Elementary school kids: You’re about to take shots.

On Friday, the FDA authorized Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine for kids ages 5–11. The CDC is expected to give its final approval within days and the shots could roll out next week.

• The safety data: A study of 4,700 children showed that Pfizer’s vaccine was safe and 90.7% effective at preventing symptomatic disease.

The Covid shots children will get are like the vaccine version of a kids menu—a smaller dosage delivered via a smaller needle and, probably, with more colorful Band-Aids.

Why it’s a big deal

Almost 2 million kids ages 5–11 have been infected with Covid in the US, 8,300 have been hospitalized, and at least 170 have died. Covid has been the eighth-biggest killer of kids in that age group, according to the CDC.

• While kids are much less likely than older folks to get seriously ill with Covid, to quote CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, “Children are not supposed to die.”

And aside from kids themselves getting sick, vaccinating children could have profound effects for society more broadly. More vaccinated kids means fewer disruptions at school, like quarantines, and it would also reduce Covid transmission from kids to more vulnerable populations.

As always, expect mandates to be contentious. California has already mandated that kids in kindergarten through 12th grade will need to be vaccinated against Covid-19, possibly as soon as next fall. A Covid vaccine would join five others that are required for children attending childcare or school nationally, including shots for measles and tetanus.

But there’s a lot of hesitancy around the Covid shot for kids. While 27% of parents said they’d get their kids vaccinated right away, 30% of parents said they would “definitely not” vaccinate their kids, according to a survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation. That’s double the rate of adults who said they wouldn't get vaccinated in December 2020.

Looking ahead...soon, the only group without an authorized Covid vaccine will be kids younger than five. Pfizer is expected to submit vaccine data for that age group by the end of this year.

+ While we’re here: Moderna said that the FDA needs more time to review data on its vaccine for teens, pushing back the timeline for its authorization.

Airlines are locked in a fierce battle over which one will be the punchline of more jokes.

American Airlines has canceled more than 1,800 flights since Friday, amounting to 18% of its entire weekend schedule. Execs blamed high wind gusts at its Dallas-Fort Worth hub and bad weather elsewhere for leaving crews stranded in the wrong places.

Big picture: This comes just weeks after Southwest canceled nearly 2,400 of its flights, which it attributed to bad weather and air traffic control problems. And in August, Spirit also nixed 2,000 flights.

So...should we start bringing sleeping bags to the airport? Are mass cancellations the new normal?

Bad weather has been around forever, but it does appear that Covid-related staffing shortages are compounding the problem. Both Spirit and Southwest are trimming their winter schedules while they try to hire more workers.

American is also confident it’ll be staffed up to better handle the holiday travel rush. It’s welcoming back almost 1,800 flight attendants from pandemic leave today and more on Dec. 1.

Police have killed more than 400 unarmed civilians during traffic stops in the past five years, and a report from the NYT shows how these potentially lethal situations are in part motivated by the outsized impact of ticket revenue on city budgets.

• Fines and fees account for at least 10% of city revenue in 730 municipalities, the Times found.
• In one town, Henderson, LA, $1.7 million in fines collected made up 89% of its general revenues in 2019.

The dependence on ticket revenues for funding municipal services has warped public safety incentives, critics say, leading to overpolicing and public mistrust of officers. It also harms racial minorities far more than white people.

The federal government plays a big role in all this, handing out $600 million/year in highway safety grants that encourage traffic stops. While officials told the NYT there are no quotas for ticket writing, 20+ states do evaluate officer performance based on the frequency of traffic stops, the report found.

Bottom line: Advocates of reform say cities need to decouple policing from revenue generation to eliminate these misaligned incentives‚ and should perhaps simply automate more traffic enforcement.

Stat: More than 24,000 municipal employees subject to a new vaccination mandate by New York City did not receive their shot as of Saturday. When enforcement of the policy begins today, they’ll be put on unpaid leave and the city will face potential worker shortages for some of the most basic services, like trash collection and firefighting.

Quote: “I’d rather be a billionaire and not be loved by everybody than not have any money.”

Charlie Munger responded to criticism about a dorm he designed for the University of California, Santa Barbara, that would leave 94% of students without windows.

Read: Remote work is bringing the city to the suburbs. (Recode)

Economy: The “bond tapering” you’ve been hearing so much about is finally here. On Wednesday, the Fed will likely announce that it’ll begin winding down its pandemic-era stimulus programs (no rate hike expected yet, though). The October jobs report will close out the busy economic week on Friday.

Elections: Somehow it’s been one year since the presidential election of 2020, and many Americans will head to the polls on Election Day 2021 for other contests. Governors are on the ballot in New Jersey and Virginia, and cities like Atlanta and New York are picking their next mayor.

Earnings season rolls on with reports from Pfizer, Moderna, Uber, Airbnb, Zillow, CVS, and many more.

Everything else:

• The US Supreme Court will hear two major cases, one involving challenges to Texas’s restrictive abortion law and the other involving a Second Amendment challenge.
• Day of the Dead, or Día de los Muertos, is being celebrated today and tomorrow.
• Daylight Saving Time ends early Sunday morning, when we trade an extra hour of sleep for near-total darkness for a few months (or at least that’s what it feels like).

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File this under “topics to bring up at a cocktail party”: The jobs that marry together the most.

Dive back into the week:

• Shallow dive: Good dog costumes
• Medium dive: New workplace dynamics
• Deep dive: The chemistry of beer
• Cannonball: How we fix the climate

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Turntable: It's week #2 of our new game that asks you to find the words in a jumble of letters. Play it here.

Dictionary Trivia

It's more fun than it sounds. Merriam-Webster just added 455 new words to its dictionary to reflect how the English language is constantly changing. We’ll give you the definitions of some of the new terms; you have to identify the words.

Ex. A commercial cooking facility used for the preparation of food consumed off-premises = ghost kitchen

1. A physique regarded as typical of an average father
2. Someone who performs their occupation entirely over the internet while traveling
3. Used to describe political efforts, campaigns, or organizations that appear to be funded and run by ordinary people but are in fact backed by powerful groups
4. A cold sweetened beverage made from ground rice or almonds and usually flavorings such as cinnamon or vanilla