By Anna Kristina Moseidjord. Bay City News.
While the Bay Area leads the nation in childhood vaccination rates, a surprising number of parents express hesitation and fear when making the decision about whether or not to vaccinate their children against COVID-19.
An informal survey of Bay Area parents found fears ranging from concerns about short-term side effects of the vaccine to questions about whether the shots are really necessary against a disease that is often less harmful to children than to adults.
Even among those who view COVID vaccines as safe and positive, the decision is often not so simple.
Katie Sherwin of Oakland said that although she and her partner have “always been pro-vaccine,” she had reservations about vaccinating her two children, ages 4 and 10 months.
“Maybe I shouldn’t admit this, but I remember texting my friends after the vaccine was approved, ‘So we’re all still doing this vaccine thing, right? ’” Sherwin said.
Sherwin isn’t alone in turning to friends to navigate these pressures. As CDC guidelines and scientific consensus have shifted over the course of the pandemic, many parents have looked to their community, often consulting friends, family, neighbors and coworkers about their vaccine options.
Marc McCoy, a parent and employee of the Oakland Unified School District, described his experience navigating the complex web of resources available to him.
“I try to listen to all the news channels, I try to watch as many news channels and talk to as many people as possible,” McCoy said. “I hear things that make me feel comfortable, and then maybe isolated incidents — where people were healthy and then they got vaccinated and died. As an individual, you have to make a decision about what’s right.”
Although Sherwin and McCoy ultimately decided to vaccinate their respective children, the doubts they expressed are echoed by people who have chosen not to get vaccinated.
Claire Anderson of Piedmont, for example, said she and her partner are “not anti-vaxxers, but we’re in COVID.”
Because of this, her two children are not vaccinated against COVID, though they have received flu and TDAP shots. Anderson’s family’s choice was due to both the novelty of the vaccine and their perception that COVID was not serious for children. Speaking about the vaccine, Anderson said it is “too new. It’s only approved for emergency use right now, and I don’t want my kids to be guinea pigs.”
In fact, the FDA has approved the vaccine and boosters beyond “emergency use,” as it has passed all testing requirements and is expected to remain in use beyond the pandemic. But anxiety about the vaccine’s novelty appears to be common, as parents grapple with the drastic changes in regulations and pandemic conditions of the past three years.
Concerns about testing despite rigorous procedures
Many Bay Area parents have echoed Anderson’s fears that their children will become “guinea pigs.” The fears often center on the idea that both the original COVID vaccine and subsequent boosters have not been adequately researched, and that they were rushed for government approval due to “unprecedented circumstances.”
However, the COVID vaccines have been tested according to the same standards as other FDA-approved vaccines, and while they are new, the science behind them has been long-researched. The speed at which they were approved was the result of a combination of administrative and funding choices that helped pharmaceutical companies research and manufacture the vaccine before approval. And the vaccines were still required to go through the same testing process as vaccines like TDAP and the flu vaccine.
COVID-19 is just one of many diseases in the coronavirus family, and many of its relatives have been the subject of research for decades. The coronavirus family includes SARS and MERS, for example, two diseases that have long been a real concern for governments and the international health community.
COVID vaccines could not have been developed so quickly if not for the years of coronavirus research that occurred before the pandemic. Additionally, the vaccine was approved and distributed much faster than normal due to a combination of increased funding, administrative prioritization, and pre-approval manufacturing.
Typically, many of the hurdles to vaccine approval and distribution are bureaucratic and financial, not scientific. The cost of funding testing and the financial risk involved in vaccine manufacturing can be prohibitive for pharmaceutical companies, especially relative to vaccine profits, as vaccines are generally not a lucrative product.
After designing them, pharmaceutical companies may have to wait months for FDA attention, and typically only after they have been approved will they begin manufacturing them.
However, subsidies and support from the Trump administration meant that billions of dollars went into supporting pharmaceutical companies in this process. The COVID vaccine was a top priority for the FDA when trials were completed and received immediate administrative attention. Not only that, subsidies allowed pharmaceutical companies to manufacture large quantities of vaccines before they were approved by the FDA.
What about side effects?
It is worth noting that for the original COVID vaccine, this process included multiple phases of testing in both animal and human subjects. For some of the later boosters, this process involved testing only in animals, which is in line with the normal, less rigorous process for updated vaccines.
However, this has also caused concern for some parents.
Rachel Concannon of Oakland, for example, said the lack of human testing gave her pause about making the decision to potentiate her children.
Many parents expressed concern about the impact of side effects on their children, as well as hesitation about subjecting their children to such side effects when COVID appears to affect children less severely than adults.
Jackie Boyle of Alameda, for example, described how the side effects of the vaccine left her depressed for a couple of days.
"Even getting up to go to the bathroom was a mission," she said.
Pointing to the 1-year-old she cares for, she asked: “If the vaccine did that to me, I mean, what will it do to her, when she’s so little?”
Like other caregivers, Boyle worries that such expertise may not be necessary. This is especially true as the so-called “tripledemic” has swept through schools this season: Parents of children who have recently had RSV or the flu were especially reluctant to subject their children to another couple of days of feeling sick.
Oakland mother and former school counselor Concannon described how she weighed the decision: “There’s a part of me that’s like, you know, it’s less of a burden on the kids, do they really need to go through this?”
However, she eventually vaccinated and boostered both of her children, saying the loss and mental health impact of missing school outweighed any potential side effects by a wide margin.
unprecedented times
Ultimately, many Bay Area parents are grappling with the truly unfamiliar nature of decision-making in the pandemic era. Vaccinating children requires trust in our social systems — systems that are grappling with new challenges.
However, while it is true that COVID is less likely to cause severe illness and hospitalization in children, the CDC and other health authorities have clearly stated that vaccinating children far outweighs any risks and provides important immunity. These health authorities strongly recommend vaccinating and boosting children.
As Jackie Boyle said, “If you have a heart attack, you go to the doctor, and all that research comes from the same place.”
While the official advice is clear, there is a real heaviness in guiding children through what has been tritely referred to as “unprecedented times”. Rachel Concannon described how her son asked her what she did during quarantine when she was a child.
“Oh, honey,” she recalls saying, “this has never happened before in my life.”
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