Biontech approval: why I have my children vaccinated against Covid-19

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It was a day of good news for the corona-plagued republic: the Robert Koch Institute announced more than a million vaccinations on Thursday for the previous day.

And: The "Spiegel" reported that the Biontech vaccine could be approved for children from twelve years of age in June, much earlier than expected.

In autumn, admission is even possible from six months.

At the beginning of the week, Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed herself skeptically and even worried.

According to information from n-tv at the vaccination summit, Merkel said it would be "a very, very long time" before there would be a vaccine for children under twelve.

"So we will have a difficult situation in the primary schools in the autumn." Now it looks like these fears will not materialize.

In just a few weeks, parents should be faced with the difficult question of whether they can inject their children with a vaccine that has been tested in accordance with all scientific and official requirements, but of course we do not yet know about the long-term effects of this.

The mRNA technology is simply too new for that.

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If Covid-19 were as dangerous for children as it is for adults, the question would probably be easier to answer.

But we now know that severe cases are rather rare.

And long-term consequences such as Long Covid or the PIMS inflammation syndrome are dangerous, but do not affect the majority of children.

In addition to the individual, the question also has a social dimension.

The one after herd immunity.

Given the more contagious mutants, experts believe that well over 70 percent of the population will need to be vaccinated to finally defeat the pandemic.

If millions of children are not vaccinated, the virus can flare up again and again and continue to mutate.

For me as a mother it is therefore clear: If the vaccine is approved and recommended by the Standing Vaccination Commission, I will have my children vaccinated. Because after a year in which families were left in the lurch, there were neither air filters in schools nor rapid tests in daycare centers, my trust in the scientists at Biontech is significantly greater than in the ability of politicians to free us from this pandemic.