Is the COVID Vaccine Safe for Children? A Pediatrician and Immunologist Weigh In

Thanks to @MOls for working so diligently on this piece for us!

I know I personally am counting down the days until we are approved for 0-5!

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This is a much needed piece that I plan on sharing with patients. Thank you!

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Awesome! So glad it can help.

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That is great to hear, Randy. I hope it can help some parents feel reassured about their decisions

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Great article. It addresses concerns respectfully and intelligently, and hopefully will be widely shared.

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My question is not specific to children and vaccines, but may also apply to children. When I was first diagnosed with Diabetes Type 2, my GP advised that in the event of me catching an infection (in context a cold or the 'flu) that I should ignore high BGLs, as this was a temporary response to the infection. I noticed that after having a COVID-19 booster shot, my BGLs were quite elevated for about a month. Is this an expected symptom of vaccination, with the body being fooled by the vaccine into thinking I had an infection?

Well, I am a retired doc, so my advice is a little tired and old, but I can see how a vaccine should induce an inflammatory response, with increased cortisols and such, and those are associated with higher blood sugars.
But, just because an elevated blood sugar is a natural response, does not mean it is good. It has been shown that keeping the glucose down to as normal as possible is associated with better outcomes in hospitalized patients, So, if your sugars are high, try to keep it down with good diet, but if it is significantly higher, might want to check with your doc to see if bumping up your meds temporarily is in order.
My latest A1c bumped up to 6.7, so technically I join you in the diabetic camp, though hopefully with some weight loss can get that down.

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Hmmm, isnā€™t it just fascinating that double vaxed and boosted people get sick anyway? Like Dr. Fauciā€¦ Great vaccine though. Works remarkably keeps Pfizer in business.,. We should jab our two year olds who are more likely to get hit by lightening! On pins and needlesā€¦

Rhetoric, but any numbers to share? Even though the prevention of minor illness is not as great with the newer strains, my impression is that the risk of serious complications with disease is still far greater in unimmunized children as well as in adults. One study showed that the risk of myocarditis in unimmunized children who got Covid was 10 times the risk of myocarditis from the vaccine. I will have to look to find where those numbers came from.

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Of the 700 children that died with Covid, I seem to remember there being a disproportionate number that were not your average healthy kid.

No doubt. Kids with chronic disease and who are immune compromised have a difficult time with Covid (and everything else). That is why we should try to help them avoid it.

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Shouldnā€™t the exact or rough percentage be reported? Iā€™ve seen it documented elsewhere.

And no consideration of infection acquired immunity for weighing the decision?

Iā€™m sure it is, Probably could google it. Not sure what infection acquired immunity has to do with it, as that only applies to subsequent infections, not primary ones. Vaccines modify the primary infection complications as opposed to infection acquired immunity which is only effective against second and subsequent infections,

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I mean whether children should be vaccinated if they have acquired immunity from a previous Covid infection.

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I recall that even with a prior infection, a vaccine still increases the number of antibodies dramatically. (And itā€™s not really ā€œacquired immunityā€, especially with the new strains.)

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What I dislike about COVID vaccines is that they do not come under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. The statistics showing the lives saved (and the grief avoided) way outweighs that though.

Maybe not with the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, but with the with the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program? The latter I was not aware of, and I barely know anything about the former.

Of my five (so far) grandchildren, only 1 has received the vaccine. She did get Covid. There are no plans for her to get a booster.

In the case of the other four (three in one family and one in the other), no vaccinations are planned. The parents determined the risk of serious illness from Covid were less than any potential risk from the vaccine.

The decisions might have been different if they were not healthy children.

From the article:
ā€œ From the numbers discussed above, we can conclude that our kids are more likely to suffer harm from COVID-19 infection than vaccination.ā€
I think most of my children came to a different conclusion when considering that their children were very healthy and did not have health problems that were likely not controlled for in the average numbers.

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That says it all.