Surgeon General slams Matthew McConaughey for opposing vaccine mandate for kids

A Surgeon General has slammed actor Matthew McConaughey for opposing a vaccine mandate for kids and claimed 'Covid is not harmless in our children'. 

Surgeon Vivek Murthy hit back saying it was important to vaccinate children as 'many kids have died' or 'been hospitalized' with the virus. 

It comes after McConaughey came out against vaccine mandates for children on Tuesday, and said he does not want his kids - aged 13, 11 and 8 - to have the jab. 

'I couldn't mandate having to vaccinate the younger kids. I still want to find out more information,' McConaughey, 52, said. 

McConaughey made his comments days after the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approved the Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE Covid-19 vaccines for children aged 5 to 11 last week - becoming one of the first states to sanction jabs for the age group with most countries, including the UK, only offering vaccines to children 12 and older.       

The decision has caused a storm of controversy with opponents pointing to the fact there is little evidence to suggest vaccinating children is necessary. Data shows Covid poses a low risk to the age group, with children accounting for less than 0.1 percent of virus deaths in America.

There have been 680 children under the age 18 who have died from Covid-19 during the pandemic as of November 3 and 63,000 who have been hospitalized as of October 10, according to the CDC. Many of those had underlying health issues. 

But Covid-19 accounts for only a fraction of kids deaths nationally - with most dying as a result of various accidents, including car crashes, drowning, and from being shot.  

Murthy responded to McConaughey on CNN on Tuesday, encouraging parents the vaccines are safe for children and warning that 'thousands [of kids] have been hospitalized' with the virus. 

'Many kids have died. Sadly, hundreds of children. Thousands have been hospitalized, and as a dad of a child who has been hospitalized several years ago for another illness, I would never wish upon any parent they have a child that ends up in the hospital,' he said.

'And the vaccines have shown in these trials for children 5 through 11 they are more than 90 per cent effective in protecting our kids from symptomatic infection, and they are remarkably safe as well.'  

The row started after McConaughey told writer Andrew Ross Sorkin that vaccinations should be about personal choice in an interview on Tuesday. 

'I'm vaccinated. My wife's vaccinated. I didn't do it because someone told me I had to — [I] chose to do it,' he said. 

'Do I think that there's any kind of scam or conspiracy theory? Hell no. We all got to get off that narrative. There's not a conspiracy theory on the vaccines.'

But he added that 'right now' he won't vaccinate his three children against the virus. 

Virus deaths account for only a small proportion of kid's deaths in the US. A total of 3,343 children 19 and under lost their lives in traffic accidents in 2019, while there is an estimate of almost 4,000 children dying of fatal accidental drownings every year.

Poisoning accidents kill 730 children every year in the country and seventy-nine children 19 and under died due to bike-related accidents.

The CDC reports that more than 12,000 children die every year due to injuries including drownings, falls, burns, and road traffic injuries - equating to around 33 children a day.

McConaughey also said his family quarantined fairly extensively during 2020 and made use of a 'heavy amount' of tests for the virus. 

'I'm in a position though where I can do that, and I understand that not everyone can do that,' he said. 

In McConaughey's home state, 61.9 per cent of Texans have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine and 53.8 per cent were fully vaccinated. Nationally, around 67.5 per cent of Americans have received at least one dose of the vaccine.

CDC director Dr Rochelle Walensky signed off on a unanimous 14-0 vote to approve the jab for children last week, making approximately 28 million children in the US eligible for the shots. 

It was the final step in the process that will allow injections in young children to begin this week in the United States following weeks of controversy over the vote. 

President Joe Biden last week said the decision was 'a turning point' in the battle against Covid-19 and said the administration had secured enough vaccines for every child in America. 

By approving vaccines for five- to 11-year-olds, America becomes one of the first countries in the world to begin vaccinating young children.

China has reportedly started rolling out its own vaccines to three-year-old children, and Chile is vaccinating children aged six and older. Israel, meanwhile, is expected to follow the US' lead now the CDC has approved the jabs.

However, these countries are currently the exception, with countries still weighing up the risks and benefits of the decision. Most are only vaccinating children aged 12 and upwards. 

In Britain, scientists have warned against officials 'blindly' recommending the jabs to young children without weighing up the risks 'extremely carefully'.

Professor David Livermore, a medical microbiologist at the University of East Anglia told MailOnline in October: 'Vaccinating children to protect adults via herd immunity is ethically dubious and is scientifically weak.'

There are also still fears about myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation detected in children, mostly boys, in around one in 10,000 cases after vaccination.

Critics say children are better off catching Covid and getting protection naturally because the risk of being admitted to ICU is about one in 500,000.