Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo:
So that’s what’s going to be evaluated by the committees.
There’s going to be first the consideration of the temporary side effects, the things that we tend to feel when you get vaccinated. Likely, they’re going to be mild, just like we heard about the adult vaccines, arm soreness, mild sort of flu-like symptoms for a very short period of time.
They’re going to evaluate the frequency of that and how severe those side effects were. But then they’re also going to consider what the other slightly longer side effects.
Now, I have to stress that the other things that we’d be looking for, the things that we heard about as — surfacing as an issue with the vaccination of young adults, things like heart inflammation, those are reported within not just a day or two, but perhaps a week or so after vaccination.
They’re going to be looking to understand that. I don’t think the trials are necessarily large enough to detect that, but they’re going to assess what the likelihood of that occurring is, both given the fact that children are going to receive a different dose and the fact that they have different risk/benefit calculations.
But I want to stress, because I think there’s this misconception out there that somehow we expect that, months from now, or perhaps years from now, after vaccinating that side effects will manifest. And that’s just not something that we expect to happen with vaccines. That’s not really how vaccines work.
So I just want to put parents at ease who may be worried that, if I choose to vaccinate my child, will years down the road something manifest? That’s really not something that I see as being likely and, in my view, not something to particularly worry about.
