By: Tricia Desroches

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has approved the Pfizer vaccine for kids aged 5-11 in a unanimous 14 vote decision. Allowing young kids to get vaccinated can help the world get back to where it was before the pandemic started. Now that the vaccine is open to a variety of ages, the number of COVID-19 cases will likely go down, but there is no guarantee that the numbers will go down any time soon. 

Children do not receive the full dosage when getting vaccinated; they only get a third of the normal dosage so it will not be as strong. Many people are very happy that the vaccine is open to younger children, especially mothers since there were a large number of mothers that lost their children to Covid-19. 

Many Americans have been waiting for this announcement for a long time, however, others were not looking forward to it. There is a large number of parents that are scared that it will become a requirement for their children to get vaccinated to attend school, like many other mandatory vaccines. They say that kids already do not like vaccines as it is and adding another would be dreadful and overwhelming for their children.

Having the option to take the vaccine for young kids will allow them to do many things that they could not do before. Usually at school, if someone is vaccinated and someone around them got Covid, they wouldn’t have to be quarantined. Younger kids didn’t even have that option because they couldn’t get vaccinated, but now they can.

However, some risks come with the vaccine, such as the diseases myocarditis and pericarditis. This occurs when there is inflammation of the tissue surrounding the heart. Also, many adults have talked about feeling very sick after taking the Covid vaccine, so it might have a bigger impact on children. These kinds of side effects can really make someone not want to get the vaccine and not want their child to get it either.