COVID-Vaccine Mandates for Kids Are Coming
COVID-19 vaccination for 5-to-11-year-olds is finally a go. But even as the emergency-use-authorization process unfolded, so too did arguments over whether kids should (or would soon) be forced into getting shots. School mandates for new vaccines tend to lag behind CDC recommendations by about half a decade, but COVID-19 shots appear to be in the express lane. The Los Angeles Unified School District—the nation’s second-largest—will require students 12 or older to be vaccinated by mid-December if they want to continue attending in-person classes. The entire state of California plans to mandate shots for all of its public- and private-school students as soon as vaccines are fully approved for them, and New York City’s mayor-elect has said that he supports the same idea.
The implementation of any statewide K–12 school mandates may still be a while off, given the expected delay before the FDA gives full approval of —for reference, the same process for the. But how, exactly, does the case for mandating COVID vaccines in schools compare to the one for all the other shot requirements—such as those for polio, chicken pox, and measles—that are already in place throughout the country?
