FOLLOWING THE SCIENCE TO A STOP SIGN — Surgeon General Vivek Murthy tweeted this morning that his 4-year old daughter tested positive for Covid-19. "I wish a vaccine was available for my child and for all kids [under] 5," Murthy wrote. "It would protect kids and help parents. Unfortunately, more data is still needed from clinical trials for the FDA to make a full assessment." Murthy wondered in his thread whether he could have done more to protect his little girl or whether her positive result was somehow his fault, expressing the angst and guilt so many pandemic parents feel every day. The FDA stunned scientists, parents and possibly the White House when it announced Friday that it would wait for data on how well three doses of Pfizer-BioNTech's vaccine protected children younger than 5 before deciding whether to authorize the first two shots. The decision, which means roughly 18 million children will have to wait a little longer before they are eligible, was especially devastating for some parents because a vaccine — and all that immunity might mean — seemed, at last, so close. I have a 19-month old and have never been a parent without a pandemic. Murthy said his daughter will likely be fine. Statistically that's true, but in his thread, he hit on something all parents know: Statistics aren't reassuring when your child has a fever, or cough or, in his words, "isn't her usual bubbly self." "Few things are worse than worrying about your child's health," he wrote. "In these moments, it doesn't matter if you're a doctor or Surgeon General. We are parents first." Which is why the FDA's delay hit so hard. "It's a baffling sequence of events," said Jason Schwartz, associate professor of health policy and a vaccine expert at the Yale School of Public Health. "The FDA went from not being comfortable with the two-dose data to being comfortable enough with it to take an unprecedented approach, to then, hours before the meeting, pulling the plug on that approach," Schwartz said. The whiplash and the lack of transparency — we still don't know what the data showed or what led to FDA's decision — leaves the door open for people to spin the news in ways that make the vaccine seem dangerous and increases hesitancy, said Govind Persad, an assistant professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, where he focuses on health law, and a Greenwall Foundation faculty scholar in bioethics. Some had hoped the FDA would authorize a two-dose regimen while waiting to assess the efficacy of a third dose. But William Schaffner, a professor of infectious disease at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and a longtime adviser to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, argued that waiting for all the data is more likely to convince more parents that the vaccine is safe and effective than scare them because it was delayed for a short time. "'We don't know the whole story yet but bring your child in to get vaccinated' — that made me very uneasy," he said. "If you go to parents and say, 'Our recommendation is to vaccinate your children,' you need to have the whole story." But most kids will be fine, right? Yes, it is true that very few children under 5 die or suffer serious complications from Covid-19, but that doesn't mean it's no big deal for kids to get Covid. A child who tests positive and shows up in the emergency room with a croup-like barking cough may not get admitted to the hospital, but a midnight run to the emergency room is nothing to take lightly. And when some cavalierly suggest that most kids will be fine, they gloss over how a positive test means quarantining from daycare or preschool. For two working parents this can be a lot to juggle, and for single-parents it can be impossible. Parents who are paid by the hour and who are low-wage workers are the ones least likely to have paid-sick leave, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And America's youngest children are more likely to be people of color and are more likely to live in poverty than older Americans. When children are home from school, it's more likely to be mom who stays home with them, a pandemic problem that has exacerbated pay gaps and disparities in the workforce. "The effects aren't borne equally in all sorts of ways," Persad said. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight's author at dgoldberg@politico.com, or on Twitter at @DanCGoldberg.
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