For American parents, particularly those with young children, the past couple of months have been dizzying and beyond frustrating.
In early February, federal regulators announced they would evaluate Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine for the youngest children — only to scrap that plan 10 days later, citing doubts about the vaccine’s effectiveness in that age group.
Soon after, scientists reported that the vaccine was only weakly protective against infection with the omicron variant among children ages 5 to 11 and that it appeared to offer little defense against moderate COVID-19 illness among adolescents ages 12 to 17.