To the editor:

Like many of you, fellow readers, my wife and I are residents of West Seattle, and boy has it been a challenging 20 months. Thankfully, our elementary-age children's school is close by and our family has had some pillars of normalcy reestablished thanks to the Herculean efforts of the staff.

We're also in the process of vaccinating our children, but not for the reasons commonly expressed in our social circles. We're vaccinating them so they are not relegated to social pariah status.

I've felt lately a sense of alarm at the pace at which an expectation is being built into social relations in our milieu, and not just as school. The likelihood of Covid-19 vaccine requirements for my children (ages 6 and 9) for public activities seems all but locked into the near future. 

Whatever one might say about this virus, for metabolically healthy children this is not the same disease course that has struck at elderly or medically fragile populations. As of early November 2021, 562 children ages 5-11 had been hospitalized due to Covid-19. There are roughly 28 million children aged 5-11. 

There are, however, instances of adverse reactions that reached notable numbers for young men in prior studies for vaccination. 

We also know there's myocardial risks in exposure to the virus as well. While we previously thought vaccination was key to preventing transmission, evidence from vaccinated parties in Providence RI and the Delta variant destroyed that as a purely locked concept. As much as vaccines have been bandied about as "no brainers," this is complex stuff.

There's the argument that we need to shut down children as vectors of spread. There's decent indication that getting vaccinated can slow or block infection and therefore, spread. The trouble with this line of thought, though, is we still have a global reservoir of vulnerable adults worldwide that haven't received a single dose of any vaccine. Maybe the omicron variant will upend things all over again. There's much we don't know. There are ever things we won't know.

So, I will be vaccinating my children, yes. (We’ll be spreading the dosing cycle to lower risks for our son.) What parents and guardians do should be their calls to make, as Maryland Gov. Hogan indicated in a recent letter to constituents. I don't believe our local assessment of risk is calibrated in a healthy way, but I don't suspect there will be any getting around this. My efforts to provide vaccinations to my children are borne more out of a sense that adults in their lives won't let things return to normal for them until they have proof of vaccination. Navigating this likely blockage far outweighs any pure fear I have about Covid-19 damaging them or offering a true risk of mortality. Not, at least, when compared to risking a motor vehicle collision on the way to soccer practice, incidents which regularly kill more children in this age range in a calendar year than Covid-19 has hospitalized to date. Your children may be different, you may have someone with an immune compromise that you're navigating- and may you make the best decision for your family. This plea is not advocating against vaccinating children. I just wish I had the same freedom to choose if for no other reason than to demonstrate to my children how one can make risk assessments in a rational fashion that somehow was more acceptable in prior years. With all due respect, Seattle, you are the most anxious metro in the country, as Gene Balk recently articulated in the Times. In leading in this way we are skewing our children's sense of how to weigh risks. Taking every available precaution in life can in fact diminish one's life. I hope you exercise your freedom to vaccinate your child as you see fit. In Seattle, I'm not sure many parents who feel as I do will get to viably exercise that freedom, based on what we see as appropriate.

Timothy Tetrault

West Seattle