Parents are lying to get a COVID vaccine for young children

These days, the distance between the ages of 11 and 12 is over a year. It’s the gap between danger and safety. The vaccine promises protection from COVID-19 for people over the age of 12, but it has not yet been approved for infants in the United States and it is not clear when it will be. Some parents who are frustrated with waiting and desperate to protect their children want their 10- and 11-year-olds to sneak into this ditch and not be caught.

Megan’s 10-year-old son has just started a face-to-face school in Los Angeles County and has been vaccinated with COVID-19. (Meghan asked to be identified by name alone because he was afraid of the consequences of finding a lie.) This summer, the rapidly spreading coronavirus delta variant made Megan safe for children. I was worried. Her older children aged 12 and 15 are also fully vaccinated, but the vaccine has not yet been approved for children under the age of 12. So Megan lied about the age of ten. And this wasn’t her first time.

This spring, Megan was vaccinated with a 15-year-old child six months before qualifying. This is because the local school district was considering returning to face-to-face lessons. (Ultimately, with both face-to-face and virtual options offered at the end of last year, Megan’s daughter continued to attend remotely and started face-to-face classes this year.) Megan said she had severe asthma. He said he panicked because he was suffering from. ..

By the time the Pfizer vaccine was approved over the age of 12, the child in the middle of Megan was eligible. As a result, her 10-year-old son was the only unprotected son in the family. By august school Beginning in the fall, Megan was frustrated by continued uncertainty about the timeline for vaccination approval for children under the age of 12. “I was more nervous as the clock was getting closer and closer to school and the Delta variants were burning everywhere,” she said.

Read: We are turning COVID-19 into a youth illness

Megan took both his daughter and son to a local pharmacy and lied about their birthday. She told me she asked me if it was okay to lie to vaccinate both children, and both were on board. With the appointment of her son, the pharmacist had a small talk with him and asked what grade he would enter. “Sixth,” he replied without skipping the beat — his fake grade.

“I went home, and I was probably in the best mood I felt for a very long time … I knew my whole family would be vaccinated,” Meghan said.

I talked to two other parents who were 10 and 11 years old and could “pass” at the age of 12 and lied to get vaccinated. (They don’t want their lies to be widely known, so I agreed not to identify them.) Many Other parents Have got Considered the same, Even if they aren’t acting on it. Ethics are complex, but logistics wasn’t in most cases. Unauthorized vaccines may be difficult to obtain from a child’s pediatrician’s clinic because the child’s age is recorded and bound by ethical standards that prevent doctors from giving the vaccine out of indication. not. However, the parents I spoke to took the children to supermarket pharmacies, chain pharmacies, and community vaccination clinics. In many cases, no proof of age was required. Parents only had to show their ID and fill out the form. Also, the vaccine is free, so a health insurance card is not required.

The pharmacist I spoke to in my area (Charlotte, NC) confirmed that under their procedure it was possible for parents to lie about the age of their child to be vaccinated. NS CDC website The pharmacy states that it does not require proof of age, occupation or place of residence. If the parent completes the required paperwork with a forged date of birth and the child is not yet in the pharmacy’s computer system, the pharmacist can do little to prove otherwise.

In terms of liability, pharmacists may be protected from proceedings as long as they follow company guidelines, but parents may not, New York City-based lawyers and LegalAdvice.comSaid to me. “Depending on the jurisdiction where the consent form was illegally submitted, parents who are lying about their child’s age to vaccinate a child under the age of 12 may commit a crime,” Reischer said. increase. In many jurisdictions, it is illegal to knowingly misrepresent your date of birth, marriage status, date of death, or other important information on your state ID. It is unclear whether the immunization record is classified as a technically important record. Reischer believes parents are unlikely to be prosecuted for lying to vaccinate their children, but they may face fines, penalties and imprisonment.

The potential medical consequences of these lies must also be considered. Robert Frenck, head of vaccine research at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and the chief investigator of most of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine trials conducted there, sympathizes with his parents but infants at doses for older children. I told me I was worried that I could be vaccinated against it. It’s not safe. Part of his job is to help establish doses that give children the best combination of immune response and safety. According to Frenck, parents who lie about their child’s age may increase their child’s chances of developing adverse events such as fever, chills, and headaches after vaccination. When a vaccine is approved for younger children, their dose may be lower if scientists decide it is safer. “If we can give a lower dose, get the same immune response, and have a better safety profile, I think parents want it,” he said. He told me that he believes that wearing a mask and keeping a distance can hold us back until the vaccine is available to everyone.

In a statement last week, the Food and Drug Administration also urged parents not to vaccinate unauthorized vaccinations for their young children. “Like you, we want to see our children and grandchildren get vaccinated against COVID-19 as soon as possible.” The statement looks like this.. “We need science and data to guide us. The FDA is working 24 hours a day to support the process of making the COVID-19 vaccine available to children.”

Despite the risks, the parents I spoke to said they didn’t feel guilty or regret, they were just relieved. Many of them believe that the known risk of getting sick with COVID-19 is worse than the potential adverse consequences of a vaccine that has not yet been approved for infants.

As delta variants spread throughout the community, hospitalizations for children are increasing and parents do not have many options to protect their children. In severe cases of COVID-19, children appear to remain at lower risk than adults, As Catherine Wu wrote Atlantic, “Delta represents a more serious danger Everyone— This means that it is a more serious danger for children as well. Not everyone practices mask wearing and social distance, which are the best tools other than vaccines to prevent the spread of the virus.Many schools have resumed face-to-face learning and are not needed in some areas mask.. Vaccines still work very well to protect people from serious illness, but children under the age of 12 do not have access to that protection.

Read: Delta confused family decision-making

Vaccines will be gradually approved by this group after the study is completed. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, Said recently He expects the vaccine to be available sometime this fall between the ages of 5 and 11 and will continue to be approved by the younger age group. Parents are dissatisfied with the expectations of adults around their children just waiting to be vaccinated and wearing masks.

Maria, the mother of two children under the age of 12, was concerned about the consequences of her actions and asked for her middle name identification. This summer, I vaccinated my son just three months before his 12th birthday. The entire family left the United States and returned to India, where they worked and attended school for most of the year. “We have experienced some horrific blockades in India,” she told me, so I felt the coronavirus was “very real” to her children. She explained to her son that this was a “life-threatening situation,” and he agreed to be shot.

First, Maria consulted her child’s pediatrician and asked if her son’s vaccine was safe (if qualified). Because he is on the small side. According to Maria, the doctor assured her that it was. She also talked to her friend who is a doctor. She said they said the same to her. In the end, she was happy with the information she received, so she made an appointment with a chain pharmacy that had never received the drug and ridiculed her son’s birthday. He obtained both doses of Pfizer vaccine before going to school in India.

“He’s really happy and relieved. He feels safer,” Maria told me.

No one was worried when I asked my parents what they were going to do about potential records management issues in the future, for example if the school started asking for vaccination proof. They said they would confess what they had done to those who needed to know when the time came. Maria said she would be tested for antibodies if she needed to prove her son’s vaccination status.

Abisola Olulade, a San Diego-based family doctor, emphasizes that antibody testing is not always reliable. NS FDA said Currently available tests have not been evaluated to assess the level of protection provided by the immune response to COVID-19 vaccination. Olulade told me that he sympathized with his parents, but they should think about how lying would affect their child’s medical records for school, future employment, and future travel. Prompt to. Does it invalidate their vaccine card as an identifier and when their passport is examined? “

Currently, all parents are considering the risk, but many choose to wait for approval. It’s as scary as waiting. My friend Kimery Martin has a deep understanding of the risks of COVID-19. She is a trained doctor in the emergency room who wrote a novel about a pandemic and has been suffering from COVID for a long time after getting sick last summer. Her older children are vaccinated, but her 10-year-old child is not vaccinated. She is not thinking of lying to get the youngest vaccination. “Many of us want to make mistakes on the part of the protector from COVID-19, rather than protecting against the theoretical and unlikely side effects of the vaccine,” she told me. “But you still have to go through the process to make sure there is nothing about the children’s bodies that have bad consequences.”

The parents I spoke to who chose to lie believe that they make their risk assessments and are justified in their decisions. They feel they have been given an impossible hand and could not wait for official approval when the children are now at risk.

“You can’t trust others to do their best for your child,” Megan said. “You have to trust your gut. And from the beginning of maternity, time, it’s about trusting your gut.”