Forget about Grandma, just vax your kids

For almost two years, health authorities have been telling us that even though coronavirus barely poses a danger to the young, “you have to get vaccinated to protect Grandma.” Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett was still pushing that narrative as recently as a few months ago; but now that it appears that the FDA is about to grant emergency authorization to Pfizer’s “vaccine” for the five-to-eleven age group, the narrative has suddenly changed.“Parents don’t need to be considering the collective interest,” the head of the Health Ministry’s advisory committee for infectious diseases, Dr. Tal Brosh, told Israeli media on Wednesday. “They need to think about their own children. They should vaccinate their children to prevent them from contracting COVID.”Brosh admitted that, “Most cases among children are mild, but sometimes there are complications.”However, it’s clear from just a glance at the Health Ministry’s own data that the complications are rare indeed, so much so that in the under-20 age group, there are currently no serious cases of COVID whatsoever. Active cases include 708 teens (aged 12-15) who have yet to be vaccinated, and 78 who have been recently vaccinated; all these cases are apparently mild or asymptomatic.How many children have died of the coronavirus in Israel to date? In the under-20 age group, a total of 14 people have died of coronavirus-related complications since records began in early 2020, of which 6 were under 10 years of age. Two of those deaths occurred in the last month. There are no readily available data on how many of those children had comorbidities.Meanwhile, a poll taken early in October revealed that only a little more than half of Israelis are planning to have their children under the age of 12 vaccinated; a few weeks later, that figure had dropped to 48%. These figures broadly tally with what parents have been doing with their younger teens – the vaccination rate for the 12-15 age group stands at 56% for a first dose and 46% for the second jab.