Have you thought about the kids?
Some 440,000 children under 12 years of age live in Arkansas and are potentially vulnerable to covid-19 infection because they have no access to vaccine at this time. Some children have been infected and are presumed immune, but that may only account for around a fifth of children in Arkansas.
This is not an innocuous infection for young children. In 2020, it was the ninth most common cause of child death, and infections have led to hospitalizations, ICU stays and, in young children, an unusual post-infection immune syndrome called MIS-C, multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children.
As more adults became vaccinated, the percentage of children with diagnoses of covid-19 increased to around a quarter of the cases nationally. More recently there has been concern that the number of children with ICU stays has risen to about a third of hospitalized cases. In the spring surge of cases in Michigan where variants were circulating, there was a dramatic increase in the number of children hospitalized.
Variant strains currently constitute about a third of cases in Arkansas and may be leading to more severe infections in hospitalized patients. It should be anticipated that since more aggressive variants such as the Delta strain have become established (about 40 percent of recent variant cases), then children's disease will be even worse.
For the mother or father of a healthy child or perhaps a child with a chronic disease, it is a time of fear. It is unlikely that vaccines for children 6 months to 11 years will be available before the fall. Variants are increasing in number and appear to be more severe. The only defense against disease for children is ongoing isolation and masking in places where infection continues.
In most communities, isolation and masking are not being implemented any more as mask mandates have disappeared and many schools have announced that masks will not be required for education either in summer school or in the fall semester. State law has been passed as well that prevents state-operated institutions from requiring masks and immunizations for workers. So, the parent has the choice of continuing home school, no sports, more physical isolation, increasing children's loneliness, clinical depression, and delayed educational progress versus putting children at risk by sending them to school.
The single most important risk factor for contracting covid-19 as a child is exposure to an adult with active covid-19 infection. Adults who have been vaccinated do not appear to spread the infection effectively even if they become infected. If people 12 and older get vaccinated, particularly those who are around children (teachers, health-care workers, day-care workers, parents and older siblings), then the chances of contracting disease become extremely low. When the entire community gets vaccinated, the chances approach zero, even with the threat of covid variants.
Bottom line: Young children cannot be protected unless older children and adults get vaccinated against covid-19. If you care about kids and their moms and dads, it is your duty to get the shot(s).
Please do your duty.
J. Gary Wheeler, MD, is president of the Arkansas Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.