The FDAa approved Pfizer’s vaccine for kids 5-11 on October 29. This is unacceptable for kids at such young ages. Instead of vaccinating children who are still undeveloped, we should be vaccinating more of the adult population.

President and CEO of Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, Dr. James Hildreth, said “In some ways we’re vaccinating children to protect adults, and it should be the other way around. “Our focus should be on vaccinating adults to protect the children,”

Other reasons are that parents are being cautious of the vaccine for their young children, worrying how it will affect them. One of the most prominent side effects is called myocarditis. A swelling of the heart muscle that can also be caused by COVID-19. Myocarditis after vaccination has been seen mainly in male adolescents and adults after their second dose of the vaccine.

Although it is understandable why parents want the vaccine for their children to keep them safe while they’re in school, we need to be concerned about how the children’s health will be affected.
Some parents are concerned about the older group that have had issues with myocarditis. Some parents are not planning to vaccinate kids who have several life threatening food allergies. Their concern is that these kids will potentially react to the vaccine as an allergic reaction.

There are other reasons children 5-11 years old should not be vaccinated. Firstly, if a child who has already been infected with COVID-19, they carry some protection against the virus and are less likely to fall seriously ill. Also, severe illness, deaths, and prolonged COVID symptoms are rare among healthy children. Major systems in the body of a young child are also impacted by the vaccine and can affect major organs as well. This is very concerning from a parental perspective.

Overall, a vaccine provides more predictable protection than the infection, however, a natural infection may offer better protection against other variants.