Parents of young children have carried an especially difficult burden since the COVID-19 pandemic started. Remote learning, daycare closings and other limitations on daily life because of worry about disease spread, especially among the unvaccinated, has made raising a child more difficult and stressful. The availability of a pediatric COVID vaccine for all children age 5 and older can now help change that.

Everyone in the United States ages 5 and older is now eligible to get vaccinated. In fact, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics both recommend all children 5 and older get a COVID vaccine as soon as possible.

The vaccines are free to all, regardless of health insurance or immigration status. More than 30,000 trusted and convenient locations, such as drugstores or community health centers, offer the pediatric COVID vaccine. You can find a nearby site in one of three ways:

• visiting vaccines.gov
• texting your ZIP code to 438829 (GETVAX)
• calling 1-800-232-0233.

We understand you may have concerns about the pediatric COVID vaccine, so let’s address some using facts provided by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

I thought kids weren’t as vulnerable to coronavirus?

Children rarely die or get severely ill from COVID — true. However, scientific study has found they are just as likely to get and spread the disease as adults. This puts everyone an unvaccinated child comes in contact with — their friends, parents, grandparents, teachers, etc. — at greater risk, regardless of that person’s vaccination status.

Need more statistics? One recent study found children are four times more likely to be hospitalized from COVID if they live in a state with low vaccination rates compared to states with high vaccination rates.

I keep hearing about vaccinated people still getting COVID. Why should I even bother getting my kids vaccinated?

“Breakthrough” cases of COVID do occur because no vaccine for any disease is a 100% effective. However, COVID vaccines are more than 90% effective at preventing severe illness, hospitalization and death. The pediatric COVID vaccine helps protect your child from getting coronavirus but, in the event of a breakthrough case, it also helps keep your child from getting seriously ill. It also helps protect those your child comes in contact with, especially those most at risk such as the elderly or those with compromised autoimmune systems.

Could my child get coronavirus from a pediatric COVID vaccine?

No. None of the authorized and recommended COVID vaccines contain the live virus that causes coronavirus. No live virus, no way to contract COVID via the vaccine.

Some temporary side effects, in children just as in adults, are possible after receiving the vaccine. These are signs the vaccine is working and your child’s body is building protection against the virus. Common side effects include:

• Pain, redness or swelling at the injection site on the body
• Tiredness
• Headache
• Muscle pain
• Chills
• Fever
• Nausea

Will a pediatric COVID vaccine alter my child’s DNA?

No. COVID vaccines do not change or interact with your child’s DNA in any way. It is biologically impossible.

Do COVID vaccines affect fertility?

Currently, no evidence indicates that any vaccines, including COVID vaccines, cause fertility problems, in women or men. A recent study showed people who had gotten the COVID vaccine had the same pregnancy success rate as people who had not been vaccinated. The CDC recommends that women trying to become pregnant now or want to get pregnant in the future, get a COVID vaccine. Vaccines are carefully studied and monitored, and it is clear they are safe for people who are pregnant or who want to become pregnant.

Aren’t there some heart issues related to the COVID vaccine in children?

A very small number of cases of myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) and pericarditis (inflammation of the outer lining of the heart) have been reported following COVID vaccination. Most cases in children have been in adolescent males and most occur after the second vaccine dose.

While these conditions are rare, the available evidence suggests a link with mRNA COVID vaccination. In general, however, the few persons who develop these conditions respond well to medical treatment and rest and recover.

I’m worried because these vaccines are just too new and unproven.

Millions of people have already safely received COVID vaccines since first becoming available in early 2021. These vaccines are the most closely and rigorously monitored vaccines for safety ever in our country and are being monitored just as closely in children.

But I have more concerns …

If you have more questions or concerns, speak with your doctor, pharmacist or health care provider. Note that The American Medical Association reports over 96% of doctors have been fully vaccinated against COVID.

Disclosure: City Dads Group has partnered with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to provide parents with accurate information about pediatric COVID vaccines for those ages 5 to 17. Photo: © angellodeco / Adobe Stock.

Many of us have or are helping our children’s grandparents schedule their COVID-19 shots. While we’re at it, don’t forget to check in to make sure Pop-Pop and Grams are up to date on other vaccines that help keep older adults healthy through their golden years.

As we age, our immune systems weaken. Some vaccines received in childhood also lose  efficacy. These leave a person, especially one with other health conditions, less able to fend off infections as well as when they were younger and stronger. Bottom line: Seniors and even those of us parents over age 50 are more venerable to contracting and developing complications from diseases.

Older adults should start with a visit to their doctor to discuss the matter. A look at the U.S. Health and Human Services Department web pages dedicated to adult vaccines might give you an idea of what you may be lacking going in.

The following vaccines are commonly recommended for most older adults:

Influenza. Seasonal flu may seem like nothing in the age of COVID-19. While mask wearing and social distancing may have knocked it down this past winter, it is still something not to be forgotten when life returns to a more normal states. Seniors are especially vulnerable to the flu, with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control noting people age 65 and older annually account for over 60 percent of seasonal flu-related hospitalizations. A special high dose vaccine is available (and only recommended) for adults older than age 65.

Shingles (Herpes Zoster): Shingles presents as a painful, blistering skin rash. It can also cause postherpetic neuralgia — a condition causes burning pain long after the rash and blisters of shingles disappear, fever, hearing loss and vision problems. A third of all people in the United States will contract shingles at some point in their lives, according to the CDC, and having it once doesn’t protect you from a repeat. As shingles is most common and severe among seniors and people with compromised immune systems, this vaccine is highly recommended for people over age 50.

Td (tetanus/diphtheria) or Tdap (tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis): Most people received these shots as children. But did you know it is recommended that everyone, regardless of their age, get a booster shot at least every 10 years? Tetanus, a bacterial infection you might now better as “lockjaw,” is so deadly that even people who have already been vaccinated are recommended to get a tetanus booster after a severe cut, puncture wound or burn.

Pneumonia:  Pneumococcus bacteria can cause meningitis, severe pneumonia and various blood infections. Health care centers and hospitals tend to be hotbeds of these strains, leaving seniors who visit them most venerable. The pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine (PPSV23), recommended for those age 65 and older, protects against the most common strains of the bacteria. The pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV13) may also be recommended to people with weakened immune systems and certain other conditions.

Other vaccines may also be recommended for older adults with certain medical conditions. These include shots against chickenpox, Hepatitis A and Hepatitis B

Vaccines for older adults photo: ©Yakobchuk Olena/ Adobe Stock.

As Thanksgiving approaches, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the calculus of what families might be thankful for this year. Those of us lucky enough to remain healthy and employed can focus on those two facts during this year’s feasts. But for many, it’s easy to feel there is little to be thankful for this year, given all that continues to be infected, affected or simply canceled — including many of those traditional feasts. In other words, cultivating a grateful mindset during this traditional season of thanks requires many us to dig deeper this year. For me, digging deep into the history of today’s pediatric vaccines helps illuminate paths to gratitude.

The lack of a cure for the coronavirus has been humbling. It reminds us that even though modern medicine has achieved amazing feats, it is not able to solve all mysteries. Despite the pandemic, however, parents can feel thankful we live in this era by remembering how much child mortality has been impacted over the past few centuries by modern science — especially by global vaccines.

Pediatric vaccines vastly improve child mortality rates

In The Importance of Being Little, researcher Erika Christakis spells out the astounding numbers: “Child survival is one of humanity’s surprisingly recent success stories. Historically, many people didn’t experience something called childhood because … they were already dead. Today, in the industrialized world, mortality of children under age 5 hovers around five per 1,000. By contrast, in nineteenth-century Sweden, one third of young children died before age 5; in Germany, the child mortality rate was 500 per 1,000 children. And early childhood mortality among modern hunter-gatherers is 100 times more than in the United States today.”

Granted, additional factors like higher safety standards and better sanitation practices helped pediatric vaccines achieve such improvements. But Christakis stresses “we need to wrap our heads around this: the crushing of child death in the developed world over the last one hundred years is something truly radical and unique in the history of our species.” In short, “the victory over childhood mortality … has not only changed childhood but even, fundamentally, enabled it.”

Thanks for a children’s book about chickenpox

I experienced the world-changing nature of pediatric vaccines while reading a bedtime story to my younger daughter when she was little. One of her favorite books was Itchy, Itchy Chicken Pox, written by Grace Maccarone and illustrated by Betsy Lewin. Originally published in 1992, the story features a little boy who wriggles around in his pajamas due to red spots all over his body: “Under my shirt. Under my socks. Itchy, itchy chicken pox.” My daughter’s favorite line was “itchy, itchy, I feel twitchy,” which always amused my wife and me because at that age my daughter mispronounced the “tw” sound as a “b” sound.

In the story, the boy gradually recovers from chickenpox on his own: “I rest. I read. I eat. I play. I feel better every day.” Usually, my daughter would just finish the book after that page, but one day she asked if I had chickenpox when I was a child. After I said “yes,” she asked if she and her sister would ever get it. “No,” I said, “because you were both vaccinated against it when you were babies.”

That’s when it hit me. As I tried to explain “vaccine” to my daughter in an age-appropriate way, I realized that because my daughters were born in the 2000s, they had benefited from the chickenpox vaccine, which became widely available in the late 1990s. Hence, the plot of Maccarone’s children’s book, published a few years before the vaccine became available, had in some ways become obsolete.

In that moment, I felt intense gratitude for all those shots my daughters received at the pediatrician’s office when they were babies. By extension, I was thankful for all the immunizations I had received when I was a child.

The race for COVID-19 vaccines will no doubt contain false starts, research detours and distribution challenges. But because vaccines have helped eradicate diseases and lengthen life expectancy in our era, we can all be thankful for the hope that medical research provides. May the coronavirus one day become associated with just another shot for babies alongside those for measles, diphtheria, and yes, chickenpox.

Pediatric vaccines photo: © angellodeco / Adobe Stock.

No one enjoys taking a needle to the arm, but getting an annual flu shot has health benefits for you, your children and those around you. Let’s look at how you can improve the chances of you and your loved ones being free of influenza this year.

Flu hits children hardest

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control notes that child under age 5 who contract the flu often require medical care with an average of 20,000 kids a year needing hospitalization. Children under age 2 most commonly suffer the most complications, ranging for ear and sinus infections to pneumonia or worse. Children and adults with chronic health issues (diabetes, asthma, autoimmune disorders) are at the highest risk of the most severe complications.

That’s why the CDC recommends everyone older than 6 months of age receive an annual flu shot with only a few exceptions.

Herd immunity

Why should you get an annual flu shot if you are in generally good health? Here’s why, using my own family as an example.

When my daughter was 2, she was diagnosed with a juvenile dermatomyositis, a rare autoimmune disease, and put on medication to lower her immune system in hope of resetting it to normal. Our doctor recommended all of our family, including our nanny at the time, receive a flu shot not only to help us lower our risk of catching influenza but also to help limit her potential exposure to the virus. That’s the same reason many daycares and schools require their employees to get the vaccine — to help prevent the kids they care for from getting the virus.

Flu shot, not the nasal FluMist

If needles make you squeamish or you just wanted to save your child the pain of a shot in the arm, the nasal flu vaccine (marketed as FluMist) has been a great option in recent years. Just a quick squirt of vaccine up the nose and … uh, oh.

While the nasal vaccine was recommended for most small children in recent years, new studies have shown FluMist ineffective. In fact, last year it may have only provided protection to just 3 percent of the children under age 17 who received it. By contrast, the overall effectiveness of the traditional flu shot was around 60 percent in 2015.

If you have a major issue with needles, seek out the intradermal flu vaccine. It’s a shot injected into the skin instead of the muscle, is just as effective as the traditional vaccine and — best of all — uses a needle that’s 90 percent shorter than the regular vaccine needle. Bad news for your wee ones — it’s only approved for adults ages 18 to 64.

Flu shot effectiveness

OK, 60 percent effective doesn’t sound all that great but it’s pretty good given several factors.

To start with, no vaccine is 100 percent effective because of how individual bodies react to it and mutations of the virus. Influenza is particularly tricky because so many different strains of it exist, changing from year to year.

According to the CDC, “Experts must pick which viruses to include in the vaccine many months in advance in order for vaccine to be produced and delivered on time. … Because of these factors, there is always the possibility of a less than optimal match between circulating viruses and the viruses in the vaccine.”

Where to get the flu shot

Finding a place to receive the flu shot vaccine is not limited to your doctor’s or pediatrician’s office these days. Most major drugstore chains, such as CVS and Walgreen’s, offer walk-in clinics. Many urgent care facilities and even local government health centers offer shots. Many offer low-cost and even free vaccines with proper medical insurance.

* Read the CDC key facts on the flu vaccine *

Photo: CDC Global Health via photopin (license)

The free-range parenting debate ignited by children wandering around neighborhoods and on subways by themselves brought an interesting conversation to Facebook the other day. The big question is: Why?

Why are we so paranoid about our children exploring by themselves or looking after their younger siblings. That’s not how it was in the old days. The rule used to be “come home when the streetlights come on.” My response was it has something to do with the loss of our neighborhood networks, social isolation, and lack of community policing. Yet another way to go was that we live in a more dangerous world.

But here’s the thing with that, we don’t. If you look at crime rates, they’re down. Across the board. Murder, violent crime, property crime. Yes, there are more people now. But the crime rate itself is pretty much back to where it was in the 1960s after a spike from the 1970s to 1990s. You can blame the news cycle for the constant stream of negative world events. It feels bad even if we’re living in a time of relative peace and safety. It’s easy to point to the horrors in Syria, Ukraine, Africa and think we live in dark times. But really we’ve made a lot of progress.

And that got me thinking about what it’s like to be a parent in a wider context. Do we live in a “Golden Age of Parenting”? Not saying we’re the best parents who have ever lived in all of humanity. There are clearly exceptions and our kids clearly face obstacles. The shrinking middle class. The education gap. Problems finding jobs. Problems paying for education. The healthcare system is still broken despite efforts to reform it. Blah blah blah.

That’t not my point here. My parenting point is twofold:

1. We tend to judge “bad” parents by their deviation from the commonly available network of family-related opportunities.
2. Those family-related opportunities are, generally, wider and more readily accessible than at any other time in human history.

The easiest way to illustrate my point is vaccines and the debate over them. We live in an age where most childhood diseases that would have otherwise killed thousands just a few generations ago have been eradicated. Those diseases are making a comeback not because we lack technical or medical know-how. They’re back because a few people have deviated from the Golden Age of Parenting mainstream.

You can apply the same premise to almost any topic. Despite ongoing issues, we live in a time when education around the nation is perhaps the best it’s ever been. We still have huge problems with poverty, but today’s low-income problems are not the same in absolute terms as just a century ago. Think of a poor child in 1915. That’s World War I. Here in Chicago the immigrant neighborhoods were … a good word is “festering.” Today’s crime, drugs, and incarceration are, relatively speaking, improved. No excuse to call it quits, obviously. But my point here is: progress.

Dads no longer are trapped in the factory or office and can spend time with their children. Moms can have careers and are no longer socially forced into staying home. We’ve made strides with gay rights, adoption, race, gender, religions, and we can network with people around the globe. This serves as a counter to that neighborhood isolation in the beginning. We may be physically isolated, but we’re connected by technology like no time before.

We often fight back against our tech gods these days and it’s fashionable to dismiss technology as evil or somehow ruining us. But that same technology also lets us send photos of the grandkids, instantly find strange animal facts, telecommute to our job so we can spend more time with our children, and whatever else we can dream up. Just yesterday my 3-year-old daughter wanted to see photos of neurons under a microscope. Kids in 1915 weren’t asking to learn about brain chemistry while snuggling with their dads on the couch.

If you asked me what era of history I’d like to be plopped down in to parent two children and generally live a decent quality of life with great freedoms, tolerance, education levels, lack of disease, and overall happiness, the 21st century would be a pretty prime candidate.

This is a good time to be alive. And probably the best time ever to be a parent.

A version of this first appeared on Newfangled Dad.

About a year ago, I remember reading dozens of online articles about the rumored relationship between the MMR Vaccine and Autism.  After all, my son was due for his MMR vaccination and as a concerned parent, I wanted to make sure that I did some due diligence that I was making the right decision in going ahead with the vaccines. Now, I am onto other parental worries.  However, despite mounting evidence, there remains the mystery of this vaccine correlation with autism.

I am no medical expert, but wanted to share the results of a recent & significant medical study regarding mercury levels in vaccines, especially the MMR vaccine, and their correlation (or lack thereof in this case) with Autism.  Josh Kross shared this Science-Based Medicine post titled, The Final Nail in the Mercury-Autism Hypothesis discussing how the investigators of the latest study “found nothing. Nada. Zip”

However, if there’s one rule in science-based medicine, it’s that no one study is ever sufficient to confirm or rule out correlations between undesirable outcomes and various exposures. However, as the weight of several studies starts to bear down on the problem, the preponderance of evidence must at some point be acknowledged, because we do not have unlimited resources to keep doing studies to answer the same question over and over and over again and every repeated study uses resources that could be used to study other potential causes and treatments for autism. Price et al happens to be one large and convincing chunk of that evidence, but it is not the only one. It builds on multiple other studies and it fits into the confluence of evidence strongly refuting the hypothesis that mercury in vaccines is a cause of autism. 

As an aside, this vaccine article was scary – it mentions a whooping cough epidemic in California – resulting from anti-vaccine families.

Yesterday, I went to our pediatrician for our son’s 18-month appointment. Aside from measuring his heigh, and weight, probing his body, and the onslaught of Q & A, these scheduled visits usually come with some type of immunization shots.

The immunization I feared the most was back at our 12-month appointment – the MMR Vaccine. Back in July, I blogged on that topic… if parents should fear the MMR (combination of measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine. I certainly did fear it & it pushed me to read several articles and research studies before making the decision. The latest news is that the infamous research study supposedly linking the MMR vaccine to autism, that was published in The Lancet medical journal in 1998, was “flawed.” The Lancet “fully retracts this (research) paper from the published record.”

Today’s NY Post included an article by Kate Sheehy, Vaccine ‘autistic link KO’d, providing the details on how “the explosive study that first linked autism to childhood vaccines – and spurred a generation of parents to consider spurning the disease-preventing inoculations – got a final nail in the coffin.”

The article estimates that approximately 5% of concerned parents opt out of doing the MMR Vaccine for their children or go “on very slow time-table for getting their shots.” As a result, the article mentioned that “We used to not see measles. People are not doing the MMRs, and the kids are getting intense illnesses.”

As parents, we want to be well-informed, especially when it comes to our kids. I am not sure if this new news (sounds funny) will persuade more parents that the vaccine is necessary, but it will certainly provide parents with more information on this hot topic. Feel free to express your opinion…

Here is a guest blog post by Edward D., who shares his concern & frustration over the H1N1 availability for babies and toddlers…

Shouldn’t the swine flu shot be made MORE AVAILABLE for babies and toddlers first? After all aren’t they the people who need it most?

On Thursday, Jan 21, the point was made on CBS’ The Doctors TV Show, that the H1N1 virus prevention shot is widely available. A CVS pharmacist was on hand making this announcement – great news! The show made the point that the shot is available at CVS (which it might be)…but I have a 24 hour CVS down the block, and the last time I went there, I didn’t see any reference to the shot being available. I did see a reference to the shot being given at Walgreens, which is also in close proximity to my apartment. I waited 1/2 an hour, and got the shot for myself…but, what about my son Zachy! For the record – I am a stay at home dad so I was able to get it during the day (unlike many of the working folks), but still had to wait 1/2 an hour.

Anyway, back to my point. Yes, the H1N1 shot is available at Walgreens and CVS, but it’s not available for infants, babies and toddlers. Recently, I went to my son’s pediatric doctor for his second flu shot. I asked the doctor about the availability of the Swine flu shot for him as well. She said that “yes, the shot is available for some people, but it’s not available for the people who need it most, babies – whose immune systems aren’t well developed yet, and are very susceptible to getting illnesses and viruses.”

Shouldn’t the swine flu shot be made MORE AVAILABLE for babies and toddlers first? After all, aren’t they the people who need it most?

My son is getting closer to his 1-year-old birthday and I can’t believe how fast the time went! I am a proud dad and certainly want what is best for him.

Ever since my son was born, I have thought about the MMR immunization — a combined vaccine that aims to prevent measles, mumps and rubella – that has many parents, including myself, worried about this vaccine because of its “possible” links to autism. I am no expert on this topic, but as a concerned parent, I have heightened my awareness and been doing some research as well. Over the weekend a family member pointed out that there has been a small measles outbreak in Brooklyn. The NYC Department of Health & Mental Hygiene posted a July 2, 2009 press that includes this statement, “the Health Department has identified 11 cases of measles in Brooklyn during the past two months and is urging doctors to be vigilant and promptly report suspected cases to the agency. Nearly all the known cases have occurred in children who went unvaccinated, leaving them unprotected against the disease.”

Based on this “hot” topic of the MMR vaccine, I recently saw an article posted in our pediatrician’s office and wanted to share it with other parents: Debunking an Autism Theory, a NY Times editorial from September 9, 2008. Here is the key takeaway:

“The Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the C.D.C., and the World Health Organization have found no evidence of a causal link between vaccines and autism. …

“Sadly, even after all of this, many parents of autistic children still blame the vaccine. The big losers in this debate are the children who are not being vaccinated because of parental fears and are at risk of contracting serious — sometimes fatal — diseases.”

Have other parents found recent articles or research related to the MMR vaccine and immunization that you could share?

Photo by CDC from Pexels