10/13/2025
Thank you, Patricia Joyce, MD for
summarizing the following. (Edited)
Covid and influenza vaccines
The current CDC has said, “talk to your doctor”, which is a great idea. However, we should do more to protect our children and patients
Influenza has a universal recommendation, meaning all ages, every year, unless there is a specific medical contraindication. A discussion between patient/parent/doctor is clearly of utmost importance, and we are happy to talk with you
Covid vaccination is equally recommended by the AAP for babies, children, and anyone ages 6 months and older.
Infants can be vaccinated at 6 months of age, which means that infants younger than 6 months are protected by all of the people around them having their own vaccines up to date. There is also some early protection from vaccination of the mother before the baby is born. (All vaccines to pregnant women are given in the third trimester, after the formation of all of the fetal organs, and while the baby is basically just growing.)
Because an infant is new and is not likely to have had prior exposure to the virus, it is recommended to have 2 doses of influenza vaccine, one month apart. That recommendation actually continues to age 9 years, so that whether the child receives the vaccine as a young infant or anywhere under age 9, whichever year they receive their FIRST dose, there is a second dose one month later. After that, only one dose per year. After age 9, most kids have had some exposure to flu and only the one annual dose is recommended.
That recommendation continues to age 65, when the annual vaccine is recommended to change to a higher dose vaccine, which stimulates a better immune response in people whose immune systems are aging.
Our current flu vaccine is trivalent, meaning it covers two types of influenza A and influenza B. So if you get sick with one of them before getting your flu shot, it’s still worth getting immunized to protect against the others.
The Covid vaccine is recommended to pregnant women in the third trimester, and to infants, for the same reasons as mentioned above. There’s a lot of bad information out there about the Covid vaccine being related to miscarriages, when it’s actually the Covid infection itself that can be the culprit.
Covid causes a vasculitis that attacks blood vessels; which means, it can attack the placenta, and cause clots throughout. The placenta is the sole vehicle of oxygen and nutrition to the fetus. When the placenta has been rendered nonfunctional due to clotting, the result is a miscarriage. The vaccine clearly presents a risk/benefit profile that only protects a developing baby
The AAP has issued guidance on the vaccinating of infants and children; mindful that this group is at higher risk of severe disease and hospitalization (second only to the elderly). After the first two years of life, there are recommendations throughout childhood, each nuanced. They can be found through the link below, but really require a conversation among parent, child and physician. Prior concerns for a risk of myocarditis in young men receiving the vaccine have faded, but not disappeared, as fewer cases have been seen with subsequent doses of vaccine. Please keep in mind, that the risk of myocarditis from an actual covid infection is real and likely far greater.
Adults of all ages are less likely to develop severe disease, become hospitalized and die if they receive annual boosters, but the specific recommendation has been made only for those over 65 years and/or immune-compromised, as they have the highest risk.
It’s been demonstrated that even that first full series of Covid vaccines are still showing an effect to prevent from severe disease, hospitalization and death. But that effect is augmented through boosters. And the booster gives you a temporary (2-3 months) boost in neutralizizing antibodies, which may protect from infection altogether.
It’s worth noting that we have been living through a pandemic, unlrecedented in modern times. There have been dangerous new pathogens with world-wide spread before, but the most recent was over 100 years ago, and there was no vaccine available as an exit ramp.
Over 7 million people have died from Covid, approximately 1 in every 100 identified cases. Over 13 billion doses of various Covid vaccines have been given, with about 2/3 of people having completed an initial series. So we now have a population that has, apart from the youngest, acquired some degree of immunity from either infection, or vaccination, or some combination of the two---but we don’t have a prior model to tell us how that should guide our future recommendations, or even our current ones. Much more information is necessary, more study, more collection of data, more understanding. If you have questions about what it all means, and whether we’ll need vaccines ongoing, or whether Covid will mutate such that it’s less of a concern---well, you have a lot of company in the medical/science communities.
Which is why it’s so devastating that our public health infrastructure has been politicized. We have so much to learn from Covid, and how it was and is being handled, and what it might mean for our recommendations now and possibly with a future pandemic
