For generations of most American families, getting kids vaccinated was just something to check off the list of back-to-school chores. But after the fierce battle over Covid injections over the past two years, simmering resistance to general school vaccination mandates has grown significantly. Utilities, 35 percent of parents oppose requiring children to receive routine vaccinations to attend school, according to a new survey released Friday by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
All states and the District of Columbia require children to be vaccinated against measles, mumps, rubella and other highly contagious, deadly childhood diseases. (Most allow a few limited exceptions.)
Throughout the pandemic, the Kaiser Foundation, an impartial healthcare research organization, has released monthly reports on changing attitudes towards Covid vaccines. The surveys have shown a growing political division on the issue, and the latest study indicates that the division 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 vaccinations, up from 20 percent in a 2019 prepandemic poll conducted by the National Health Service. Pew Research Center. In contrast, 88 percent of adults who identified as or thin endorsed childhood vaccination requirements, up slightly from 86 percent in 2019.
The survey found that overall, 28 percent of adults believed parents should have the authority to make school vaccine decisions for their children, a position held by only 16 percent of adults in the 2019 Pew poll.
Read more about the coronavirus pandemic
- Free home tests: With the number of cases rising, the Biden administration has restarted a program that has delivered hundreds of millions of tests through the postal service.
- Updated recordings: The Food and Drug Administration has expanded eligibility for the updated coronavirus boosters to children as young as 6 months old.
- Infection: Like a zombie in a horror movie, the coronavirus can persist long after death in the bodies of infected patients and even spread to others, according to two startling studies.
- Pregnant woman: While studies have shown the Covid vaccine to be safe for expectant women, many have avoided the injections, unaware of the risks the virus poses.
The shift in positions seems less about dismissing the shots than about growing support for the so-called parental rights movement. Indeed, 80 percent of parents said the benefits of measles, mumps and rubella vaccines outweighed the risks, down slightly from 83 percent in 2019.
“The talking point that has spread is the concept of taking away parents’ rights,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ committee on infectious diseases. “And when you put it that simply, it is very attractive to a certain segment of the population. But what about the right to protect your children at school against vaccine-preventable diseases?”
Still, said Dr. O’Leary that he wasn’t too concerned that school vaccination mandates would be lifted, but that the growing embrace of parents’ rights could further delay compliance with state-mandated vaccination schedules, a timeline long endorsed by pediatricians.
“We know that many children have missed their vaccines during the pandemic, not because they refused, but because people did not go to the doctor for many reasons,” he said. “And we have a global dip in vaccine coverage. So now is not the time to consider a rollback of these laws.”
The latest study was based on interviews with a nationally representative sample of 1,259 adults and was conducted from November 29 through December 8.
It showed disappointing shot rates of the latest Covid booster, a “bivalent” shot targeting both the original coronavirus and the Omicron variant that has been available since September. Only four in ten adults said they had received the booster or were planning to do so. Of those over 65 — the age group most at risk — about one in four said they’d been too busy to get it or couldn’t find the time.
Even among adults who had received previous Covid vaccines, the survey found that more than four in 10 said they felt they didn’t need this last shot.
Only about a third of respondents said they were personally afraid of becoming very ill from Covid, although half were generally concerned about the rising numbers of Covid this winter. About two-thirds of black and Latino adults were worried about the Covid numbers, compared to about four in 10 white adults.
The survey also found that about half of parents were concerned that their children could get sick this winter with Covid-19, the flu or RSV (respiratory syncytial virus), a sign that Covid-19 was becoming increasingly normalized in the public’s perception and joined the landscape of seasonal diseases.