Adding 5-12 year-olds to the ranks of vaccinated is a big step in getting populations to herd immunity. After all, kids carry Covid, too!
(Originally published Nov. 4 in “What in the World“) With the CDC’s blessing, American kids aged 5-12 can now roll up for vaccines against Covid-19. This is a major development that helps close one of the most dangerous gaps in our efforts to end the pandemic. If nothing else, it potentially boosts the total vaccination rate by as much as 15 percentage points.
But the real impact may be much greater. This new cohort of vaccine recipients will help reduce transmission among a group of people compelled to gather five times a week in large groups, yet who can’t really grasp the consequences of social distancing and wearing masks. Kids around the world were sent back to school—long before infection rates subsided—by politicians under pressure from exhausted parents. Once back at school, they’ve been freely spreading the virus among their peers and then carrying it home to their siblings, parents, gam-gam and paw-paw. If you think kids below the age of 12 can be counted on to dutifully wear masks and maintain 1-2 meters of distance when not under strict adult supervision, you have clearly never had kids or been one.
It was easy to sacrifice kids to the virus because their immune systems are strong enough to prevent most of them from contracting severe illness. Sending kids back to school didn’t kill them. But from the perspective of achieving herd immunity, it was suicidal: kids 5-12 represent at least 15% of the entire U.S. population of potential virus hosts, yet were still ineligible to receive vaccines. The Biden Administration has been touting inoculation rates above 70%, but has apparently been using the population of eligible recipients as the denominator. The true rate of vaccination in the U.S. is only about 58%. Now the U.S. can start closing that gap. Hopefully the rest of the world will soon follow.
The CDC says that even kids that have already had Covid (and adults as well!) should get vaccinated. As hard as it may be to believe, the jabs apparently provide better protection against the latest strains than a previous infection. Vaccines are already proving successful in keeping seniors out of the hospital.
With our youngest citizens now eligible for protection, it’s time to get much more serious about extending vaccinations to poorer populations. Rich countries have already reportedly given more booster shots in three months than poor countries have given initial doses this year. Yet little concrete on redressing this imbalance appears to have come out of the latest gabfests in Rome and Glasgow.
Tough luck for poor countries? Yes. But potentially tough luck for us, too. Given enough infections, those poor nations are likely to produce a mutation of Covid that evades vaccines, no matter how many boosters we administer. Then Covid really will be like the flu: flu vaccines can often be only about 10% effective because of influenza’s ability to mutate so rapidly. And the odds remain on Covid’s side: roughly 65% of humanity remains unvaccinated and therefore a potential reservoir for the virus.
What’s worse, scientists are now discovering that animals may provide another safe haven. U.S. researchers have found widespread Covid infection in Iowa’s white-tailed deer population.
Whether or not venison should be back on the menu, it’s clear that high adult vaccination rates aren’t enough to warrant reopening. Greece is the latest nation to discover that re-opening to visitors is an open invitation to Covid. Greece has thus joined Denmark, Iceland and Singapore in suffering a late and dramatic resurgence in infections.
Another country suffering an unexpected spike in cases is Germany, particularly among its unvaccinated minority. Both Germany and Greece have seen vaccination rates plateau well below 70%, but still above the U.S. rate.
Of course, neither can come close to the intensity at which the pandemic is ripping through Eastern Europe and the Balkans.
And spare a thought for Russia, which on Wednesday reported a record number of daily Covid deaths.
Who are all these unvaccinated Europeans? You guessed it: kids. While the media have focused on vaccine reluctance among adults, none of the European nations or Russia yet vaccinate children under the age of 12. And aside from China and Malaysia, the same is true across much of Asia.