More than a month after federal officials recommended a new version of the COVID-19 vaccines, 7% of U.S. adults and 2% of children have gotten a shot.
A month after federal officials recommended new versions of COVID-19 vaccines, 7% of U.S. adults and 2% of children have gotten a shot.
One expert called the rates “abysmal.”
The numbers, presented Thursday at a meeting held by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, come from a national survey of thousands of Americans, conducted two weeks ago.
The data also indicated that nearly 40% of adults said they probably or definitely will not get the shot. A similar percentage of parents said they did not plan to vaccinate their children.
I have small children. I've had COVID three times (that I'm aware of; the last time I got it I just thought I had allergies and did a home test on a lark that was positive).
Having small children in daycare/early grade school, where if your kid has covid means parents have to take five days off of work to stay home with their kids to follow the isolation protocols means kids are always being sent in with covid and parents don't report it, because then they have to follow an isolation protocol instead of their best judgment. Every time I've got covid, I caught it from my kids, who get it from other kids. I imagine I'm about as immunized as you can be at this point.
When our kids are positive, we keep them home and follow the isolation protocols, which is a privilege we have. But, I'll be honest: seems pretty fucking pointless. And each time they've gotten it, we only know because we randomly test them when I hear other parents mentioning they had covid but the kids seemed fine so they sent them in. They've had symptoms once. They've had several colds that have been AWFUL, but none of those were covid.
Covid for my kids is a positive test. That's usually the only symptom. I can understand why parents just send them in to school. Yet there are no formal policies requiring a pediatrician visit and a negative test for the flu, or for a bad cold. Just COVID.
It's really, really absurd, and working parents that I know just treat covid like any other cold: if it's bad enough that the kids are miserable, they stay home, otherwise, they go in. It's not the case if you have an immunodeficiency or are very old, but that's true of every illness for those groups. As far as I can tell, parents have moved past covid. It's just another illness that kids get.
Young children get sick as often as 12-18 times a year. Acting like covid, which has been in the population for some time now, is still some big bogeyman does an injustice to the actual illnesses that cause disruption. Frankly, it's a virus that has now become a political bellwether, which is incredibly, incredibly stupid.
Idk about everyone else, but this is getting ridiculous now for our family. We're doing our best to continue to follow guidance, but even the pediatrics department basically rolls their eyes about covid, because overworked parents have to come in and get a permission slip to send their kids back to school.
In March of 2019 I made a comment online pointing out that US work culture wouldn't respond effectively to COVID and that soon we would be right back to sending people to work sick because the God Economy matters more than public health.
The reason everyone is rolling their eyes is because no one ever really took it seriously. Those with the most money were able to get treatments and isolate themselves easily. They still are able to. The number of CEOs who demand return to office while also not showing up to the office themselves is quite high.
We were always disposable. There are effective ways to continue to handle this, but no one in charge wants to spend time or money on those things.