An influential panel with the Food and Drug Administration voted unanimously to greenlight the approval of COVID-19 vaccines for children — not because children are at risk of falling seriously ill from the virus but because getting them vaccinated is the only way to determine the vaccines are actually necessary, according to one of the panelists.
During a meeting this week, the panel was asked an important question: “Based on the totality of scientific evidence available, do the benefits of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine when administered as a two-dose series outweigh its risks for use in children 5-11 years of age?”
Dr. Eric Ruben, a Harvard Medical School professor and FDA adviser, responded: “We’re never going to learn about how safe this vaccine is until we start giving it. That’s just the way it goes.”
JUST IN: FDA Panel votes 17-0 to approve vaccines for children ages 5-11…
Dr. Ruben on the FDA panel: “We’re never gonna learn about how safe the vaccine is until we start giving it. That’s the way it goes.”
— Matt Couch (@RealMattCouch) October 26, 2021
This answer will do little to instill confidence in parents who are understandably hesitant to get their children vaccinated. It’s one thing to expect grown adults capable of making responsible decisions to get the shot; it’s another to ask minors to become test subjects for a vaccine, especially when the virus this vaccine combats is not a threat to children’s health in the first place.
Families who want to get their children vaccinated against COVID-19 should be free to do so. That’s their choice. The problem, however, is that it’s only a matter of time before they lose that choice and vaccination becomes mandatory. This is already the case in California, where Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an order mandating that all schoolchildren get the shot as soon as they are eligible.
There is no scientific or moral justification for mandates such as Newsom’s. Children have a higher risk of dying from the flu than they do of COVID-19. Indeed, they have a greater chance of dying in the car on the way to school than they do of falling seriously ill from COVID-19.
Other vaccines are required by public school districts, but the reasoning behind these mandates makes sense. The risk of death for children from these afflictions is much greater than any risk associated with its given vaccine. Hence why vaccination against polio is required by public school districts but vaccination against the flu is not.
The FDA has failed to explain how the risk of COVID-19 infection in children outweighs the potential risks of the vaccine. Thus far, the agency has only succeeded in convincing parents that it wants to use their children as guinea pigs — or, in Dr. Anthony Fauci’s case, as beagle puppies. FDA officials should not be surprised, then, when parents of both political affiliations resist their vaccination efforts.
