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 amount of time they were protected from infection from the first shot.

From the Times story:

Some experts have suggested that because children 5 to 11 received a much lower initial dose than older children or adults, they are particularly in need of a booster shot. One study done by New York researchers found that for children ages 5 to 11, the Pfizer vaccine’s effectiveness against infection fell to 12 percent from 68 percent within 28 to 34 days after the second dose. Another C.D.C. study stated that two Pfizer doses reduced the risk of Omicron infection by 31 percent among those ages 5 to 11, compared with a 59 percent reduction in risk among those age 12 to 15.

That’s actually quite a lot! My children both got their shots back in November, which is, well, a lot farther away than “28 to 34 days” ago. According to these studies, they are essentially not vaccinated at all right now. It’s no wonder that the FDA is…