Why should teens be allowed the Covid vaccine without their parents' okay?

And why are the New York Times and the New Yorker telling them they should?

In the last 48 hours, the two most powerful voices in American journalism have both written what are essentially advocacy pieces encouraging teenagers to take Covid vaccines - even if their parents do not approve.

First the Times stepped up with:

As Parents Forbid Covid Shots, Defiant Teenagers Seek Ways to Get Them

The article all but lionized teenagers who live in states that do not require parental consent for vaccines, and featured a psychologist telling readers that “adolescents at 14 and even younger are at least as good as adults at weighing the risks of a vaccine.”

Sure! Kids are just little adults. They’re great at weighing risk. That’s why we let 12-year-olds join the military, drive, and get married. (I would love to know if this psychologist thinks that 14-year-olds who commit murder should be sentenced as adults.)

Meanwhile, The New Yorker ran an interview with an anonymous Arizona teenager who just HAD to have the vaccine. Why?

He missed out on “a gathering, sort of a video-game tournament… at one of my friends’ houses.” His vaccinated friends told him he couldn’t come. (Which doesn’t make much sense, since they’re the protected ones, but many vaccinated people seem bizarrely scared of the unvaccinated.)

“That’s when I realized that this is pretty important, and I’m starting to get left out of life.”

Yes, this young man missed out on “sort of a video-game tournament.” How will he go on?

But he’s the hero in this tale. How do we know?

Because his parents are - wait for it - Trump supporters. (Who went down a “far-right rabbit hole” - meaning they had the temerity to do their own research.) They clearly do not love their son and cannot be trusted to make decisions for him.

Like the Times piece, the New Yorker interview did not even raise the possibility that Covid vaccines might be risky for teenagers or that parents would have any legitimate reason to reject them. The Times article even quotes a physician claiming that “No, Covid is not just like the flu.” He’s right - it is much less dangerous than the flu for healthy children and young adults.

Most stunningly, neither the Times nor the New Yorker mentioned the fact that the Covid vaccines can cause serious heart inflammation in young people. The word myocarditis is nowhere to be found. This is shocking, or would have been in the pre-Covid era.

For what it’s worth, David Remnick - the editor of the New Yorker - found the Arizona teen’s story compelling enough to conduct the interview himself. Remnick is possibly the most revered figure in American journalism. He has edited the New Yorker since 1998. In the late 1980s, he covered the fall of the Soviet Union for the Washington Post, and in 1993 wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning book called “Lenin’s Tomb” about that sad country’s final days.

I mention all this because Remnick - more than anyone else - should appreciate the irony of trying to tear apart families and turn children against their parents. After all, Communist regimes specialized in this kind of psychological mutilation.

Alas, Covid seems to have destroyed the elite media’s sense of irony along with everything else.