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The New York Times

They're Not Anti-Vaccine, but These Parents Are Hesitant About the COVID Shot

On May 4, Dr. Hina Talib, who goes by the handle @teenhealthdoc on Instagram, asked the parents among her 33,000 followers if they were hesitant to get the coronavirus vaccine for their 12- to 15-year-olds, and if so, why. Talib, who is a physician in the adolescent medicine division at Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in New York, was surprised to get 600 messages filled with questions and concerns. More often than not, Talib said, the parents had already had the COVID-19 vaccine themselves and would preface their message with, “I’m not an anti-vaxxer or an anti-masker. I’m just worried.” According to recently released polls, parents across the country share those concerns, with only about 30% saying they would get their children vaccinated right away. Parents of infants and preschoolers expressed more anxiety about the vaccine than parents of teenagers did. In trials, there have been no serious safety concerns for children thus far, and Dr. Lee Savio Beers, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, heralded the recent emergency use approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children 12 to 15 as “a critically important step in bringing lifesaving vaccines to children and adolescents.” Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times Despite evidence of the vaccine’s safety, several parents I spoke to over the past week were similarly hesitant about getting their children the shot. They were not skeptical about all vaccines; their children tended to be up to date with recommended well-child vaccines. Their overall fear was related to the newness of the vaccine and unknown future outcomes. As Kimberly Johnson, 38, the mom of elementary-school-age twins in Pound Ridge, New York, put it to me in a Facebook message, “I’m not anti-vax but this all seems just too fast for me. I don’t want my children to be responding to those lawyer ads you see on TV 25 years from now. You know the ones, ‘If you were under the age of 16 in the years 2021-2022 and received the COVID-19 vaccination you could be entitled to compensation … ’” For Teens, Concerns About Puberty and Fertility Parents of adolescents I spoke to tended to be concerned about the vaccine affecting puberty and future fertility for their children. Saadia Faruqi, 45, a children’s book author in Houston whose kids are 11 and 14, said that though she and her husband got the vaccine, she worries about how it might affect her kids’ hormones, fertility and their growing bodies. Faruqi feels that if she makes the wrong decision for her children, “I’m going to be a bad mom,” she said. “I don’t want either of my kids to turn around when they’re in adulthood and ask, ‘Why did you do this?’” Talib has also heard these concerns from parents of teens, and she said that while she understands the worry, there is no biological mechanism that would make the COVID-19 vaccine worse for teenagers. “Hormones related to puberty should not change the immune response, or the side effect profile of this vaccine,” Talib said. In trials, the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccine was extremely effective for children 12-15; there were zero breakthrough infections among the kids who received the inoculation. Akiko Iwasaki, a professor of immunobiology at Yale School of Medicine, who wrote an article for The New York Times debunking disinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine and fertility, said, “Even during the vaccine trials, some of the women inadvertently got pregnant. There’s nothing even to empirically support” a link between infertility and the COVID vaccine. “I have two daughters myself who are in the 12-14 year age group; I totally understand the fear,” she said. “But there’s really no basis for it.” For Younger Children, Worries About Allergies and Side Effects Molly Herman, 35, who has a 2-year-old and is 32 weeks pregnant with her second child, said she is anxious about giving her daughter the vaccine, even though she chose to get the shot during her pregnancy. Her daughter has never had antibiotics, and she has barely been sick, so “I don’t know what she’s allergic to,” said Herman, who lives in Medfield, Massachusetts, and works in higher education. Nicole Frehsee Mazur, 39, who lives in Birmingham, Michigan, was also concerned about her children, who are 4 and 6, having an allergic reaction to the vaccine, because she had an averse response to the Moderna shot and the kids have allergies. “I’m not opposed to vaccinating them. I would just like to wait until more kids are vaccinated,” she said. Vaccines may be available for children older than 2 by September at the earliest, so these concerns are theoretical at the moment. Dr. Nia Heard-Garris, a pediatrician and researcher at Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, said that she understands parents’ hesitations. “That kind of conversation has been present before we had a feasible vaccine, especially from groups that have been marginalized and experimented on. It’s not a fear that’s far-fetched,” she said. But Heard-Garris said she trusts the science and the data and that the abstract fears of the vaccine’s long-term effects should be weighed against the real-life impacts of the virus. As Beers put it, “While fewer children than adults have suffered the most severe disease, this is not a benign disease in children. Thousands of children have been hospitalized, and hundreds have died.” The doctors I spoke to were hopeful that as the vaccine becomes a reality for young kids rather than an idea, parents will become less hesitant. They urged parents, especially those whose kids have allergies, to talk to their pediatricians about the best approach for their children. Talib said that parents and teens alike in her practice have said they would feel more comfortable getting their vaccines in a pediatrician’s office, closely monitored by a doctor they know, than at a large vaccine site like a convention center or a pharmacy, the way many adults have been vaccinated. Last week, President Joe Biden said that he was shifting his administration’s vaccination strategy away from mass vaccination sites and toward more local sites in order to get more shots to younger people and the vaccine-hesitant. It is still unclear how many states or localities may encourage or require middle or high school students to get the vaccine before attending in-person school this fall, though more than 100 colleges and universities have already announced that students must have the COVID vaccine if they want to return to campus. Ultimately, the biggest proponents of the vaccine may be the children themselves, if they are old enough to have an opinion. “Don’t forget to check in with your teen and hear their thoughts and questions about the vaccine as well,” Talib said. Although in many states, those younger than 18 need parental consent to get the vaccine, Heard-Garris said that her patients in the 16 and up crowd who are already eligible for the vaccine are telling her, “I want this; I know my mom doesn’t want this.” They want to be able to get back to school and go to prom and hang out with their friends without worrying about the virus looming. They want to return to some semblance of “normal,” just like their parents. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company

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