More than a decade before the coronavirus pandemic, I began researching how parents decide to reject recommended vaccines for their children. Despite the common assumption that these parents are ignorant or anti-science, I found that most parents who reject some or all vaccines work hard to weigh their understanding of the risk of the disease against their understanding of the risks of the vaccines and possible benefits of vaccination.
Despite half of parents expressing fear of infection, few parents intend to vaccinate their children against covid. Almost 40 percent of children between 5-11 years are vaccinated (a notable doubling of the number from November), while fewer than 20 percent of parents of children under the age of 5 years express an intent to immunize their children against covid when a vaccine is authorized. How, then, can we understand why almost 93 percent of children are fully vaccinated against polio, a disease not seen in the U.S. since 1993, but fewer than one-third of parents of young children want a vaccine against a virus in wide circulation?
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Any successful vaccine campaign for children will have to address parents’ questions and concerns, and show that the vaccine, for which there is limited trial data, is effective in preventing serious illness and safe for young children. There is, so far, little information about how well the vaccine will prevent infection in young children or how long immunity will last.