Airline Pilot Central Forums - Ethics of COVID immunization in kids

Airline Pilot Central Forums (https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/)

- COVID19 (https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/covid19/)

- - Ethics of COVID immunization in kids (https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/covid19/134912-ethics-covid-immunization-kids.html)

Ethics of COVID immunization in kids

The delay of approval of COVID immunization in those under 12 has raised a number of issues - not merely those involving schools. The problem has several issues, including the CFR requiring higher levels of caution with drug approvals for children and a higher standard of assurance of benefit to offset the risk since kids are legally incapable of giving informed consent for such testing like adults are. That is the case with ALL drug testing for children, and the bottom line issue is that the potential benefit TO THE CHILD (emphasis added) must exceed the risk, however little that risk might be. And even with the younger age groups that have been approved it seems that in some respects - incidence of myocarditis and pericarditis, for example, these immunizations while still quite safe are somewhat higher than you see in adults. But the problem as you go younger is not the absolute amount of risk involved for approving these immunizations, it is the risk-benefit ratio.

While the immunizations may not be terribly risky in the pediatric group, neither is COVID. Sure, COVID CAN kill young kids, but it rarely does, just as immunizations CAN kill kids (as the first RSV vaccine demonstrated) although that too is a rare event.

We may be soon facing the issue of potentially vaccinating kids not for their own safety but rather as part of an effort to provide herd immunity to decrease the riskif infection to those who are at increased risk, the elderly, those living with HIV, cancer patients under treatment with immune suppressing radiation or chemotherapy, and those with multiple comorbidities.

This is sort of a new area in Public Health, and it is clear the FDA people are moving slowly and with much concern in the face of political pressure to move faster. The recent top tier resignations may well be part of that concern.

https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-policy/guidance/faq/children-research/index.html

https://news.yahoo.com/vaccine-leaders-resign-pfizer-booster-142824241.html

Or they can be vaccinated for their own benefit...

To allow them to participate in school, sports, etc and allow their parents to work and feed them instead of staying home providing daycare.

Like anything else there's a tradeoff between the risks of vaccination vs. covid or social isolation. Vaccine risks are exceptionally low and the delat variant is affecting young people more.

It is appropriate for the gov to go slow with kids, since the adult trial results do not automatically in all cases translate to child biology.

Speaking of ethical, I wonder how many people would be seeking seeking an off-label use of comirnaty for children under 12 if it were available in the marketplace today.

https://i.ibb.co/B2W2drL/F963-D0-BB-...3640-E4-C0.jpg

an excerpt:

Quote:

Many politicians and some scientists have spoken out in favor of vaccinating more children amid concerns that COVID-19 could spread in schools reopening after the summer holidays, further disrupting education.

Britain has reported more than 133,000 deaths from COVID-19 and nearly 7 million cases, and while transmission among children can be high, they are rarely severely ill from the disease.

On Friday, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said children with underlying conditions that made them more at risk from COVID-19 should get vaccinated.

For healthy children, there was still a small benefit from receiving COVID-19 vaccination, and advisers said the risk-benefit was “finely balanced.”

However, the JCVI said it wanted more information on the long-term effects of rare reports of heart inflammation, known as myocarditis, in young people following vaccination with Pfizer’s shot.
US booster plan faces complications, some may miss Sept. 20 Myocarditis is rare and normally mild, with patients usually recovering in a few days.

“Of course, these vaccines do work and would be beneficial to children in terms of preventing infection and disease, but the number of serious cases that we see of COVID in children this age are really very small,” JCVI member Adam Finn told Reuters.

“There are uncertainties about the long-term implications of (myocarditis), and that makes the risk-benefit balance for these children really quite tight and much tighter than we would be comfortable to make the recommendation.”

UK Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Sajid Javid, who sets policy for England, and his counterparts from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, wrote to the chief medical officers (CMOs) of the four nations, asking for further advice, “including on educational impacts.”

https://www.newsnationnow.com/world/...-15-year-olds/

Quote:

Originally Posted by rickair7777 (Post 3290414)

A physician friend refers to the notion of vaccinating healthy kids for Covid "child abuse."

The Brits look at child vaccination

Quote:

Originally Posted by rickair7777 (Post 3290414)

Did health officials weigh these different options last year when mandating lock downs and home schooling? It doesn't seem like economic destruction, social isolation or mental health was factored into any of the bureaucrat's decision making process in the last year. If it prevented one death they wanted to do it at any cost. So now that we can leverage vaccines as a carrot we are going to put these other issues back into the collective decision making conscience? Doesn't surprise me one bit, the political class has used every tool in their arsenal to force what they think is the best for the people they rule over.

Although I have a limited understanding of bioethics, some research into the topic revealed this: vaccinating one cohort to protect another cohort is only ethical if the vaccine offers a risk less than the disease in which you are vaccinating against. I believe the jury is still out on that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GeeWizDriver (Post 3290496)

A physician friend refers to the notion of vaccinating healthy kids for Covid "child abuse."

We vaccinated ours so we could go on a family vacation. And they're getting the flu shot this fall. As far as I can tell they don't seem abused.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rickair7777 (Post 3290577)

We vaccinated ours so we could go on a family vacation. And they're getting the flu shot this fall. As far as I can tell they don't seem abused.

What destination required children to be jabbed? I haven’t heard of any places requiring children to be jabbed for entry