- Millions of kids are going back to school for the first time in a year.

Yes!

But a couple of questions are out there.

Like, are kids gonna bring COVID with them to school, or are they gonna bring it home with them?

- Alok, my son started kindergarten this year and I'm so proud of him and so excited, but a lot of us parents are feeling anxious.

- I understand why.

Like, you look at headlines, and all these kids went back to school.

There's reason for some questions and anxiety.

So let's ask you: with Delta virus surging and (indistinct) going back to school, how do you feel?

- Well, I get nervous because he's a kid, you know, no matter how many times I say pull up your mask or give people personal space, he still wants to wrestle, He still wants to play tag.

And I want him to, too.

You know, he's a kid!

- I mean, I want to wrestle and play tag.

Does that make me a kid?

- Yeah.

A little bit.

(Alok laughing) Now some people say we just need to get enough people vaccinated.

We have a vaccine for grownups.

So why is it taking us so long to get a vaccine that we can give to younger kids?

- Good question!

A widely used vaccine could make such an impact in this pandemic.

I mean, in summer and early fall with a Delta variant, COVID spread faster than fidget spinners did a few years ago.

It's crazy!

Over 5 million kids have now tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 since the start of the pandemic.

And yet even after all of this, only about 30% of kids aged 12 to 15 are fully vaccinated.

- I read a poll saying that nearly half of all parents would, quote, "Wait to see how it's working before vaccinating their children."

And I got to say, as a nurse, that makes me anxious, but as a parent, I totally understand.

So it seems like most people are not anti-vaxxers exactly.

- Yeah.

I agree.

And I think it's unfair to label everyone out there who has a question about vaccines as anti-vax.

Like, it just alienates them.

- Right, most people are concerned about safety and whether or not this vaccine is going to have long-term effects or how it's gonna affect their child.

- Yeah.

I think that's fair.

You know, like we want to see the data.

We want to know that these vaccines are safe and like what's happening in this clinical trials.

When, and if I give my kid a vaccine, like, is everything gonna be okay?

Well, here's how it goes.

The process for testing vaccines in kids is essentially the same thing as adults.

Companies were testing the vaccine out on teens back in fall 2020, but they waited for more data, more end points, making sure it was safe before expanding on to testing younger children.

- Trials for kids younger than 12 got underway in March of 2021, when Pfizer and modern has started clinical trials.

And then in July of 2021, the FDA asked scientists testing the vaccine to double the number of five to 11 year olds in their trials to make sure they could detect any rare side effects.

Finding more trial participants takes more time.

- And that Pfizer study includes 3,000 kids age five to 11, another 750 age two to five, and then 750 more in that little baby category from age six months to two years.

- The FDA will weigh in on the results this October.

- So let's run through some of the reasons of why people are hesitant.

One common one I keep hearing is that the vaccines were developed so quickly.

Operation Warp Speed!

- Believe it or not, the vaccine makers took all the steps as they normally do.

Between the three vaccines authorized in the U.S., these clinical trials had more than 100,000 people.

- And that is a huge number.

To put things in perspective, in the clinical trials for testing HPV vaccines, there were about 74,000 people, and that was run over many years.

Look at the final clinical trial for the chickenpox vaccine that only had 1,100 people.

And so, yes, the numbers are all over the place, but millions and millions of vaccines have been given out for all these diseases.

They're safe and they work.

- With kids and the COVID vaccine, the FDA is monitoring everyone for two months to look for side effects before they decide anything.

- If you look back in history with previous vaccines, nearly all the really serious side effects occurred within six weeks.

So this is why any emergency use authorization for a vaccine requires two months of safety data to capture any of that.

And full FDA approval requires six months.

- Another thing that I hear often is that kids aren't really getting sick or sick enough to be hospitalized, so then why give them the COVID-19 vaccine?

- I still hear this.

And like, I'm so tired of hearing it.

We heard it last year.

People may like, oh, kids are immune to COVID.

No, they're not.

Like, we have seen plenty of kids, you know, get a mild infection, but we've also seen a lot of kids get hospitalized.

We've seen some kids die, wind up in the ICU.

We have a long haul of COVID symptoms.

You know, kids, although rare, kids can also develop that multi-system inflammatory syndrome.

I mean, this is terrible, but also like when you have a smaller percentage of kids getting sick, but you have way more kids catching SARS-CoV-2, then inevitably those numbers are gonna go up.

But even if you're not just talking about kids themselves, kids can also spread it to others who may have a more severe disease course.

- Right, and when you get a vaccine, it's not just for the person who receives the shot.

It's to protect other people as well from getting that same virus.

- Community immunity, baby.

- Exactly.

Some people say they don't want to vaccinate because it won't make a big difference.

You might have heard that vaccinated people can also spread COVID, and that's true.

But according to the CDC, that virus doesn't stick around as long, which lessens your chance of spreading it to others.

- And another thing that we commonly hear is people saying like, Hey, the vaccine doesn't work because vaccinated people are still testing positive.

That's okay.

That's not what the vaccine was designed for.

The vaccine was designed to prevent severe disease, which it's still doing.

Remember, infection is not the same as disease.

So if you test positive for SARS-CoV-2 and you're vaccinated, you're far less likely to actually develop a severe illness from COVID-19.

SARS-CoV-2 the virus, COVID-19 the disease.

- We need to point out that the vaccine is not risk-free.

One of the more serious side effects is myocarditis, which is inflammation of the heart muscle, which can cause shortness of breath, chest pain, or a regular or rapid heartbeats.

- And it also causes really scary headlines.

But here's the good news.

It's really rare, with one study showing a rate of about 12 in a million for those aged 12 to 39.

- Now, for teenage boys, it's a lot higher, about 63 cases per million shots.

But even for those teenage boys, the risk for myocarditis is almost six times higher from COVID itself than from the vaccine.

- And of all reported cases of myocarditis following The vaccine, no one has died.

- All right, Alok, here's something interesting- - Hit me!

- In the late 18th century and early 19th century, the small pox vaccine faced a lot of resistance too.

Imagine scraping a lesion that someone got from a diseased animal and injecting it into your skin.

Uh-huh.

Nope.

But today, thanks to that vaccine, smallpox has been entirely eradicated.

See?

See?

- I like also like the deep dive into vaccine history, but also like, do you know anyone with smallpox?

- I do not.

- Yeah.

Vaccines work.

Yeah.

See how that happens?

- All right, Alok, I got some parenting tips for you because right now- - Blame it on me.

- Alora is a little tiny baby, and you know, she's not gonna remember her shots.

As soon as she gets them, she forgets them.

But when they turn about three, four, they're gonna be running around that office, you know.

So, what I do with my son is I teach him that superheroes get injections.

So he went to his last appointment, he had to get two, and he let 'em hit him with the both, and he walked out like a G. He said, "If Hulk can get his shots, then I can get my shots."

- I like that.

- So what superhero do you think Alora is gonna be?

- She's like Aquawoman because she just drools and pees everywhere.

And so I'm gonna be like Aquawoman would get her shots.

I'm gonna use this tip.

- And I think that when it comes to superheroes, kids think that they can cure everyone and they're there to help the community.

So I taught my son that this is what you do to help save other people.

- They are public health superheroes.

That's not wrong.