I am vaccinated. Moderna, double shots. My husband is vaccinated. In fact my entire family is vaccinated.
But I am going to reveal something that will get me thrown out of whatever polite society social circles that still welcome me. I was hesitant before getting Moderna. I am almost thirty seven years old, I got the vaccine while I was still breastfeeding and my husband and I are, God willing, planning on having more children in the near future. And I was worried about potential impacts on fertility. I was worried about being of birthing age, and had the same concerns expressed by millions of women.
Ultimately, I credit Dr. Ashish Jha, the Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, for helping me make my own personal decision about the vaccine. His social media and many interviews are measured, respectful and ultimately considerate of normal anxieties many women of birthing age have. When I had the opportunity to interview him, he didn’t treat me like I was an idiot or was wearing a tin-foil hat when I asked questions. For whatever it is worth, I believe there would be a lot less politicization and anxiety if he were in charge of NIH instead of Dr. Fauci, but I digress.
So my husband and I ultimately drove from our home in the DC Beltway to George Mason University after signing up online for a large vaccination event held on campus. I was nervous driving there. Ultimately Ben and I decided that the risk of a new vaccine was lower than the risks of getting COVID-19.
California Governor Gavin Newsom (pictured) said last week that California would require students to be vaccinated against COVID-19 from ages K-12, once it is FDA approved. Presumably, he will want over-fives jabbed as soon as the FDA give the OK. And he won’t be the only Blue State governor going down that road
Parents can opt their children out of inoculation based on personal beliefs but Newsom has not defined the criteria for obtaining those exemptions, leaving the task to state public health officials. It’s nebulous and confusing at best. Pictured is masked young children at a California elementary school in August
We have a baby, and I can’t take the same kinds of risks I once could. I am comfortable with my decision and grateful to re-enter society after what was a very long, lonely and dark year of social distancing and not seeing friends and family (as it was for all of us). And I’m grateful that, to date, there is no scientific data, research or recorded events that in any way make me fear this vaccine will impact my fertility.
I would urge any adult to do the same unless their doctor gives them a good medical reason not to.
I credit Dr. Ashish Jha, (pictured) the Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, for helping me make my own personal decision about the vaccine. His social media and many interviews are measured, respectful and ultimately considerate of normal anxieties many women of birthing age have
All of that being said, the vaccine I took is still experimental, developed in months, not years, and still not FDA approved. While I feel confident in my choice to get vaccinated, only a fool would compare this vaccine to the long-used, tested vaccines recommended for our children.
But as of this moment, Pfizer is asking the F.D.A. to authorize it’s COVID-19 vaccine for children ages five to eleven. The agency has promised to move quickly and has a meeting scheduled for the end of the month. California Governor Gavin Newsom said last week that California would require students to be vaccinated against COVID-19 from ages K-12, once it is FDA approved. Presumably, he will want over-fives jabbed as soon as the FDA give the OK.
And he won’t be the only Blue State governor going down that road.
For Democrats, vaccines for all, whatever the circumstances, have become an article of faith and ideological purity test all rolled into one.
Parents can opt their children out of inoculation based on personal beliefs but Newsom has not defined the criteria for obtaining those exemptions, leaving the task to state public health officials. It’s nebulous and confusing at best.
My daughter Liberty has just turned one, she is vaccinated with all of the normal vaccines children get in the first year of life in the United States of America. I didn’t hesitate to vaccinate her because I believe in science, and I really like, trust and respect her pediatrician. I also have heard horror stories from my friends in places like California and Brooklyn where there are outbreaks of things like whooping cough and measles at their children’s school. I am a hardcore conservative Republican, not some hippie who believes in junk science on mommy Facebook groups in Malibu.
But if Liberty, were a few years older, I would not be comfortable being forced to give her an experimental vaccine that has not been F.D.A. approved to protect against a virus that, thank God, barely impacts children.
In the UK their vaccine watchdog DECLINED to recommend vaccines for even over-15s because they said the benefits were ‘marginal’ for the children concerned.
They acknowledged that the only real medical justification for giving children Covid shots is to protect the wider community from the virus. That is, their parents, grandparents and teachers – many of whom, in the last category, don’t want to take the vaccine themselves.
Yet we don’t make the flu vaccine compulsory for children, despite the fact that it is at least as lethal for kids.
For whatever it is worth, I believe there would be a lot less politicization and anxiety if Dr. Ashish Jha were in charge of NIH instead of Dr. Fauci (pictured) but I digress
In the UK their vaccine watchdog DECLINED to recommend vaccines for even over-15s because they said the benefits were ‘marginal’ for the children concerned. They acknowledged that the only real medical justification for giving children Covid shots is to protect the wider community from the virus. That is, their parents, grandparents and teachers – many of whom, in the last category, don’t want to take the vaccine themselves. A 12-year-old boy receives the Pfizer vaccine in August before the school year started
I can already feel the pitchforks out for me writing this. Under normal circumstances, such as being forced to get vaccines for school at a young age, the vaccines in question have been tested for decades and took time before they became a requirement for school admission.
This vaccine is not the same. On top of everything else, I do not believe it is the government’s, or at the very least, the sleaze bucket-du-jour Governor Gavin Newsom’s, role to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do with my child. He couldn’t even follow his own Covid mandates during lockdowns without going to a group dinner at one of the most expensive restaurants in the world so why should I trust him with this?
Conservatives by nature, distrust the government. The entire point of our ideology is to limit the power of government only to what is necessary to maintain our Republic, not to create draconian overlords with the power to rule over every aspect of our lives. If there is anything I have learned over the past two years it is that if you give the government an inch, it will take one hundred miles and more and then never give it back.
Parents, and researchers, need more time. If God forbid there was some side effect that impacted children we are unaware of because this was rushed, the little remaining trust Americans have in our institutions would be lost.
There would be nothing short of bedlam. This is not a virus that is killing or even seriously threatening children, a few vanishingly-rare tragedies apart. And according to a British study in Nature recently, about half of them had serious pre-existing conditions.
So I just don’t believe we should be forcing this on families with young children.
For now, I am lucky, my daughter is only one, so maybe we should visit California before the Governor requires her to get vaccinated in order to go to a children’s park.