Book Offer
This will close in 10 seconds
Actor Matthew McConaughey has weighed in on the debate on vaccinating children this week, telling The New York Times DealBook summit this week he is against mandating the Covid-19 vaccine for “younger kids”. He made the comments on Tuesday, in remarks that could hint at the actor’s speculated interest in entering politics.
Although McConaughey said he was not against Covid-19 vaccinations, he “couldn’t mandate having to vaccinate the younger kids” without further information.
The actor said that his own children would not be vaccinated, at least for the time being: “Right now, I’m not vaccinating mine, I’ll tell you that,” the Academy Award winner said. His comments come following the US Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccine for emergency use in children aged five to 11.
In Ireland, children aged twelve and over are able to get vaccinated despite experts in some jurisdictions advising against <https://gript.ie/experts-advise-against-covid-vaccine-for-healthy-kids-but-british-government-may-push-ahead/> vaccinating healthy children due to the “admittedly small” risk of heart inflammation.
Now, some are calling for the Irish government to consider vaccinating Irish children aged five and up. The calls persist despite new studies showing Covid-19 deaths are “incredibly rare” in children.
UCD’s Dr. Paddy Mallon said “as a general concept”, Covid-19 vaccines should be “considered for all children – from the very young attending school, which is age five and upwards” in a move he admits “could be seen as contentious.”
His advice comes despite a series of studies looking at hospital admissions and reported deaths across England which suggests COVID-19 deaths are “incredibly rare” among children, and that the virus carries a lower risk of dying or requiring intensive care among children and young people than was previously understood.
Nature reports that, in a series of preprints published on medRxiv1-3, a team of UK researchers found that Covid-19 was “very rarely fatal” in under-18 year olds, “even among those with underlying comorbidities.”
McConaughey also stated that he and his wife had been fully vaccinated, and in what could perhaps be perceived as a subtle reference to the pressure people are under to comply with vaccinations, said that they “chose” to receive the shots rather than being told to get them.
“Do I think that there’s any kind of scam or conspiracy theory? Hell no,” McConaughey said. “We all got to get off that narrative. There’s not a conspiracy theory on the vaccines,” he added.
But he said he is not in favour of a vaccine mandate for children — and would wait to find out more about the safety and efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines for young children before he would let his own kids take the shots.
The 52-year-old Oscar-winning actor has, in the past, shown an interest in politics, hinting at running for governor of his home state of Texas, although he has not publicly committed to a career in politics. As recently as October, he rather ambiguously told NPR that “I am not — until I am,” when asked whether he would be running for election in the state. He previously said that contesting elections in the Lone Star state would be “an honest consideration.”
After making the comments on Tuesday, however, McConaughey slammed ‘clickbait headlines’ that he said, “insinuated […] that I am against vaccinating children at all.”
After facing considerable opposition, he said in an Instagram story that his eldest 13-year-old son Levi is fully vaccinated for Covid-19 and that his concern was centred on vaccinations for those under 12. His response came as Surgeon General, the operational head of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, Vivek Murthy, picked up on McConaughey’s widely circulated comments.
Murthy slammed the actor, claiming that it was important to vaccinate children as “many kids have died” or “been hospitalised” with the virus.
This week, data released from the UK showed that a total of six healthy children in England had died of Covid-19, evidencing what commentators described as the “limited impact” of the virus on children.
The Telegraph reported that Dr Camilla Kingdon, the president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said that the study showed “very, very tiny numbers” of children dying from Covid. She said that the impact of successive lockdowns and social distancing caused far greater consequences “through lost education, mental health, and other collateral damage”, she said, and added that much of the impact has yet to be seen.
“There was a view that kids weren’t affected by Covid. But what we would constantly try to point out – and which some of this data shows – is actually, these are wider issues that are no less detrimental to children and may have a more long-lasting impact actually, then the virus itself,” Dr Kingdon said.
She also said that children had paid a ‘very, very heavy price’ and that the impact was evidenced in many aspects of their health, warning: “You can also see it in community child health services, autism assessments, therapy referrals.”
She added: “We’ve got a significant backlog to remedy as we move beyond the pandemic. Aspects of child health services have taken a hit because of the pandemic and there’s going to be a long process to catch that up.”
This will close in 10 seconds