For generations of most American families, getting kids vaccinated was just one thing to check off the back-to-school to-do list. But after the fierce battles over the Covid shots of the past two years, simmering resistance to blanket vaccination mandates in schools has increased dramatically. Now, According to a new survey released Friday by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 35% of parents oppose requiring children to receive routine vaccines to attend school.
All states and the District of Columbia require children to be immunized against measles, mumps, rubella, and other highly contagious deadly childhood diseases. (Most allow some limited exemptions.)
Throughout the pandemic, the Kaiser Foundation, a nonpartisan health care research organization, has published monthly reports on changing attitudes towards Covid vaccines. Surveys have shown a growing political divide on the issue, and the latest study says the divide now extends to routine childhood vaccinations.
Forty-four percent of adults who identify as Republican or lean that way said in the latest survey that parents should have the right to opt out of school vaccination mandates, up from 20% in a 2019 pre-pandemic poll. by the Pew Research Center. By contrast, 88% of adults who identify as or are leaning toward the Democrat-approved childhood vaccine needs, a slight increase from 86% in 2019.
The survey found that 28% of adults overall believed that parents should have the power to make decisions about school vaccines for their children, a position which in the 2019 Pew poll was not held. than by 16% of adults.
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The change in stance appears to be less a rejection of the beatings than a growing endorsement of the so-called parents’ rights movement. Indeed, 80% of parents said the benefits of measles, mumps and rubella vaccines outweighed the risks, down slightly from 83% in 2019.
“The topic of discussion that has been circulating is the concept of suppressing parental rights,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ committee on infectious diseases. “And when you put it that simply, it’s very appealing to a certain segment of the population. But what about the right to have your children protected at school against vaccine-preventable diseases? »
Still, Dr O’Leary said he wasn’t overly concerned that school vaccination mandates would be lifted, but that the growing adoption of parental rights could still slow compliance with vaccination schedules required by the State a schedule that has long been trusted by pediatricians.
“We know a lot of children missed their vaccines during the pandemic, not because they were refusing, but because for many reasons people weren’t going to the doctor,” he said. . “And we have a global drop in vaccination coverage. Now is not the time to consider rolling back these laws.
The latest survey was based on interviews with a nationally representative sample of 1,259 adults and was conducted from November 29 to December 8.
It showed disappointing uptake rates of the latest Covid booster, a “bivalent” vaccine that targets both the original coronavirus and the Omicron variant and has been available since September. Only four in 10 adults said they had received the booster or intended to do so. Among people aged 65 and over – the age group most at risk – around one in four said they had been too busy to get it or could not find the time to do so.
Even among adults who had received previous Covid vaccines, the survey found more than four in 10 said they felt they did not need this latest vaccine.
Only around a third of respondents said they were personally worried about getting very sick from Covid, although half expressed concern in general about rising Covid rates this winter. About two-thirds of black and Latino adults feared Covid rates, compared to about four in 10 white adults.
The survey also revealed that around half of parents feared their children would get sick this winter from Covid-19, influenza or RSV (respiratory syncytial virus), a sign that Covid-19 was normalizing from more and more in the public perception and joined the landscape of seasonal diseases.
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