TEXT I
Why Parents Still Hesitate to Vaccinate Their Children Against COVID-19
According to a recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), only 27% of parents of 5- to 11-year-olds are keen to immunize their children against COVID-19, whereas 30% said they definitely won’t vaccinate their children. One-third of parents said they’ll “wait and see” before deciding how to proceed.
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Nevertheless, the CDC reports that more than 90% of US children up to age 24 months are immunized via injection against several diseases, including measles, mumps, and rubella; almost 93% have received at least 3 of the 4 recommended injections of polio vaccine. And approximately 95% of kindergarteners had received state-required vaccines for the 2019-2020 school year.
So why are parents more hesitant when it comes to the COVID-19 jab? For many, the answer is related to familiarity with the vaccines in question. Shots to protect against measles, mumps, and rubella have been around since the 1960s. But the first COVID-19 vaccine was created last year; it’s still relatively uncharted territory. And unlike parents of the 1960s, today’s parents may be inundated with social media and internet messages promoting misinformation about or mistrust in vaccines.
Available at: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/ fullarticle/2787289. Access: Aug 25, 2022.
TEXT II
The Abysmal Covid Vaccination Rate for Toddlers Speaks Volumes
You would think that vaccination sites would have been swamped with parents rushing to vaccinate their young children against Covid after the Food and Drug Administration authorized the vaccines for the under-5 age group in June. But as of early August 2022, around 5 percent of eligible children under 5 had received the first dose of the vaccine series. Worse, the number of them being immunized has been decreasing.
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What does it say, then, that most parents have not vaccinated their children against Covid? Even if, as the data would suggest, they’ve vaccinated themselves at much higher rates?
I fear that it’s indicative of Americans’ loss of trust in the public health system of the United States. Much of that is because of misinformation and disinformation spread about the safety and efficacy of vaccinations. But some of it is the result of inconsistent and often suboptimal science communication by public health experts.
Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/18/opinion/covidvaccination-children-toddlers.html. Access: Aug 25, 2022.
These two passages attempt to explain the reason why many parents have not vaccinated their children. Both passages attribute the low rates of child vaccination to