A strong majority of American parents support masking requirements in schools to protect against COVID, according to a new survey released Wednesday. But support for COVID vaccine mandates is much lower among parents generally. And don’t count on groups such as unvaccinated adults to get their children a coronavirus shot as we head back into the school year beneath the shadow of the latest COVID-19 wave and the Delta variant’s surge.
Some 63% of parents believe that schools should require indoor masking in schools for students and staff who are unvaccinated, according to the survey by health care think tank Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). But KFF’s vaccine tracker also finds a stubborn trend: opposition to requiring COVID vaccines for attending school. The numbers are nearly switched when it comes to school vaccine mandates versus indoor masking for the unvaccinated, with nearly six in 10 parents opposing vaccine edicts. That could spell trouble as the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) warns that more than 94,000 American children were diagnosed with COVID in the first week of August, as well as local reports that pediatric COVID units are seeing an influx of patients.
It should be noted the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) went further than simply advising masks for the unvaccinated at the end of July when it recommended mask wearing in all U.S. schools, including for schools in locales without a rising coronavirus case count. The agency says anyone who is on any school premises in person, including teachers, students, staff, and visitors, should be required to wear masks, including those who are fully vaccinated against COVID.
Pfizer/BioNTech’s mRNA-based COVID vaccine is the only one currently authorized for use by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in Americans as young as 12 to 17 years old. Moderna has also applied for an expansion into this age group and is expected to get it within months or even weeks. Johnson & Johnson, which makes the third vaccine currently approved in the U.S., has not yet applied for the same expansion but plans to enroll children as young as 12 to its one-dose COVID vaccine trials by this fall.
But a mixture of vaccine hesitancy and the strange sociopolitical factors driving the COVID vaccine divide continue to influence parents’ views on getting their schoolchildren immunized. And if a parent is vaccinated, the chances raise dramatically that their kids have had at least one COVID vaccine dose, too, or will get one as soon as possible. On the flip side, a staggering 50% of unvaccinated parents told KFF they would “definitely not” get their 12- to 17-year-old child Pfizer’s authorized vaccine and another 19% would only do so if forced to by the government or school system.
KFF also delves into what’s driving parents’ fears on whether or not to get their kids a COVID shot. After all, even 5% of vaccinated parents say they “definitely” won’t vaccinate their children before school begins and another 23% want to “wait and see” before making a decision.
It appears that longstanding myths and debunked claims about vaccines generally—and the COVID vaccine in particular—lie at the root of parents’ hesitancy, especially parents who believe the widely refuted claims that coronavirus vaccines’ efficacy is overblown by the media or that an immunization’s side effects can be worse than getting COVID-19 the disease itself. The latter is a widespread view among adults who haven’t received their own jabs.
But the trickle effect on how parents feel about the COVID vaccine for their kids, including some parents who are themselves vaccinated, highlights some niche concerns. Those include worries that a COVID vaccine could “negatively impact their child’s fertility in the future,” write the KFF study authors of adults with unvaccinated kids ages 12 to 17.
“Nearly three-quarters of parents of unvaccinated adolescents (73%) report being concerned that the vaccine may negatively impact their child’s fertility in the future, even though the CDC states there is ‘no evidence that any vaccines, including COVID-19 vaccines, cause female or male fertility problems,'” according to the study. And 88% of this group of parents are either “very” or “somewhat” concerned that COVID shots’ long-term effects on children are still unknown. Just shy of 80% are worried their kid might have to grapple with serious side effects from a coronavirus jab.
Parents who have been vaccinated themselves are somewhat less likely to say they have those same health anxieties. But 70% of immunized parents are still wary of serious COVID vaccine side effects for their kids, including 58% who have questions about a shot’s possible effect on future fertility in children. The prospect of forced vaccination without a parent’s permission is also common among those with schoolchildren.
So while 7% of vaccinated parents may plan on getting their young child or teen a COVID shot “right away” once available, the 23% in the “wait and see” crowd might require a lot more convincing, alongside the overwhelming share of unvaccinated adults who seem determined not to get their kid a shot at all.
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