(WXYZ) — A new survey found that most parents are not planning on getting their younger kids vaccinated right away. This poll is from the Kaiser Family Foundation. More than 1,500 US adults took part and here’s what was found.
27% of parents are planning on getting their children between the ages of 5 to 11 vaccinated against COVID-19 right away. And when I say ‘right away', that could be as soon as next week.
The CDC’s advisory committee is planning on meeting Monday and Tuesday and that’s when this group of independent experts will consider whether or not the CDC should recommend Pfizer's kid-size doses.
But getting back to the poll, about a third of parents said they will not get their kids vaccinated at all. While another third said they’d take a wait-and-see approach.
The survey also found that many of the parents are concerned about safety.
- 76% indicated that they were "very" or "somewhat" concerned about long-term side effects
- 71% said that they were worried about serious side effects
- 66% were concerned about how the vaccine would affect a child’s fertility later down the road
As a parent I get the concern, but the CDC says there is no evidence that shows getting vaccinated against COVID-19 causes fertility issues. It’s an unfounded myth that is scaring the heck out of people.
It’s frustrating to me that folks get duped into believing a lot of nonsense that’s actually been disproven by science. And with infertility, studies have shown that COVID vaccines do not affect fertility in men. Nor do they affect embryo implantation or early pregnancy development in women.
In Michigan, we’re in the midst of a fall spike. Could cases go higher? Possibly. The virus is highly contagious and very unpredictable.
COVID cases are still high among American kids – roughly 118,000 were added in the last weekly report. So it's unlikely that the virus will disappear in the near future.
Kids between the ages of 5 to 11 years old can still die from COVID. 146 already have. Not to mention the 5,000 plus children that developed a severe multisystem inflammatory condition known as MIS-C because of COVID.
The bottom line, in my opinion, is that we need our children protected. And getting them vaccinated is one giant step to getting not just their lives but everyone’s back to normal.
