Speaking on Thursday, President Biden pushed forward in his drive to vaccinate children ages five through eleven with the COVID-19 vaccine, despite polls showing that nearly half of American parents oppose the idea.
Biden boasted, “Families will be able to sleep easier at night knowing their kids are protected.”
Biden stated:
Now I know parents out there are anxiously waiting for a vaccine for children ages five to eleven. The good news is the FDA and outside experts from the CDC are set to make this determination as to whether the vaccine will be authorized for that age range in the next few weeks.
If authorized, we are ready. We have purchased enough vaccines for all children, between the ages of 5 and 11, in the United States. It will be convenient for parents to get their children vaccinated at trusted locations, and families will be able to sleep easier at night knowing their kids are protected.
A CBS News/YouGov poll conducted between October 6-8 found that 61% of parents who were unvaccinated were against vaccinating their children ages 5-11, while precisely the opposite held for vaccinated parents, 61% of whom would vaccinate their children in that age group.
A Gallup poll conducted at the end of September found almost a majority of parents were against vaccines for children under 12: 45% opposed such an idea.
The White House has alerted governors to begin getting ready to vaccinate children as young as five years old.
“The Biden administration has purchased 65 million pediatric doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, enough to vaccinate the estimated 28 million children who would be eligible should the Food and Drug Administration approve Pfizer’s request to vaccinate children ages 5 to 11, said an official of the Department of Health and Human Services,” NBC News reported.
As The Daily Wire previously reported, an independent expert panel will publicly debate the issue on October 26.
“Pfizer and its partner company BioNTech are awaiting an expert review for the vaccine, which is scheduled for October 26th,” The Daily Wire noted. “Pfizer conducted a study of over 2,000 children and found no serious side effects, though the company admitted its study was not large enough to detect rarer side effects like the heart inflammation that presents very rarely in young men after they’ve received the second dose of the vaccine.”
On Thursday, however, CNN reported of an Indiana couple whose small children were given the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine instead of a flu shot and had adverse reactions. Joshua and Alexandra Price’s five-year-old daughter Sophia and four-year-old son Lukas went with their parent to a Walgreens in Evansville where they were mistakenly given the wrong shot.
Alexandra Price told CNN, “When they called us and told us that they had made a mistake and had given us the wrong shot, I was just in shock. All I could say to them was, ‘What does this mean for my kids?’”
CNN reported that the children’s symptoms intensified and that the family’s attorney stated, “The children have experienced a number of adverse effects since receiving the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. Fever, body aches, cough, headaches, and nausea are among the symptoms the children are experiencing. The 4- and 5-year-old are also under treatment of a pediatric cardiologist for tachycardia and elevated blood pressure, respectively.”
“After a follow-up appointment Tuesday, Alexandra said that Lucas has improved but Sophia has worsened. ‘Her blood pressure is in the 98th percentile and she continues to have no energy,’” CNN added.