Your Kids Probably Need Another Booster More Than You Do

And now they can get one. Get them one.

The FDA is recommending, as of today, that all 5-to-12-year-olds get booster shots. I will confess, as the father of two children exactly in that age range — a 10-year-old and a seven-year-old — I hadn’t really thought that much about getting boosters for the kids. I wasn’t against it, far from it. I just hadn’t really worried about it.. My younger son had Covid-19 back in December 2020, before vaccines, and was asymptomatic; my older son, like me, has never had it. They’ve been back in in-person school for a year now, and haven’t been wearing masks this entire semester. There have been a few kids at school who have tested positive, or been close contacts of people who have, but my kids and their close friends have been fine. So I haven’t been particularly concerned about my kids getting it. They’re back in school. They’re socializing. They’re playing pranks on their friends again. It’s good. We’re happy.

But, according to data from a Pfizer clinical trial, a booster shot for kids is actually rather important. It will protect them against severe forms of Covid-19, of course, though most children, particularly non-immunocompromised ones, haven’t suffered severe symptoms anyway. But that’s not the biggest benefit. I don’t think I quite realized how short…