Parental Hesitancy Around COVID-19 Vaccines
Anand Swaminathan, MD, and Vanessa Cardy, MD
- Pfizer mRNA vaccine now approved by FDA for kids aged 12-15
- While many parents of kids in this age group have been vaccinated, there is a significant proportion of these same parents who are reticent to get their kids the COVID vaccination
- Kaiser Family Foundation’s “Vaccine Monitor” did a nationwide poll and found that of parents of a child aged 12-15:
- 30% will get their kids vaccinated ASAP
- 26% will wait and see
- 18% will vaccinate their kids only if mandated by schools
- 23% will definitely not get their kids vaccinated
Crucial for physicians to understand what is driving these concerns:
- Myth that kids do not get sick from COVID therefore some feel that possible risk of vaccine outweighs the risk of COVID
- Widely reported that flu is worse
- Standard concerns about the speed of creation of vaccines
- Fear from marginalized communities that they are being used as guinea-pigs or are being experimented upon
How to counter these concerns:
- mRNA vaccine technology is not actually new and has been well tested
- The speed of COVID vaccine production does not mean that safety steps have been skipped. Rather it illustrates the speed at which vaccines can be developed when the entire world is working towards a common goal
- The vaccines are widely proven to be safe in adults and late teens down to age 16
- Unlikely would be different in the 12-15 year age group and data supports this.
- Kids do get sick from COVID: There have been 130k hospitalizations of kids with COVID in the US, and more deaths than with influenza. COVID = worse than the flu
- Knowledge about long term effects of COVID is still evolving but it seems there can be deleterious physical and mental health impacts from
- Kids, particularly those aged 12-15 spread it to others
- To decrease the spread we need to vaccinate these kids
- Most marginalized communities who have historically dealt with health inequities are the same groups who are most vulnerable to COVID and its serious consequences
- Take the time to explore concerns and do our utmost to empower these populations so that they might be vaccinated
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