Fauci responded that it “doesn’t make any sense” for parents to not get their children vaccinated for Covid like they do with other childhood diseases. He continued to emphasize that children need not to be seriously ill if their parents give them their shots.

If you look at the number of children right now going to the hospital who are in trouble getting seriously ill, you almost have to say it’s the responsibility of the parent to protect their child. It is true that when you compare the hospitalizations and severe illness in young children compared to adults, particularly the elderly, there’s no doubt that the likelihood of getting seriously ill for a child is less than for an adult when you’re dealing with Covid-19. But that doesn’t mean that children do not get seriously ill. And all you have to do is go to any pediatric hospital right now, virtually anywhere in the country. You see children there who are suffering, some even dying, who need not be in that situation, if they were vaccinated because virtually all — not 100 percent but close to that — of the children who are seriously ill in a hospital from COVID-19 are children whose parents decided they did not want to vaccinate them, and that is avoidable.