We Are Turning COVID-19 Into a Young Person's Disease [View all]

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Sarah Zhang
@sarahzhang
I wrote about this weird period where parents are vaccinated but kids are still waiting...and waiting... possibly until 2022. The pandemic will start looking very different

We Are Turning COVID-19 Into a Young Person’s Disease
Even as cases drop among vaccinated Americans, the coronavirus still can spread among unvaccinated people—who will be disproportionately children.
theatlantic.com
8:57 AM · Apr 21, 2021

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/04/young-kids-vaccines-covid/618650/

Like many parents, Jason Newland, a pediatrician at Washington University in St. Louis and a dad to three teens ages 19, 17, and 15, now lives in a mixed-vaccination household. His 19-year-old got vaccinated with Johnson & Johnson’s shot two weeks ago and the 17-year-old with Pfizer’s, which is available to teens as young as 16.

The 15-year-old is still waiting for her shot, though—a bit impatiently now. “She’s like, ‘Dude, look at me here,’” Newland told me. “‘Why don’t you just tell them I’m 16?’” But because certain pharmaceutical companies set certain age cutoffs for their clinical trial, she alone in her family can’t get a COVID-19 shot. She’s the only one who remains vulnerable. She’s the only one who has to quarantine from all her friends if she gets exposed.

In America, adults are racing headlong into a post-vaccination summer while kids are being left in vaccine limbo. Pfizer’s shot is likely to be authorized for ages 12 to 15 in several weeks’ time, but younger kids may have to wait until the fall or even early 2022 as clinical trials run their course. This “age de-escalation” strategy is typical for clinical trials, but it means this confusing period of vaccinated adults and unvaccinated kids will not be over soon. And the pandemic will start to look quite different.

How different? Vaccination is already changing the landscape of COVID-19 risk by age. In the U.S., hospital admissions have fallen dramatically for adults over 70 who were prioritized for vaccines, but they have remained steady—or have even risen slightly—in younger groups that became eligible more recently. This trend is likely to continue as vaccines reach younger and younger adults. Over the summer, the absolute number of cases may drop as mass vaccination dampens transmission while the relative share of cases among the unvaccinated rises, simply because they are the ones still susceptible. The unvaccinated group will, of course, be disproportionately children. By dint of our vaccine order, COVID-19 will start looking like a disease of the young.

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