'We don't want children in the ICU'

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'We don't want children in the ICU'

October 27, 2021

Stephen Collinson and Caitlin Hu

'We don't want children in the ICU'

Millions of American parents just gave a huge sigh of relief.

The Food and Drug Administration's panel of vaccine advisers on Tuesday voted 17-0 (with one abstention) to recommend emergency use authorization of Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine for kids aged 5 to 11. Next up is final approval by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, possibly by next week.

The move may come too late to fully save Thanksgiving and Hanukkah in late November, since the Pfizer shot comes in two doses spaced three weeks apart. But Christmas and New Year's could reunite families and friends who remember the joyless holiday season of 2020.

The US is behind a handful of European nations that have already started vaccinating kids. But this marks an important turning point in a pandemic that has dragged on far longer than President Joe Biden promised: Cases and deaths in the US are declining and there are hopes that the Delta variant may have reached its peak, although colder weather could spike infections in the North. Getting kids inoculated will help massively.

Of course, this being the deeply divided United States, the news on Covid-19 vaccines for kids is also likely to trigger a new round of political recriminations and social angst. Only 55% of parents with kids under 12 said in a recent Gallup survey that they would vaccinate them against Covid-19, even though inoculations against polio, tetanus and other diseases are standard for children. As usual, the partisan breakdown was stark; 83% of Democratic moms and dads want their under-12s protected with the reduced dose that the FDA recommends. Just 21% of Republican parents say they do.

'We don't want children in the ICU'

Though members of the FDA committee agreed the benefits of vaccinating younger children appeared to outweigh the risks, some still appeared troubled about voting to vaccinate a large population of younger children based on studies of a few thousand, reports CNN's Maggie Fox. "I am just worried that if we say yes, then the states are going to mandate administration of this vaccine for children to go to school and I do not agree with that," said Dr. Cody Meissner, a professor of pediatrics at Tufts University School of Medicine. "I think that would be an error at this time."

However, as Dr. Amanda Cohn of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reminded the committee, the coronavirus has already taken the lives of more than 700 children in the US. "We don't want children dying of Covid," she said. "And we don't want children in the ICU."

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Beloved

An angry crowd at a Loudoun County, Virginia, school board meeting in June.

Speaking of political divides, schools are the latest area of American life to be consumed by cultural and ideological fury.

Education has emerged as the critical issue in a neck-and-neck race in Virginia, a state Joe Biden won by 10 points in 2020 but that could elect a Republican governor next week. GOP strategists believe that criticizing what kids are taught in school could be their opening with key suburban voters in the state.

Across the country, meetings of school boards -- the elected bodies that handle curriculums, budgets and policies -- have been interrupted by furious protests, heckling and even threats. And conservative governors in Texas and Florida, auditioning with Trump's base as future presidential candidates, have already waded into education policy, banning Covid-19 mask mandates and signing bills that prevent transgender girls from playing on female sports teams in high school and college.

In Virginia, a controversy is now boiling over an ad by Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin that features a woman saying she was shocked by explicit material her high schooler read in Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "Beloved." Democrats accused Youngkin of blowing a racist dog whistle after criticizing the Nobel laureate, one of the most famous Black writers in US history.

Feuds over education encapsulate wider clashes over race, cultural war, gender self-definition and the identity of America itself. But they also raise the question of whether America's kids should learn only subjects that agree with their parents' politics. After all, education is supposed to involve unearthing facts and perspectives that challenge preconceived ideas. But it's just too tempting a target for politicians to ignore.

Thanks for reading.

On Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron meets with nationalist Polish President Andrzej Duda in Paris. British Finance Minister Rishi Sunak gives a half-yearly update on the public finances and economic outlook. And German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier visits Ireland.