The ACIP clearly made the right call here. Still, as I've mentioned before, I worry about what this means for vaccination of children under 12.
Young kids need to be vaccinated, too. Toddlers -- the population with which I'm most concerned because, well, I have one -- are hospitalized in roughly one in 200 cases and suffer MIS-C in perhaps one in 2,000. And they develop long COVID -- it's hard to say just how often, but also hard to regard any number as trivial. This is to say nothing of the importance of vaccinating this population to control community spread, especially with things reopening and more infectious variants becoming dominant.
Yet, I have to think that the prospect of vaccine-induced myocarditis in such young children might throw a wrench into the works when it comes to extending EUA coverage to them. This would seem to lend some urgency to determining what exactly is causing this side effect, its likelihood of occurring different populations, and whether there's a way it might be prevented (e.g., timing of doses).
Dr. Walensky also wrote that COVID-19 is a much more significant cause of myocarditis than any of the vaccines, according to current evidence. So ... to prevent myocarditis, get vaccinated!
The ACIP clearly made the right call here. Still, as I've mentioned before, I worry about what this means for vaccination of children under 12.
Young kids need to be vaccinated, too. Toddlers -- the population with which I'm most concerned because, well, I have one -- are hospitalized in roughly one in 200 cases and suffer MIS-C in perhaps one in 2,000. And they develop long COVID -- it's hard to say just how often, but also hard to regard any number as trivial. This is to say nothing of the importance of vaccinating this population to control community spread, especially with things reopening and more infectious variants becoming dominant.
Yet, I have to think that the prospect of vaccine-induced myocarditis in such young children might throw a wrench into the works when it comes to extending EUA coverage to them. This would seem to lend some urgency to determining what exactly is causing this side effect, its likelihood of occurring different populations, and whether there's a way it might be prevented (e.g., timing of doses).
Dr. Walensky also wrote that COVID-19 is a much more significant cause of myocarditis than any of the vaccines, according to current evidence. So ... to prevent myocarditis, get vaccinated!