TY - JOUR T1 - A focused protection vaccination strategy: why we should not target children with COVID-19 vaccination policies JF - Journal of Medical Ethics JO - J Med Ethics SP - 565 LP - 566 DO - 10.1136/medethics-2021-107700 VL - 47 IS - 8 AU - Alberto Giubilini AU - Sunetra Gupta AU - Carl Heneghan Y1 - 2021/08/01 UR - http://jme.bmj.com/content/47/8/565.abstract N2 - Cameron et al’s1 ethical considerations about the ‘Dualism of Values’ in pandemic response emphasise the need to strike a fair balance between the interests of the less vulnerable to COVID-19 (most notably, their freedom) and the interests of the more vulnerable (most notably, their protection from COVID-19). Those considerations are at the basis of ethical defences of focused protection strategies.2 One example is the proposal put forward in the Great Barrington Declaration. It presented focused protection strategies as more ethical alternatives to lockdowns which would prevent lockdowns’ ‘irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed’.3 Here we want to suggest that a version of Cameron et al’s analysis can be applied to the case of vaccines to support a focused protection vaccination strategy. At this stage, we should limit vaccination to the vulnerable and not target children (and possibly other young people) in COVID-19 vaccination strategies.We argue that, given the current state of knowledge about COVID-19, immunity and vaccines, it would be wrong to pose the costs and risks of vaccines on children for three reasons. First, they are unlikely to benefit from COVID-19 vaccination … ER -