More little kids are getting COVID. Why aren’t SLO County parents getting them vaccinated?
After nearly two years of homeschooling, Tracy Dauterman decided to send her children, 7-year-old Colton and 5-year-old Brady, to Winifred Pifer Elementary School in Paso Robles last month.
She also signed them up for weekend flag football and recreational soccer. Colton started taking a weekly art class. It’s a stark contrast to the family’s life before her sons were vaccinated for COVID-19.
And it wouldn’t have happened without the vaccine.
“I feel like it’s very important for them at this age, just for their social skills and learning how to work on a team, and a lot of that stuff we hadn’t been doing because I didn’t feel comfortable with them not being vaccinated,” Dauterman said.
Dauterman tried to get them involved in activities last summer but withdrew her sons from the class after learning the instructor would not be enforcing the indoor mask mandate.
Among San Luis Obispo County parents with children between the ages of 5 to 11 years, the Dauterman family is an exception to the norm.
“I would be shocked if anybody that I know locally, with the exception of maybe a handful of people, has their kids vaccinated,” Dauterman said.
Statistics from the county Public Health Department bear that out.
More than three-quarters of county parents have opted out or decided to take the “wait and see” approach when it comes to vaccinating elementary school-aged children for COVID-19.
“Our vaccination rate for those in the age group of 5 to 11 is only at 23%,” said Dr. Penny Borenstein, county health officer, citing local health data. “That is just really disturbing.”
Dr. Rene Bravo of Bravo Pediatrics in San Luis Obispo said that he was not too surprised to learn of the low vaccination rate.
“It confirmed what I thought was going on,” Bravo said.
His office has administered 701 patient doses for elementary school-aged children as of Wednesday, Bravo said.
More SLO County kids are catching the coronavirus
The vaccination rate for eligible children under 12 years in San Luis Obispo County is below the nationwide rate for this age group.
In the United States, roughly 28% of children between 5 and 11 years received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine as of Jan. 18, according to a data analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Local doctors say that vaccine hesitancy coupled with the spread of the highly contagious omicron variant has inundated local physicians with pediatric coronavirus cases.
Bravo said he has seen more children with COVID-19 in the past four weeks than he has in the past two years.
County data shows at least 26 local children have landed in the hospital with severe COVID-19 infection since the beginning of the pandemic — including 11 in the past month.
“Very few that I’ve seen that have gotten the coronavirus have been vaccinated,” Bravo said. “The omicron outbreaks here are largely in the unvaccinated populations.”
In October, the CDC announced that the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine was approved for children between the ages of 5 and 11.
A few weeks after that, Dauterman was at the pediatrician’s office for her youngest son’s five-year check-up when her physician enthusiastically recommended the COVID-19 shot.
Brady got his first vaccine in the series that day, and Colton got his shot a few days later at a county vaccination event. Aside from one day of arm soreness, both boys had no side effects and have managed to avoid contracting COVID-19 despite multiple close contact exposures since being vaccinated.
The COVID-19 vaccine’s endorsement by family pediatricians and authorization by leading scientific institutions was enough for some local families.
Anne, an Atascadero mother who asked to only be identified by her middle name, said she was a little nervous about vaccinating her 5-year-old daughter but decided to trust the assessment of the experts. She also has a 3-year-old son who isn’t yet eligible for the vaccine.
“It was mostly just as long as the FDA and the CDC is recommending it, I’m going to follow the recommendation,” Anne said. “It’s the only way I can feel sane. Like I’m doing something to protect them.”
Risk of serious side effects from the COVID-19 vaccine is low
Bravo said that many parents of unvaccinated children say they don’t believe contracting COVID-19 is very serious for young children or that they are more concerned about possible lasting effects of the vaccine.
“I have more concerns about the long-term effects of COVID than any sort of very obscure, very rare possibility of any long-term vaccine effects,” Bravo said.
The CDC said that serious side effects after a COVID-19 vaccine are extremely rare and recommends that everyone eligible, including elementary school-aged children, get the coronavirus vaccine.
Dauterman said that at first, she was a little hesitant about whether to vaccinate her children.
“There’s a lot of fear-mongering going around online,” she said. “There’s a big scare about myocarditis, which seems to be an incredibly rare event.”
The CDC said myocarditis, which refers to inflammation of the heart muscle, is an extremely unusual side effect experienced by some children and adolescents who received the COVID-19 vaccine. It is a symptom that the majority of children will recover from, the CDC said.
Concerns about the potential for myocarditis or unknown, long-term side effects from the COVID-19 vaccine are overblown compared to the risks of COVID-19 infection, health experts say.
Typically any adverse event after a vaccine appears in the first three or four weeks after the dose is administered, not three or four years later, Bravo said.
“I think that’s an obscure argument that’s always brought out by the anti-vax group that really is not borne out by the science,” he said.
Bravo and Borenstein are perplexed as to why local parents are more concerned about COVID-19 vaccine side effects than actual COVID-19 infection.
“Why would you put your child at risk for even the long-term consequences or the short-term, rare consequences of landing in the hospital and potentially even dying from a disease when it is just absolutely preventable for a healthy young person to get a vaccine?” Borenstein said.
It’s not as though parents are rejecting vaccinations as a general rule.
In fact, Borenstein said that uptake for immunizations to protect against vaccine-preventable diseases like measles, mumps, pneumonia and tetanus is close to 95% in San Luis Obispo County.
“There’s absolutely no reason for this disparity for this disease versus other diseases,” she said.
Misinformation about COVID-19 is rampant in SLO County, parents say
Parents interviewed for this article said the low vaccination rate and poor adherence to masking guidelines in parts of San Luis Obispo County are the key reasons why they opted to vaccinate their children.
And social media isn’t helping matters.
Several local Facebook groups where the COVID-19 vaccine is discussed typically contain a fair amount of misinformation, according to local parents.
“It definitely gets talked about online,” Dauterman said.
“There’s a lot of people that will say like, ‘Oh, I like to listen to all sides,’” Dauterman said. “Well, not all sides should be listened to. Misinformation isn’t a side. It’s just wrong.”
Borenstein said any parents who are looking for information about the safety and efficacy of pediatric COVID-19 vaccines should ask their pediatrician before they turn to the internet or social media for medical guidance.
Bravo agreed.
“I always tell folks that are hesitant about vaccines, remember people giving you information are not accountable to you. I am,” Bravo said. “The people on the internet are the people with their own biased agendas who, for whatever reason, are anti-science or anti-vaccine. They’re not accountable to you for the decisions that are made in this room.”
Anne said the lack of adherence to public health guidelines such as social distancing and mask-wearing is one of the reasons why she decided to vaccinate her 5-year-old daughter.
“I felt like it was my only way to protect her ... to at least have her vaccinated,” she said.
Dauterman said that she had considered sending her children back to class at the beginning of the school year, before they were vaccinated, but decided against it after hearing about planned anti-mask protests. She read on Facebook that some parents were going to send kids to school without masks or in mesh, non-protective masks.
“It just filled me with concern and made me feel like the community here doesn’t care about one another,” she said.
There’s also been a lot of online chatter about the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine versus immunity conferred through infection.
A common misconception held by parents is that children who contract COVID-19 and recover no longer need to get the COVID-19 vaccine because their immune systems fought off the infection once, Bravo said.
“I don’t want people to get the impression that once you have the coronavirus then you’ll never have it again, because I am actually also seeing reinfection,” Bravo said. “I’m seeing kids that have had delta several months back come down with the omicron. So they’re getting it again.”
Because COVID-19 vaccine-driven immunity isn’t proving to be long-lasting — that’s why doctors have recommended boosters — it’s best to stay up-to-date on your vaccinations to protect against new variants.
“I tell folks, don’t get the coronavirus if you don’t have to,” Bravo said.
Parents of kids under 5 wait for news of vaccine approvals
While parents of elementary school kids have a choice regarding vaccination, those with kids under 5 are still in a waiting game.
Amythest Ehrler of Arroyo Grande was a nurse for 12 years before she stopped working due to a medical condition that left her immunocompromised. Ehrler is vaccinated and boosted and so is the rest of her family.
But when it comes to giving her 4-year-old son, Jackson, the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine series, she is reticent.
“We are very pro this vaccine. We’re just very hesitant to give the vaccine to my 4-year-old,” Ehrler said.
The root of her hesitation lies in the pharmaceutical company’s Dec. 17 announcement that the child-sized doses of the two-shot vaccine series failed to generate the expected immune response in children between 2 and under 5. This test is referred to as a “non-inferiority test” in the news release.
In the news release, Pfizer said it planned to add a third dose to the vaccine series for this age group and will continue to measure immune response in the trials. If the immune response is sufficient, the company will apply for emergency use authorization (EUA) through the Food and Drug Administration.
“For my 4-year-old, if the shot was approved tomorrow, I wouldn’t give the shot, because it hasn’t passed that non-inferiority test, because it hasn’t been proven that the test works for my kid’s age group.
“But if they give me the results that it is passing that non-inferiority test, I give the shot,” Ehrler said.
The early trials show no safety concerns for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Ehrler said she does not have worries about the vaccines’ safety. She’s just waiting for results of the non-inferiority test.
In light of the omicron surge and its impacts on pediatric hospitalizations, the FDA asked Pfizer to apply for the EUA under the three-shot series for this age group. The data will be reviewed in a virtual meeting on Feb. 15, according to a news release from the FDA.
When the time comes and a vaccine is approved for children in Jackson’s age group, Ehrler said she will consult her doctor and her son’s pediatrician for guidance.
As for what to do with her 3-year-old son, Anne said she’s thinking about signing up for a pediatric clinical trial in the hopes of helping him access the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine sooner.
“I want them vaccinated because that’s the only thing I can do, right?” she said.
Ultimately, public health experts and local doctors said their main goal is to protect the safety and well-being of San Luis Obispo County residents, including some of the smallest and most fragile.
“We’re not carrying any sort of control agenda,” Bravo said. “We’re just trying to keep people healthy and protect the vulnerable. It’s just that simple.”
