The arrival of child-sized doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine has Oklahoma pediatricians fielding a new, common question: Does my child really need this?
And it’s a question they’re eager to address.
“Children are not supposed to pass away,” said Dr. Donna Tyungu, pediatric infectious disease specialist with Oklahoma Children’s Hospital-OU Health. “COVID is now one of the 10 leading causes of death for children in this country — and now it has become a vaccine-preventable illness.
“That’s what lands in the heart of a pediatrician.”
Local pediatricians estimated that about a third of their patients’ parents are champing at the bit to get their children ages 5-11 vaccinated. Another third have questions or concerns to be addressed or want more time to wait and see how other kids do with the shots.
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And that last third? They simply won’t do it.
But to a person, doctors said they want their young patients’ parents to know they can come to them about this decision, no matter what.
“It would be really beautiful if everyone would not use Facebook for this and not use TikTok and go and sit down and calmly talk it through with their pediatrician,” said Dr. Tyungu. “Get those questions answered by someone you know and trust. That would be the ideal world to be living in during a pandemic.”
Two basic facts Tyungu wants every parent to know? Here they are in her words:
1. “We know from adult cases the chance to get reinfected is three times lower for those who are vaccinated than for those who have already been infected.”
That is pertinent for parents considering whether to get their child the shots if they’ve already had COVID.
2. “With the delta variant, the virus was much, much more transmissible among children, which is what led to thousands of children being hospitalized and hundreds of deaths in this age group.”
The known death toll among Americans age 18 and under is nearing 700, with 200 of those deaths among infants through 4-year-olds.
Dr. Lisa Wright, a pediatrician in the Muscogee Nation Department of Health’s Sapulpa clinic who has also worked in Eufaula during the pandemic, said she hasn’t had a single patient age 12-17 with a serious reaction to the COVID vaccine.
She shares with parents that she and her colleagues are all ensuring that their own children get vaccinated as soon as they become eligible.
“No parent thinks that this is going to happen to their child, but if the numbers were reversed — over 740,000 adults and 700 children dead — if those numbers were reversed, I don’t think society would be functional.
“Everything would be shut down,” said Wright.
“As a pediatrician we would not recommend someone give their child a shot or medication we would not give our own children.”
While the risk of death for young children from COVID-19 is far less than for adults currently, the physicians who care for them in Oklahoma say they’ve seen many more pediatric cases of long COVID lasting two to three months and multisystem inflammatory syndrome.
Also called MIS-C for short, the inflammatory syndrome causes a child’s heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes or gastrointestinal organs to become inflamed, and doctors currently have no way of knowing the long-term effects for children who are affected.
“Do children do better (when infected with COVID) than adults? Hands down,” said Dr. Tyungu. “But we cannot tell families which child gets COVID, which child is going to have long COVID for two or three months, which child is going to have multi-system inflammatory disease.
“But we now have something that can potentially prevent those bad cases — and we’re not even talking about how much we can prevent bringing the virus to vulnerable adults.”
That’s something Shoneen Alexander-Ross, chief performance officer with the Muscogee Nation Health Department, does talk about with parents in her community.
A new study estimates that more than 140,000 children in the U.S. lost a parent or a grandparent caregiver to COVID-19 between the start of April 2020 through the end of June 2021. The majority of those children are in racial and ethnic minority groups.
The epidemiologist who authored the study estimates that the figure is around 175,000 today, thanks to the delta variant surge in late summer.
Alexander-Ross said numerous Muscogee families in Oklahoma are reflected among those statistics.
“One of the things that makes us unique is we have multi-generational homes, so it is common to have grandparents in the home,” she said.
“We are seeing a high number of family members affected, so it’s really important that children be vaccinated because some of our elders are high-risk and they’re the primary caregiver for the children in the home.”
Dr. Wright said parents of young children in particular are desperate for a return to “normal” for their children.
She sees vaccination as a critical means for society to accomplish that.
“So many things have impacted children since COVID started,” she said. “I’ve had a number of patients lose relatives, and the number of children I’m seeing dealing with mental health issues or who have gained an excessive amount of weight because they weren’t out doing activities is really concerning.
“The vaccine is going to really help change things as a community and as a country as far as getting back to normal. The COVID vaccine is safe for children.”
U.S. health officials have given the final OK to Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine for children as young as 5. The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave the go-ahead Tuesday night.
What to know about getting the flu vaccine this year
What to know about getting the flu vaccine this year
This year, COVID-19 vaccines have been the subject of everything from presidential speeches to hip-hop song parodies. Experts are saying that COVID-19 vaccination is especially important as the U.S. heads into the holiday season, when cold weather will intersect with family gatherings across the country. But the novel coronavirus isn’t the only respiratory disease that may hit the country this winter.
Winter also marks the peak of flu season in the Northern Hemisphere. While the flu is not often at the forefront of most Americans’ minds, it does take a heavy toll on the country. The disease has killed between 12,000 and 52,000 people a year between 2010 and 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Millions more people become infected with the flu, and hundreds of thousands require hospitalizations.
In 2021, many public health experts are concerned that the flu season could be particularly hard on the U.S. Last year’s flu season was unusually mild, largely thanks to widespread mask-wearing, social distancing, reduced travel, and other COVID-19 precautions. But this year, as restrictions have been lifted across the country, the flu could pack a harder punch. Americans’ immune systems may have forgotten how to protect against the flu because many of us weren’t exposed last year, explains Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, author of Your Local Epidemiologist.
Stacker compiled a list of 10 key facts for this year’s flu season from the CDC, the Association for Health Care Journalists, and other scientific and news sources. Read on to learn when to get your flu shot, who is eligible, and more.
You may also like: Answers to 25 common COVID-19 vaccine questions
You can get your flu and COVID-19 shots at the same time
Though COVID-19 and the flu require two different vaccines, Americans are able to get their shots for both diseases in one doctor’s visit or one trip to the pharmacy. Other vaccines are often administered at the same time—especially for kids getting their routine childhood immunizations—and this practice does not impact protection from disease or potential side effects, the CDC says. Common pharmacies like Walgreens are making it easy for people to get two vaccinations in one trip, including those adults who are eligible for a Pfizer booster shot.
Children older than 6 months should get flu shots
The CDC recommends that everyone 6 months old and older gets a flu shot, and considers young children (between 6 months and 4 years old) to be “high priority” in vaccine distribution. While parents of young children wait for the Food and Drug Administration to determine authorization for child-size doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, they can still take their kids to get flu shots.
Experts are concerned about a flu and COVID-19 'twindemic'
Many health experts are specifically encouraging flu vaccination this fall. If the flu and COVID-19 spread widely at the same time, the U.S. may face a twin pandemic, or “twindemic.” A “twindemic” could be devastating for health care systems because the flu and COVID-19 share some common symptoms—making them difficult to distinguish without testing—and require similar equipment for severely ill patients, such as ventilators.
Last year's flu season was unusually mild
Though experts worried about a “twindemic” last fall and winter as well, the 2020–2021 flu season proved to be quite mild, with low case numbers. This was a “pleasant surprise,” Dr. William Schaffner, medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, told the Association for Health Care Journalists. Like other experts, Dr. Schaffner credited the previous mild season to masks, social distancing, and other COVID-19 precautions, which stalled respiratory disease spread at a broader level. This winter, with restrictions lifted and many Americans vaccinated against COVID-19, the flu season may be much more intense.
Flu shots contain inactivated flu viruses
The most common flu vaccine—administered as a shot in the arm—contains a lab-made influenza virus that has been inactivated, meaning it won’t cause the flu. Another type of flu vaccine contains a live but weakened influenza virus. Both of these virus types differ from the COVID-19 vaccines currently on the market in the U.S., but other COVID-19 vaccines, such as the Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines produced in China, are inactivated virus vaccines.
Flu and COVID-19 shots have similar side effects
Similarly to COVID-19 vaccines, the most common side effect for a flu shot is a sore arm. The flu shot shouldn’t pack a more severe punch this year, reports Julia Craven at Slate, but people may be more likely to notice that side effect because of their experiences with COVID-19 shots. Craven also wrote that the flu shots’ inclusion of four different flu virus strains does not impact side effects.
Get your shot by the end of October
The best time to get your flu shot is in September or October, and you should aim to receive that shot by the end of October, the CDC says. The agency recommends that older adults should get vaccinated in the fall, not in July or August, because the vaccine’s effectiveness may decrease over time. If you don’t get your shot by the end of October, though, you can still get vaccinated later and have protection against the flu through the remainder of the disease’s season.
Flu shots are especially important if you're traveling
If you’re traveling internationally or visiting more vulnerable relatives for the holiday season, a flu shot may be an important pre-trip protection. The CDC recommends getting your vaccination at least two weeks before your trip, because—like with the COVID-19 vaccines—it takes about two weeks for your immune system to develop protection against the virus.
