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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowChildren age 5 to 11 will soon be able to get a COVID-19 shot at their pediatrician’s office, local pharmacy and potentially even their school, the White House said Wednesday as it detailed plans for the expected authorization of the Pfizer shot for younger children in a matter of weeks.
Federal regulators will meet over the next two weeks to weigh the benefits of giving shots to children, after lengthy studies meant to ensure the safety of the vaccines.
Within hours of formal approval, expected after the Food and Drug Administration signs off and a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory panel meeting scheduled for Nov. 2-3, doses will begin shipping to providers across the country, along with smaller needles necessary for injecting young children, and within days will be ready to go into the arms of youngsters on a wide scale.
About 15 million doses will be shipped to providers across the country in the first week after approval, the White House said.
“We’re completing the operational planning to ensure vaccinations for kids ages 5-11 are available, easy and convenient,” said White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients on Wednesday. “We’re going to be ready, pending the FDA and CDC decision.”
The Biden administration notes the nationwide campaign to extend the protection of vaccination to the school-going cohort will not look like the start of the country’s vaccine rollout 10 months ago, when scarcity of doses and capacity issues meant a painstaking wait for many Americans. The country now has ample supplies of the Pfizer shot to vaccinate the roughly 28 million children who will soon be eligible, White House officials said, and have been working for months to ensure widespread availability of shots once approved.
More than 25,000 pediatricians and primary care providers have already signed on to administer COVID-19 vaccine shots to children, the White House said, in addition to the tens of thousands of retail pharmacies that are already administering shots to adults. Hundreds of school- and community-based clinics will also be funded and supported by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help speed putting shots into arms.
The White House is also preparing to mobilize a stepped-up campaign to educate parents and children about the safety of the shots and the ease of getting them. As has been the case for adult vaccinations, the administration believes trusted messengers—educators, doctors, and community leaders—will be vital to encouraging vaccinations.
While children are at lower risk than older people of having serious side effects from COVID-19, those serious consequences do occur–and officials note that vaccination both dramatically reduces those chances and will reduce the spread of the more transmissible delta variant in communities, contributing to the nation’s broader recovery from the pandemic.
“COVID has also disrupted our kids lives. It’s made school harder, it’s disrupted their ability to see friends and family, it’s made youth sports more challenging,” U.S. surgeon general Dr. Vivek Murthy told NBC on Wednesday. “Getting our kids vaccinated, we have the prospect of protecting them, but also getting all of those activities back that are so important to our children.”
Murthy said the administration, which is promoting employer vaccine mandates for adults, is leaving the question of requirements for schools to local and state officials, but called them “reasonable.”
“Those are decisions on, when it comes to school requirements, that are made by localities and by states,” he told NBC’s “Today.” “You’ve seen already some localities and states talk about vaccine requirements for kids. And I think it’s a reasonable thing to consider to get those vaccination rates high. And it’s also consistent with what we’ve done for other childhood vaccines, like measles, mumps, polio.”
The administration notes that children who get their first shot within a couple of weeks of the expected approval in early November will be fully vaccinated by Christmas.
The U.S. has purchased 65 million doses of the Pfizer pediatric shot—expected to be one third the dosage for adults and adolescents—according to officials, more than enough for every kid in the age group. They will ship in smaller packages of about 100 doses each, so that more providers can deliver them, and they can be stored for up to 10 weeks at standard refrigeration temperatures.
About 219 million Americans aged 12 and up, or 66% of the total population, have received a COVID-19 shot and nearly 190 million are fully vaccinated.
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Child abuse
Ignorance
No
No long term study or understanding of risk.
True of virtually all medicines. Option is to get the bug and pass it along to others. But your take is the result of tour “research”.
Absolute ridiculousness, as well as a waste of money considering the Administration spent tax payer $$ to purchase a dose for every child 5-11. We are literally experimenting on our children, to what, keep adults safe?
Federal Data States:
Compared to other age groups, people under 18 are at much lower risk of serious illness and death from Covid-19. The death rate for Americans under 18 who are infected is about 0.01 percent, compared to 5 percent for 65- to 74-year-olds, 12 percent for 75- to 84-year-olds, and 25 percent for people 85 and older. In total, people 50 and up make up 94 percent of Covid-19 deaths in the US, based on federal data.
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And from a recent pear reviewed paper, cited by author of article:
The risk is even lower for children under 10, experts told me.
Another way to gauge risk is to compare Covid-19 to other significant causes of death. Covid-19 has killed 280 children under 18 from January through September 2021, the time span in which the alpha and delta variants were active. Flu and pneumonia, heart disease, drowning, guns, and motor vehicles were all deadlier to children during the same time periods annually from 2015 to 2019 (the latest years with available data).
Satan details plans to vaccinate 28M children age 5-11
This doesn’t make any sense, children have virtually no risk from COVID-19. And we have therapeutics including monoclonal antibodies and soon antiviral pills from Merck.
The vaccination fetish is getting more bizarre every day.
They pass it along to the vulnerable
Very essence of Government stupidity. Forced vaccination of children, the least vulnerable individuals in our population, goes beyond the idiotic. Again, what does this say about this push to force a vaccine on EVERYONE even those that have had COVID and have more anti-bodies in their systems than the vaccine could ever provide. It certainly sounds like DESPERATION. I personally know of at least 10 children under the age of 12 that had COVID and had symptoms so mild, they barely knew they had it. None had any complications. These children are more likely to get struck by lightening than get a serious case of COVID that leads to complications requiring hospitalization.