaccinated immediately once the shots are authorized. Another 33 percent said they would wait and see how the rollout goes for other children.
What they ultimately decide may impact the trajectory of the pandemic in the United States. Federal officials have said achieving a high childhood vaccination rate will be key to tamping down the coronavirus’ spread, especially in light of a recent study showing that children are transmitting the virus as frequently as adults.
The White House has launched a campaign to educate parents about the vaccinations, as federal health officials anticipate signing off this week on administering a reduced dose of PfizerBioNTech’s vaccine. The companies have said their trials show the immunization is safe and 91 percent effective in children ages 5 to 11.
But reliable information from official sources will have to compete with a maelstrom of rumors and social media claims, many of which are untrue.
“This is probably the most publicized vaccination campaign ever, and there are torrents of misinformation out there. So it’s absolutely understandable why parents would have some questions,” said Sean O’Leary, vice chair of the Committee on Infectious Diseases for the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Children at risk
Several parents cited a feeling that they lacked reliable information as a main source of their hesitation.
John Lyons, a 39-year-old father from Chicago, said he and his wife got vaccinated against the coronavirus as soon as they became eligible because they both work in the medical field. But, he said, they feel that there’s a lot to consider and no easy answers when making that decision for their children.
“It’s a risk-versus-reward decision,” said Lyons, whose children are 7, 6 and 3. “And I guess my hesitation comes in that I don’t know what the real risk of COVID-19 illness is for my children. Information seems to be very difficult to come by — good information, reliable information, seems difficult to come by in terms of pediatric risk.”
While children are much less likely to become severely ill from the coronavirus, they are still at risk. Nearly 6.2 million children in the United States have tested positive since the pandemic started, resulting in tens of thousands of hospitalizations and more than 500 deaths, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Some children who had COVID-19 are now showing long-haul symptoms.
Nationwide, almost 46 million people have tested positive and more than 745,000 have died.
Some parents also incorrectly worry that the vaccines will affect their children’s future fertility or make them shed parts of the coronavirus and infect others, said Krupa Playforth, an Alexandria, Va.-based pediatrician and mother of three. Neither fear is true: The vaccines do not cause infertility or release any of their components.
“I think we are more willing to take risks with ourselves than we are with our children,” Playforth said. “That protective instinct kind of kicks in.”
For many, pediatricians are a trusted source of information. Playforth suggested that parents ask doctors whether they plan to vaccinate their own children. For her part, she said she plans to get a vaccine for her 6year-old daughter, as long as the FDA approves vaccination for that age group without reservation.
Other parents are worried not only about immediate adverse reactions, but also potential long-term side effects — which doctors said there is little precedent for with vaccines.
Jeff Phipps, of Crossville, Tenn., said he and his wife were on the fence about whether to get vaccinated themselves but ultimately did and finished their immunizations last month. He said he doesn’t reject the idea of vaccinating his children, ages 16, 14 and 10, but “there’s still so many question marks.”
“I was willing to do it for me, but when I think about my children, we’re just still searching for answers,” he said.
Randall Hayes, who lives in the same city, said he and his wife are both pro-vaccine. The couple were vaccinated against the coronavirus and have gotten all other recommended vaccines for their 2-year-old and 9-yearold daughters. But they have differing opinions on whether to vaccinate their oldest when she becomes eligible for the coronavirus vaccine.
Adverse reactions rare
Hayes, 38, said he is not against getting the vaccine for his daughter, but he is concerned about potential adverse reactions such as myocarditis, a condition characterized by inflammation of the heart muscle. He said he was willing to accept possible risks for himself, but he does not want to make that decision for his child.
If the vaccine were to result in long-lasting effects, he said, “I’m going to have to stand and look my girls in the eye in 10 years or 20 years and say, ‘I thought I was making the best decision for you.’ And if it wasn’t, then that’s something that would be hard to live with.”
His wife, Amanda, 35, said she wants to vaccinate their 9-year-old but she can empathize.
“I have not sat down and pored through all the research behind every vaccine that both of my daughters have gotten, but this is new and it’s also coming at a time where there’s a lot of mistrust that surrounds it. So it is just very hard, I think, for most people to accept,” she said. She added that even she wonders, “Ten years down the road, what are we going to find out that we don’t know right now?”
Health experts said serious adverse reactions to vaccines are generally rare and typically become clear quickly. O’Leary said the notion that children may suffer consequences from the vaccine down the line is “based on a mistaken assumption that the vaccines actually can cause long-term side effects.”
“There’s really not a precedent for that,” he said. “When a vaccine causes an adverse reaction, it’s in the days to maybe weeks after the vaccine. It doesn’t happen years down the road, and there’s no reason to think that these vaccines would be any different than all of the other vaccines.”
In the case of myocarditis, a heart condition that in rare cases may be linked to the mRNA vaccines in young people, Playforth said the side effect did not become apparent until months after vaccination began because it’s so uncommon.
While delayed effects from vaccination are unlikely, contracting the coronavirus can have long-lasting impacts. Long-haul COVID-19 in children appears rare, but estimates of how many kids suffer from it vary widely. And more than 5,200 children have gotten a rare but serious condition called multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C), which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states can cause inflammation of the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, eyes and other organs.
Still, experts said parents’ concerns about vaccination are understandable.
“Even if you got the vaccine for yourself, I think feeling that nervousness about getting it for your child is very normal,” said Jennifer Kusma, an instructor of pediatrics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.