Reply to Mandatory vaccines for teachers/staff and eligible students

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=jsteele][quote=Anonymous]In the context of discussing teacher and school workforce vaccinations, what is the goal of saying "well what about kids' vaccinations"?  Is it just a pure whataboutism?  Or am I missing something?

Yes, teachers should be vaccinated for public health, for the protection of children who can't be vaccinated, for the protection of their coworkers, and for smoother operating of schools during a pandemic.

Yes, kids who can be vaccinated should get vaccinated for public health, for the protection of children who can't be vaccinated, for the protection of people they are around, and for smoother operating of schools during a pandemic.

Yes, parents should be vaccinated for public health,...you get the point.

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This is a schools forum. As such, what we are discussing is covid transmission in schools. This thread has the title, "Mandatory vaccines for teachers/staff and eligible students". By mid-September, all teachers and staff will either be vaccinated or tested weekly. So, mission accomplished. But, what about the "eligible students" part of the subject line? A whole lot of posters in this thread want to ignore them and jump to blaming adults in Wards 7 and 8. The vaccination situation in those wards is not great, but for adults over 50 it is not horrible. For adults between 40 and 50, it is concerning, but again not horrible. For children between 12 and 17, it is horrible. Less than 10%. There are going to be a lot more of those unvaxxed 12-17 years olds in the schools then there are adults from those wards (and the adults will either be vaxxed or tested). This is not to blame the children, but simply to explain why blaming adults in those two wards is misplaced (that is, if your concern is the heath and safety of our school children).

If your point is that everyone who is eligible to be vaccinated should be vaccinated, I could not agree more. But, this discussion started with a poster explicitly focusing on adults in Wards 7 and 8. My point is only to say that for schools, it is the children of the wards -- and to some extend the children of other wards -- whose vaccination status is more concerning. You will never solve a problem if you do not correctly identify the problem. Those who are focusing on the adults of Ward 7 and 8 are not correctly identifying the problem.

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I read the lower rates of adult vaccination in Wards 7 and 8, as well as the very low rates of 12-17 vax in those wards, as a suggestion that [i]parents[/i] are less likely to vax in those wards.  So I don't care so much about rando adults that aren't around kids, I care about parents. Most transmission to kids has been via the home, and that's been true whether there is IPL or not.  So unvaccinated parents are indeed something we need to focus on if we value the safety of the school children too young to be vaccinated and the smoother operation of schools.  Add in that kids under a certain age don't have the ability to vax themselves even if they are over 12, and yeah, their parents are again a problem.  We can believe that unvaxxed parents are more likely to have unvaxxed kids.

If you look at parent-age (18-64, broadly) vax rates, Wards 7 and 8 are lagging a bit compare to the other wards (they are 30% versus the other wards are like 40-50%, if I remember correctly).  So yeah those wards are worse in that sense but I'd agree they aren't THAT much worse.  The unvaxxed kids rates in Wards 7 and 8 are WAY behind the other wards, though, which suggests more unvaxxed parents in those wards.  (Like, does a 10% kid vax rate mean that only 10% of parents are vaxxed?  I don't know.)

My personal stance on this is that there are probably a whole lot of unvaxxed parents in every ward (and unvaxxed 12+ kids), and that needs to be remedied.  There's probably a racist undercurrent to some people's focus on Wards 7 and 8, when you've still only got half of parent-age people (and kids) in other wards vaccinated.

Aside from a vax mandate for kids 12+ I'm not sure what to do.  I wonder how that would work politically in DC -- I think it wouldn't go over well, based on the racial dynamics of  covid vaccine hesistancy.[/quote]

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