Lawmakers do a disservice by wanting to keep vaccines from Tennessee children | Opinion

Michelle Fiscus, MD FAAP
·3 min read

Once again, Republican legislators are attempting to insert themselves between public health and the well-being of Tennessee’s children. First it was forbidding mask mandates in schools. Then it was prohibiting teens from making a choice to receive a COVID-19 vaccination.

Now, as reported by The Tennessean on June 22, House Speaker Cameron Sexton, Majority Leader Rep. William Lamberth, Republican Caucus Chairman Jeremy Faison, and Rep. Jason Zachary have asked Governor Bill Lee to block the Tennessee Department of Health from providing COVID-19 vaccinations to children under the age of 5 — falsely stating children are not at risk of death or hospitalization from COVID-19.

This begs the question, “where do these legislators get their information?” It can’t be from the pediatric infectious disease experts at any of Tennessee’s children’s hospitals, who could tell them of the many Tennessee children who have been hospitalized and killed from COVID-19.

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COVID-19's impact on Tennessee children

According to reports from the American Academy of Pediatrics, Tennessee ranks seventh in the country for COVID-19 cases per 100,000 children. Tennessee has reported more than 300 cases of multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), which is a serious complication of COVID-19 that nearly always results in the need for hospitalization in a pediatric intensive care unit and disproportionately impacts children of color.

Had the legislators bothered to watch the public meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice (ACIP) recently, they would have learned that healthy children are just as likely to be hospitalized from COVID-19 as children with pre-existing medical conditions. Children ages 6 months to 4 years are more likely to be hospitalized from COVID-19 than any other pediatric age group, in part because a vaccine that has been provided to more than 250 million Americans has not been available to them until now.

Michelle Fiscus
Michelle Fiscus

The continued narrative that, “Children don’t get sick from COVID-19” is demonstrably false and is an organized effort to spread misinformation and foster vaccine hesitancy.

These legislators continue to ignore the publicly available data that describes the impact of COVID-19 on the health of children in order to spread fear of vaccination. These legislators are not experts in public health.

They are not experts in pediatric medicine. They are not experts in vaccinology. Tennessee has experts, and they are right where these legislators live and work.

Rep. Jason Zachary and Rep. Scott Cepicky talk over the barrier that separates their desks as the Tennessee House of Representatives began their session this week in Nashville, Tenn. Tuesday, June 2, 2020 Barriers were put between desks and many of the lawmakers were wearing masks.
Rep. Jason Zachary and Rep. Scott Cepicky talk over the barrier that separates their desks as the Tennessee House of Representatives began their session this week in Nashville, Tenn. Tuesday, June 2, 2020 Barriers were put between desks and many of the lawmakers were wearing masks.

Perhaps one day while in Nashville, they could pay a visit to the vaccine experts at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital where they conduct pediatric vaccine research. Representative Zachary, who has been a loud voice of COVID-19-related misinformation, has East Tennessee Children’s Hospital right there in Knoxville.

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I’d be willing to bet any of their pediatric infectious disease experts would be more than happy to share their stories of the impact of COVID-19 upon children in the Knoxville area. Representative Zachary told News Channel 5: “Parents who want to have their child vaccinated can still do so by going to a private medical provider.”

Parents of the nearly 1 in 5 children in Tennessee who live in poverty rely on the health departments to provide immunizations to their children. Many children in Tennessee live in areas where there is no health care provider aside from a health department.

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It’s easy for someone living in privilege to forget that many in Tennessee, a state that continues to rank at the bottom of states for health outcomes, do not have ready access to health care. Perhaps Tennessee’s legislators could busy themselves with addressing that issue, instead of attempting to obstruct a parent’s right to choose to have their child protected against COVID-19.

Michelle Fiscus, MD FAAP, is a board-certified pediatrician and former medical director of the Tennessee Department of Health's Vaccine-Preventable Diseases and Immunizations Program. 

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee legislators could harm more kids by blocking COVID vaccine