With provinces and territories now rolling out plans to COVID-19 vaccinate children aged five to 11, many parents eagerly signed their children up to be among the first in line.
But not everyone is pouncing on the opportunity. Some parents have more questions before their kids get the jab.
Nathan Maharaj and his wife were up bright and early Tuesday registering their nine-year-old son for his first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine in Toronto.
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He’s excited Edmund can feel safer returning to karate classes, for instance, and will feel more comfortable planning visits to Ripley’s Aquarium, Ontario Science Centre or the movies.
“It’s a threshold we needed to cross to do things that we were comfortable doing before and as things are opening up again,” Maharaj said.
“We don’t want to be going there and then, you know, for the next 72 hours praying for no symptoms of anything to emerge and then also isolating from others because who knows what we’re carrying.”
Coquitlam, B.C., parent Mike Romaniuk, seen with his two young daughters Harper, centre, and Georgia, is still unsure about giving them the COVID-19 vaccine. He would like to review the studies that Canadian health officials reviewed when creating their recommendations for children. (Submitted by Mike Romaniuk)
In Coquitlam, B.C., Mike Romaniuk is digging through news sites and studies about how both COVID-19 and the vaccines for it are affecting children. While everyone in his family is up to date with B.C.’s recommended immunizations and received this season’s flu shot, he is still unsure about the COVID-19 vaccine for his daughters Harper and Georgia, who are respectively aged four and two.
“There’s definitely an aspect of ‘I don’t want to be first for my kids, I don’t want to risk,’ but I recognize on both sides there’s risk. Not doing it is a risk as well,” Romaniuk said.
“The more data, the more confidence, I think, especially if it’s tabulated or presented in a way that’s easily understandable and comparable.”
He would love to be able see the studies Canadian health officials are analyzing to create their recommendations for children, for instance, saying that for him it would help instill more confidence.
“There’s a lot of parents that I interact with that have concerns. They’re scared to ask [questions], scared to speak out. There’s quite a stigma around it,” he said.
The drive to vaccinate younger children against COVID-19 could prove tougher and perhaps take longer than earlier age groups, but medical experts say they’re ready to answer all questions and meet parents and caregivers where they’re at.
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Dr. Susy Hota, University Health Network’s medical director for infection prevention and control, answers questions about the first COVID-19 vaccine approved for Canadians aged 5-11. 7:33
Before the pandemic, the term vaccine hesitancy was most often discussed in the context of parental decision-making, according to medical anthropologist Ève Dubé, a researcher at the Quebec National Institute of Public Health who has studied it for more than a decade.
She said before the pandemic about one-third of parents were vaccine hesitant.
“Not all those parents refused vaccines, but some were accepting with concerns, being unsure that this was the right decision,” said Dubé, who says education on the issue helps build trust and motivates parents to inoculate their children.
Looking at recent surveys, she says, there appears to be more hesitancy about COVID-19 vaccinations for the five-to-11 age group than for earlier cohorts.
“For COVID, I think the situation is a bit different … because of the fact that children are less at risk of COVID, their direct benefit of vaccination is less clear than for measles or other childhood vaccinations,” she said.
‘A slower start’ predicted
Traditional mass public health campaigns with posters and fact sheets about the importance of vaccination typically work to reach the majority. Those positively discussing vaccines with fellow parents can also help, Dubé said.
However, for those with many more concerns, health officials employing a targeted, one-on-one approach are most effective, she said. She admits it is more resource and time intensive.
“It might be a slower start of the [age 5-11 vaccination] campaign,” Dubé said. “But with time … the vaccine hesitancy may decrease. Most people never want to be the first in line to do something new.”
A parent and child arrive an in-school clinic providing the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 5 to 11 in Wheeling, Ill., on Nov. 17. (Nam Y. Huh/Associated Press)
According to historian Catherine Carstairs, who has researched health and medicine, many people pointing to when “everyone rushed out to get the polio vaccine” forget that it actually took many years to achieve consistent uptake across different age groups.
“I think we may see something similar with COVID-19,” said the University of Guelph history professor.
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Catherine Carstairs, a history professor at the University of Guelph, notes how even with the polio vaccine in the 1950s, people choose to wait awhile before choosing to be immunized. 1:26
While many point to a discredited 1990s-era study falsely linking autism and vaccination for increased hesitancy of and opposition to vaccination in recent years, Carstairs believes there have also been many other contributors.
This includes more skepticism of the medical profession, the rise of “natural health” products and non-traditional medicine, a growing feminist health movement and a shift in parenting styles that puts “less reliance on outside expertise and more of a sense of ‘I know my child better than anyone,'” she said.
Working to address parent concerns
As a parent of a five-year-old himself, infectious diseases physician Alexander Wong empathizes with fellow parents who, given how fast the COVID-19 vaccines have rolled out, have more questions and simply want to do what’s best for their kids.
“We need to really kind of be open-minded and work really hard to address those concerns with parents so that we can get as many kids vaccinated as possible,” he said in Regina.
WATCH | This infectious diseases doctor shares advice for parents with concerns:
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Dr. Alex Wong outlines a few important points about COVID-19 vaccines for parents of younger children. 2:14
A question Wong hears regularly is that if COVID-19 has caused relatively few kids to become severely ill, hospitalized or die than adult populations, why do we need to vaccinate?
His response: “No kid should get sick or, God forbid, die as a result of a preventable illness.… We vaccinate for things like measles, rubella, mumps, norovirus, all these other things without thinking twice. And the number of deaths caused by those types of disease conditions pre-vaccine were far, far lower than what we’re seeing with COVID.”
More practically, he added, vaccination will minimize the intense disruptions kids and families have faced throughout the pandemic at school, with extracurricular activities and time spent with extended family and friends.
Another thing he highlights for parents is that real-world data is coming from the U.S., which approved the vaccine for children aged five to 11 in early November. Wong notes that about three million Americans kids have had one dose thus far with no major flags about side effects.
“That’s a reassuring safety signal,” he said. “Everybody is scrutinizing this vaccine unlike anything else probably in history quite frankly.”
Leah Lefkove, 9, shows off her vaccination sticker in Decatur, Ga., on Nov. 3. It was the first day COVID-19 vaccinations were available for U.S. children from 5 to 11. (Ben Gray/The Associated Press)
Paul Offit, a professor of pediatrics and member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices that authorized the COVID-19 vaccine for children in the United States, empathizes with those who feel there hasn’t been enough data gathered on this young cohort.
Yet there has never been this abundance of real-word data on teen and adult populations that can be applied to children, he told CBC Radio’s The Sunday Magazine.
Offit says contracting COVID-19 is a much riskier proposition than potential vaccine side effects. One risk of natural infection is myocarditis, or an inflammation of the heart muscle.
He said the risk of myocarditis is roughly one in 45 people who contract COVID-19, compared with roughly one in 50,000 among people who get the vaccine.
“And it’s much more severe [with infection],” Offit added.
He also pointed out that young kids who contract COVID-19 are at higher risk of a condition called Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C), “where myocarditis occurs 50 to 75 per cent of the time.”
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Canadian kids aged five to 11 are up next for COVID-19 shots, after Health Canada’s decision Friday to approve the Pfizer vaccine for them. Dr. Paul Offit is a member of the vaccine advisory committee that made the same recommendation in the United States earlier this month, a decision he describes as “nerve-wracking,” because he knows there’s some risk involved for young kids. But, as he writes in his new book, You Bet Your Life: From Blood Transfusions to Mass Vaccination, the Long and Risky History of Medical Innovation, all medical breakthroughs involve risk… and not getting the shot is not a risk-free choice. 24:13
In the past 200 years, any side effects associated with vaccines invariably arise within six weeks of the dose, says Offit, who is also director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
“It’s perfectly reasonable to be skeptical… You should have questions and you should have those questions answered,” he said.
“There’s a line though between that and someone who [doesn’t] trust the pharmaceutical industry, they don’t trust the medical community, they don’t trust the government and it doesn’t matter what you say, they’re simply not going to get a vaccine.
“That to me is not a vaccine skeptic. That’s a vaccine cynic.”
Have questions about this story? We’re answering as many as we can in the comments.
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
