Today, Explained - Why little kids don’t have vaccines

Episode Date: May 5, 2022

And how the seemingly endless wait in the US is affecting their development. This episode was produced by Victoria Chamberlin, edited by Sean Rameswaram and Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and Victoria Dominguez, engineered by Paul Mounsey, and hosted by Noel King. Here's a link if you want to contribute to Today, Explained to Kids: bit.ly/texkids Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained   Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Vaccines. A vaccine, you have to get a shot so you'll be feeling better. Okay, you have to stay healthy. When you don't get healthy, you're going to get sick. Once I had to go get a flu shot, it keeps you from getting flu when your new baby sister's born. The COVID-19 vaccine made it possible for a large part of the population to get back to something like normal, but not kids under five. Late last year, there was some hope. Pfizer's data showed that the immune response in kids was similar to what was seen in adults who got the vaccine.

It performed well in the youngest of kids. So in kids six months to two years old, they had a very good immune response. Until there wasn't. But for toddlers, the older ones in this group, they didn't have the same response with a two-shot regimen. Why has it been so hard to get this vaccine? It's Today Explained. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings.

Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. Lauren Gardner, you cover the FDA for Politico. Last Thursday, Moderna asked the FDA to authorize its COVID vaccine for kids under six. A company's announcement comes as the FDA says making a vaccine available for kids younger than five is one of its highest priorities. Why is it taking so long to get a vaccine for this age group? This is the million dollar question. We were hearing towards the end of 2021 that the vaccine manufacturers were expecting data by end of that year, early this year.

Pfizer will ask the FDA for emergency use for its COVID vaccine for children as young as six months old. And that, you know, once they had the data in, they would be able to move pretty quickly to ask the Food and Drug Administration to authorize their vaccines for emergency use for that population of children. And what's happened since then, well, Omicron. The latest wave of COVID infections making it feel, yes, like December of 2020. The spike in new infections fueled by the Omicron variant

is showing no signs of slowing down. New Jersey, Florida, Delaware, and Massachusetts also recently reported new daily records. Companies were conducting their trials while this new variant started circulating in the United States. And as we've all seen with adults and older children, it was much easier all of a sudden to get infected.

And that changes how the data is collected and what it's showing. It's been about a week since Moderna went to the FDA. When do we expect the FDA to give Moderna an answer? So Moderna has said that they're going to need about a week or so to finish submitting all of their data to the FDA. Also, keep in mind, Moderna still hasn't had authorization given for their vaccine for anyone under 18 in the U.S. So there's a lot of data that they still have to submit. But what FDA has done is they're trying their best to give guidance to parents who want to know when these vaccines will be available without over-promising. And part of the reason why they have to be careful in doing

this is they cannot disclose confidential business information. Companies can say publicly when they submit an application to FDA where they are in their process. You know, it's something they talk about on shareholder calls all the time, but FDA can't say that for them. So FDA is really reliant on the manufacturers to publicize where they are in their process. I believe in a couple of months, we should be in a position to have the date and then eventually submit before the end of the year. That has jaded parents, especially, who have been so eager to get these vaccines because they feel like they were promised a timeline

that really could not have been promised. It's really frustrating that there's protection now for just about everybody else. But those of us who have young kids are stuck. They haven't specifically said when the Moderna vaccine for kids under six will be considered. But they've held three dates in particular for pediatric vaccines. Keep in mind, too, we're expecting data from Pfizer in the next couple of weeks. So that will also factor into what comes up when. But Pfizer decided we need to look at what a third shot does for kids. If they wait a little longer,

if they administer the third dose in that clinical trial, they'll have a very firm picture of what level of effectiveness the vaccine is delivering. So once that happened, there had been discussion about, you know, maybe we move forward on authorizing two doses of the vaccine, but knowing we might have to add a third in there. And moving forward with that kind of approach could have generated even more confusion than already exists. These are the exact same vaccines that we're giving to adults, right? When we talk about little kids, they would be getting the same vaccine that went into my arm? So the dosage of these pediatric vaccines differ from what you and I might have gotten in our arms last year.

In Moderna's case, the dosage of their pediatric vaccine is about a quarter of what's given to adults. And it's similar for Pfizer. Their pediatric vaccine dose is also a fraction of what adults received. That dosage still produces a similar immune response so that you can tell that these little kids' bodies are trying to fight off the virus in a similar way that if they were exposed to the coronavirus,

they would see a similar immune response happen. Baked Beans. When the FDA evaluates a pediatric vaccine, what exactly are they evaluating? What makes this process so much longer? While companies have been in contact with FDA before they formally launch these applications for these authorizations, that doesn't mean FDA has all of the data available to them, right? You know, they're talking to the manufacturers, having conversations before the application

actually crosses their desk. So while they may have an idea of what they're about to see, they don't have the full picture. And once FDA gets that application, that's when the real work begins. Because what happens is FDA basically rechecks all of the math that these vaccine makers do. They're like your math teacher in high school that didn't just take your word for it that, oh, this is the answer I came to. No, they want to make sure that you did the right process to get that answer, right? And that's what I don't think a lot of people in the general public understand is they are redoing all of these statistical analyses. They're making sure that the findings that the vaccine maker says they found when they crunched the data, that FDA can reproduce that. And then it's also a matter of making sure that they have the manufacturing capacity to do this. What does your facility need to also a matter of making sure that they have the manufacturing capacity to do this. What does your facility need to put in place to make sure that they can make these vaccine

doses, especially since we're talking about smaller, different doses compared to what adults get? They come in different boxes. They come in different vials. So there's all kinds of things here that FDA has to check. Childhood immunizations are not at the level that they were pre-pandemic. And there is a lot at stake here if FDA doesn't get this right for the future of kids' immunizations in this country. across the country are saying that they're increasingly worried that more families are projecting how they feel about the COVID vaccines onto other routine childhood vaccines. Everything from measles to chickenpox to meningitis. Things that, you know, over the years, parents just have routinely given their kids, right? Sure.

Yes. Yes. Yes. If you think all the way back to polio, there was a period of time where there was a bad batch of polio vaccine. One of the labs making the vaccines hadn't taken the proper steps to kill the live virus in the shot. Kids were injected with this vaccine

that ended up giving them polio. The Surgeon General halted all vaccinations while they figured out what the problem was, and they created more safety standards. Thousands of children were paralyzed. A few died. But still, somehow, the immunization campaign against polio went forward, and we eradicated it in this country. If there's a major safety concern that could have been checked earlier on in the process of going over a vaccine maker's application and that gets missed and something were to go wrong with this very specific, very vulnerable population, it could completely undermine the public's trust in vaccinations going forward.

We already have vaccines for children over the age of five. Are parents of kids who are five and over vaccinating their children at very high rates, very low rates? What's it look like? While the vaccine is certainly popular for some parents, the rate nationwide is not super high. It's about 30% right now for kids between the ages of 5 and 11 who are fully vaccinated. 30%. Yeah. And the rate's a little bit higher as you go up in age groups. So the 12 to 17-year-olds, it's a slightly higher rate. Of course, they've also been able to get vaccinated for a longer period of time than kids between 5 and 11. But as you look to kids in these younger and younger age groups, parents have a lot more hesitancy about whether or not they're going to move forward with vaccinating their child. I see many parents around

me in my social circle who are very excited to get a vaccine for their children who are under five. Four years old. But that's anecdata, of course. We could see a similar situation where around only 30 percent of really wee ones get the vaccine. There will still be pockets of these populations in parts of the U.S. that remain unvaccinated. So it's going to be a little bit of a game of whack-a-mole, right? Where, you know, you'll have some social circles in some metropolitan areas or some regions where there's a decently high vaccination rate for these kids.

And then you're not going to see that in other places across the U.S. For the parents of under fives who are listening right now, when do you think there will be a vaccine for little kids? I'm going to base this on Moderna because they're the ones who have advisors could talk about specifically the Moderna vaccine is about mid-June. That's the earliest they could talk about it. That's the earliest they'll talk about it, but they tend to move pretty quickly. Once FDA authorizes a vaccine, the CDC has to weigh in and formally recommend it. And once that happens, providers can actually start getting needles into arms. Based on the schedule that FDA has outlined, the tentative schedule,

late June seems very possible. I don't want to say likely. I don't want the parents to kill me. I hope that the earlier parts of our conversation made it clear that it's not as simple as FDA just, you know, getting an application and waving it through. A COVID vaccine protects you from COVID or there's also a flu shot. It protects you from different sickness. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month.

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It's Today Explained. My name's Anna North. I'm a senior correspondent at Vox. I cover American work and family life. There's definitely a sense among parents that their young kids have lost something, possibly even many things, over the past two plus years. What does science tell us? There's been a lot of research into the development of young children over the last few years. Some of the most interesting, I think, actually looks at babies who were born in 2020 and whose birth parents actually, you know, were pregnant at the very beginning of the pandemic. There's some evidence that there was some impact on babies being in a prenatal environment during that incredible time of stress. They show, you know, some differences on some developmental tests.

We have no way of knowing how long that's going to persist. And there's also a lot of confounding factors. So what a lot of scientists will tell you is the way they do science on little kids has changed a lot in recent years because of the pandemic. They're masked, for one thing. So if you've ever tried to talk to a small child where you're both wearing masks, it can be hard to understand them. It can be hard for them to understand you. And there's also a lot more science taking place over Zoom, taking place remotely just for safety reasons that can change the outcomes that you get.

So on the one hand, I think experts have been studying this question a whole bunch. And on the other hand, there's still a ton of looming questions. When you say development tests show different outcomes, what are we talking about? Some of the motor skills questions that experts will look at are things like, can the baby plank? So can the baby, you know, lift up on feet and on hands and sort of hold their body straight? You know, other things include like, is the baby rolling over? Can the baby roll over from their back to their stomach? Can the baby get into a crawling position by getting up on their hands and knees?

You know, these are all like basic small skills for babies that they use on the way to walking and running and doing all the things that a lot of bigger kids do. And there's some evidence that some of these gross motor skills were delayed a tiny bit in babies whose birth parents were pregnant right in that, you know, really terrible time in early 2020. You visited a pre-kindergarten in Queens as part of your reporting. What did you see? What struck you? These were four-year-olds. They had been out of any kind of formal child care setting usually for six months in 2020.

So they weren't out as long as some kids had been out, but they were still out for a good chunk of time. And, you know, their teacher pointed out to me, even when they came back to school, it's not like their lives were normal because they often weren't doing like anything else social. You know, they go to school, they come home, they're not going to the grocery store with their family, they're not seeing extended family. There's a lot of things that were different. When you talked to their teachers and said, how did those six months out of Head Start affect these kids? What did you hear? I think they would agree with me that these kids are now socializing, that they're, you know, sort of making up for lost time. But they, you know, in particular, one teacher that I spent some time

with really felt that they had lost a lot. My first name is Roshan. My last name is Kanam. Kids call her Miss Roshan. Sometimes she taught these kids older siblings or knew their older siblings before the pandemic. So she's sort of been with this community for a while. We actually called Miss Roshan. She was in her siblings before the pandemic. So she's sort of been with this community for a while. We actually called Ms. Roshan. She was in her classroom at the time. I am working for the Child Center of New York since 2013. As a preschool, we have eight classrooms in the school. Four are 3K and four are 4K.

These children were two years old when the pandemic started. Ms. Roshan, when the school went virtual back in 2020, what was the biggest change for you as a teacher? Oh, it was so hard. I never even heard the word Zoom before. Like, it was so hard. It was so hard. But we made it possible.

What do you think was hardest for the little kids? Each, you know, each child is different. They're so used to see the YouTube video and thing, but learning in front of the computer, like half an hour is really hard for them because of the age group. They cannot concentrate so much for a long time, even though we used to tell them that,

okay, now you see your friend, look, she's in the computer, look who you see, talk to them, say hi, hello. They were kind of like stuck somewhere, I don't know, but they don't talk with the friends, not at all. Are there any specifics that you've noticed, like they behave better or, you know, they talk less in class or they talk more in class? What do you think is the biggest change? I see a lot of change. This group now, they're more independent in one sense, let me tell you. Like we have centers throughout the classroom.

In the writing center, children used to have the crayon, pencil, you know, the paper, the scissors, whatever they need their writing to make art or something. Now, we don't have that in the writing table. scissors, whatever they need, their writing to make art or something. Now, we don't have that in the writing table. We have everything in a little box for the children. And that box goes to their copy. So they are responsible for their box. They take it out when they need to write.

So they are so independent. They come to school now by themselves, the parent from the door, they leave the children, right? They come inside, they take off the jacket, they take off the bag, they get ready, they line up to wash their hand. So before when the parent used to come in the classroom, they usually help the children to do all these things. But that's why I'm saying that this group, they are more independent than the previous group. Small children being a bit more independent sounds like an okay thing. What do you think? It's okay in one way, it's not okay in other way, because I feel like, yeah, okay to, you know, to survive. It's okay to survive but they're children we have to

if you if you started so early to do all the take all the responsibility that's my personal opinion you're going to be so tired soon taking all the responsibility by yourself and it's good in one sense yes they don't need anybody they're're so independent. That's so good. The emotion also, less emotion. I see less emotion because before, when the parent used to leave the children in the classroom, children used to cry. Now, no crying. They come like from the first day, nobody crying. That's something like alarming, I think.

Why do you think the kids aren't crying anymore? What do you think is at the bottom of that? They're growing up with the pandemic, with the coronavirus, I think. Why do you think the kids aren't crying anymore? What do you think is at the bottom of that? They're growing up with the pandemic, with the coronavirus, you know. The mommy and everybody is telling them, you know, you have to be away from the thing. You have to be, don't go to other people's space. Also, we talk that, you know, you have to go by yourself because of the virus. You have to be careful. The health and safety issue we put in front.

So that maybe, you know, motivates them to be not crying, but be safe. You're saying you think it's really affected how they see the world. Yes, of course. Because back in the day, even the parents, the adult would not tell them too much about the viruses and things. Nowadays, everybody's talking about being healthy, being safe, being cautious about the virus and not being sick. So all these things, yes, all these things affect the children. They used to not go to the park. They used to not go to the store. They used to not go to the movie, not to the museum, not to the beach. Nowhere.

Just at home. You know, the most important thing for them to have a friend. The most hated phrase for them is, I'm not your friend. That's so heartbroken for them. So heartbroken. Most, mostly, they like the friend. They like to be with the other, and they learn through the interaction. They learn through the physical interaction, the mental interaction, all kind of like, even also the language. Language play a big role

to develop, to learn, you know? Do you think it's going to take work to get kids back on track, or do you think they're resilient? They are more resilient. That's true. They are resilient, but there will be an effect on them as they are going to the bigger world. And this group, because of the mask, I'm going to say, they have the speech problem a lot. Children learn through imitation, through interaction. They don't really see our lips are moving. It's a big problem.

They're learning now, no matter what language you are talking, you are speaking, you are learning the language. This is the age, you are learning the language. So it's really hard for this group. Did you have to do school at home at all? No, only virtual. Okay. Do you like school in person better? Yes. What did you not like about it? Because I couldn't see my best friend. What at school makes you really happy? Seeing my best friend and playing with him.

We play together and we climb stuff and mostly he runs off from me. Oh, and then you chase him? No. No? I find another friend and then I just say I'm good. Oh, and then you're Jason? No. No? I say, I find another friend, and then I just say I've got friends. Oh, okay. Before we go, a few summers back, Today Explained did a mini-series just for kids. Today Explained to Kids is coming back this summer, and the people making it have a request.

They want to hear from the young people in your life who have a favorite plant-based meal or snack. It will not shock you to learn that this is for an episode about eating less meat. If you've got one of those young people, please have them send us a voice memo if they wish. You can email recordings to todayexplainedatvox.com. The deadline for submissions is May 15th. And just know we might use your child's voice memo in Today Explained to kids. If you want more information, there's a link in our show notes. Today's episode was produced by Victoria Chamberlain. It was edited by Matthew Collette. It was engineered by Paul Mounsey. And it was fact-checked by Laura Bullard and Tori Dominguez.

I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. Bid.