Today, Explained - Are you vaxxed, fellow kids?

Episode Date: December 8, 2021

Today, Explained returns to Cramer Hill Elementary School to explore the challenges of vaccinating children against Covid-19. Today’s show was reported by Miles Bryan, edited by Matt Collette and Jillian Weinberger, engineered by Efim Shapiro, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. It's Today Explained. I'm Sean Ramos-Firm. It's December. The holidays are coming up. Omicron is out there. People are getting boosters. And kids, kids are finally getting their shots.

I was worried about the middle, not about the people that said that it was about, like, you gotta be a zombie or a lot of things. And I was like, that's a lie. That's Amber Villar, 12 years old, 7th grade. You got to be a zombie or a lot of things. And I was like, that's a lie. That's Amber Villar, 12 years old, seventh grade. And she's out here arguing with anti-vaxxers, too. If you're going to be a zombie, that's OK, because you're going to live. Amber goes to Kramer Hill Elementary in Camden, New Jersey.

A few months ago, we sent Today Explained producer Miles Bryan there to report on the return to school. And he recently went back to report on how kids are getting vaccinated. Miles, remind us where we left off with Kramer Hill. Right. Our first episode on Kramer Hill came out in October. And it was about how difficult it was for school staff to balance making up learning loss and keeping kids safe. And you might remember the episode closed on the school's principal talking about how she thought they're only really going to get back to something approaching normal when all of the kids were able to get vaxxed. I really hope that by November, we're feeling at like some plateau and like some predictable cadence, because the like

unpredictability is a roller coaster that I'm like ready to get off. Now that you're rolling the tape, I do remember that. But vaccines for 5 to 11 year olds were not approved at the time we ran that episode. That happened only in early November. You returned to Kramer Hill just a few days ago. How are things looking? Are they normal-ish? The short answer is no, they're not looking normal.

The number of COVID cases there and the disruption caused by those cases, those have both declined since August and September. But unfortunately, the pandemic is still very much present at Kramer Hill. And in part, that's because the principal's goal of having most of those kids vaccinated has not happened yet. The principal figures about 20 percent of the middle schoolers have gotten the shot, but less than 10 percent of the 5 to 11 year olds have. And getting those kids signed up for the vaccine is a slow and complicated process that involves winning over nervous parents. Tell me more. How is the school trying to win over nervous parents? Well, Sean, they're hosting vaccine clinics. Oh. Having a vaccine clinic for kids during school hours has been a go-to move for school districts across the country.

New York City held vaccine clinics at all of its 1,000-plus elementary schools in November. Kramer Hill held its first vaccine clinic in November, too. That was for kids 12 and up, and it's where I met Amber. Kramer Hill's first vaccine clinic for 5- to 11-year-olds was last Friday. The school closed off a conference room for the vaccinations. A local pharmacy administered the shots. There was toys for the kids who got vaxxed, football, science kits, baby dolls. Interested parents were able to get vaccinated, too.

They got $25 gift cards. Gift cards to where? I think the gift cards were just They got $25 gift cards. Gift cards to where? I think the gift cards were just those Visa gift cards to anywhere. Gift cards to anywhere. I love it. I love it. Okay, as you were. A bunch of families came through on Friday, but I focused on one family, Veronica Ramirez and her children, Inez, Ivalice, and Hector.

Check one, two, three, four, five. Let me have your names here. My name is Hector, and we will be talking about my universe. Hector sounds very charming, and he sounds like he's probably in that five to 11 age group. Yes, Hector is in that crucial age group. He is eight years old. He's in the third grade at Kramer Hill. And just to paint you a little picture, Sean, he loves Squid Game. What? Wait, wait, wait, wait. What is up with parents showing their kids Squid Game? My buddy Josh came over on Halloween and he was dressed up as in a Squid Game costume. And all these like children, actual children were walking by being like, yo, Squid Game, Squid Game, what's up?

And I was like, why are these kids watching Squid Game? Well, as I was about to tell you hector does not watch squid game it is too violent for him but he mostly consumes it through listening to the show's soundtrack on youtube wow yeah talented performer right here i'm so excited for hector to watch Squid Game when he's 40 years old yeah hopefully he wasn't as he won't be as disappointed as I was Hector was stoked about me interviewing him because he wanted to practice for his future

career of being a YouTuber that is it for the day folks I don't know if you caught that, but he said, and cut. He did that to close all of our scenes. Wow. I hope this feature on our podcast is like a great start to his career as a YouTuber. How is Hector feeling about getting the shot? Hector was nervous. I am terrified of needles.

But you know, Sean, he figured it was going to be worth it. Hector does not want to lose his sense of smell or taste. And he really doesn't want to have to quarantine. The Kramer Hill vaccinated kids that come into close contact with someone who has COVID are allowed to come back to school. But unvaccinated kids have to stay home for two weeks. The reason why I want to take this is so I don't have to stay away from my friends, my teachers, or my BFFs.

Ultimately, though, Hector's getting the vaccine for the same reason any kid does anything other than eat candy or listen to Squid Game music on YouTube. His mom told him to. Nice. I mean, this must be music to the ears of, like, the school's teachers and administrators?

It absolutely is. You probably remember Kramer Hill principal Jesse Gismondi. Why are we eating ice cream for breakfast, love? Just a question. Early 30s, very poised, wears a lot of jumpsuits. How does she feel about Squid Game? You know, I don't know. I haven't asked her, but I don't get the sense she's watching a lot of TV. She's one of these people that's just like fantastically dedicated to her job. And she told us in our last Kramer Hill episode that when school started, you know, she had this huge task ahead of her because a lot of kids who were already struggling before the pandemic had fallen multiple grades behind.

And, you know, that was true nationally as well. The most vulnerable kids had been hit hardest by a year and a half of mostly remote learning. But the good news is that most of those kids at Kramer Hill have made up a ton of ground since the school year started. They may not be at grade level, but now they're only maybe one grade behind instead of two or three. So what we're seeing is that kids, like, bounce back. Well, that's great news. Does she know why kids are just bouncing back?

Yeah, she has a pretty strong sense that it's due to one reason in particular, and this should probably not be surprising to anyone, but it's that kids are back in the classroom. Being surrounded by four walls, using a pencil and paper to respond and do arithmetic, or even like write out an essay and then, you know, answer it and type it up is a great step. You also are in an encouraging space that is quiet and conducive to learning. And you're able to really like be your best academic self. And vaccination is key to keeping this momentum going. Every time a kid gets sick and they and their close contacts have to go home and quarantine

for two weeks, they miss a ton. And unfortunately, that does continue to happen. The whole school had to shut down for two days the week of Thanksgiving because they had so many COVID cases. Wow. OK, so if this weren't already high stakes, it certainly is after you have to shut down the school for two days the week of Thanksgiving because of rampant COVID cases. How is Principal Gizmondi talking to parents about getting kids vaccinated? You know, Kramer Hill does not actually track the vaccine status of kids or their parents. But it comes up when Gizmondi's calling parents to tell them their kid was exposed to COVID.

The relief in parents' voices when I call them and say, oh, the big brother is vaccinated, they don't need to stay home. Or like, I'll go a step further and I'll say to a parent, like, if they were vaccinated, they wouldn't have to do this as a factual piece of information that maybe would be helpful to them. So she's maybe not making a super aggressive argument with those parents trying to convince them to get vaccinated, but she does a lot of gentle nudging. And how was that received by the parents? Did you talk to any Kramer Hill parents about this? I did. I did get to talk to a Kramer Hill parent. It was actually Hector's mom, Veronica.

Oh, yeah. Veronica's 44. She works for the Camden City Schools. And she showed up at Kramer Hill on Friday because she was actually getting her first COVID-19 vaccine as well. Why was she waiting so long? Yeah, I asked her that. And, you know, she said she was nervous.

She was still nervous on Friday morning. I don't like needles and just worried about the side effects. Remember early on when like, are people going to be afraid of needles was sort of like a joke reason to not get the vaccine. I feel like it's the underrated reason. People really hate needles. Children hate needles. Adults hate needles. Veronica hates needles. Veronica doesn't like needles. And then she also talked about the side effects. And the side effects she was referring to are the actual documented COVID-19 vaccine side effects, getting a fever or body aches and getting laid out for a day or more. Veronica told me she can't really afford to get sick ever. I was just worried about my health because, you know, my three kids, you know, I'm a single mother.

So I would be, you know, afraid of who would be there to take care of them. The family actually already had COVID back in April. Fortunately, nobody got really sick, but it was still a massive inconvenience. But even so, Veronica was also a little skeptical of the vaccine's effectiveness. She mentioned to me seeing people on the news who died of COVID after being vaccinated. And I guess I should point out here that the COVID vaccines are very protective against serious illness. Okay, so what finally pushed Veronica over the edge, though? What made her come to Kramer Hill on Friday and get the shot at long last? Yeah, I was super curious about that, too. After all of these months, why do it that day? Why do it on Friday? And Veronica told me it wasn't one big thing so much as a bunch of things. The new COVID variant, Omicron, that definitely freaked her out. And she's also seen some people in her community get really sick with COVID.

I had a good experience. And finally, and maybe this is the most important part, the setting was right. You know, Veronica loves and trusts Kramer Hill. So the opportunity to get vaccinated there, that was really meaningful for her. That's what led her to want to get vaccinated on Friday and to sign up her three kids. I don't have to go take them to a drive-through, unfamiliar place to them.

You know, they're here at their own school. They feel comfortable. I think that's the best idea any school could have. And that's actually not all of it. Veronica's mom, Juana, also showed up. She was getting her second shot. She got her first one at Kramer Hill in November. Nice. You know, it's sort of refreshing to hear that people can still be convinced. I think so much of the antagonism on this issue has created this sort of binary in our minds of people who are like waiting in line for

a booster, can't wait to get, wait to get their third shot versus people who are just extremely anti-vax and refusing to ever get the shot. But there are people who are still out there waiting to be convinced, right? Yeah. I was thinking about the same things after spending time with Veronica and her family. She's someone who very much believes in COVID. She's careful. She's worried about it. But she was also wary about the vaccines. And that's actually a common sentiment, especially for parents. A Kaiser Health News survey from October found only about a quarter of parents wanted to get their kids vaccinated right away. Many of them have adopted a wait-and-see

approach. Veronica's path to getting her and her kids vaccinated involved waiting and seeing other people take the vaccine and a trusted messenger in her kids' school. So, you know, the lessons of her experience, it seems to me, is that school administrators and officials hoping to get kids vaccinated will need a lot of time and patience and to accept the fact that there's no one size fits all approach. Okay. I like that for Veronica, but let's talk about the kids again. They're the reason for this season. Her kid, Hector, hates needles.

How did it go for the young filmmakers? Yeah, Hector and his sisters and his mom and his grandma, they all got vaccinated together in this little conference room in Kramer Hill. They very kindly let me hang out and record it. Hector was nervous. He was holding this stuffed doll. It was Hermione from Harry Potter. I'm not ready for this, but I had to. So I'm squeezing this doll so hard. But the whole thing, you know, it was over before it even began. It took about five minutes for the

whole family to get vaccinated. Afterwards, kids got stickers and toys, and the adults got those $25 gift cards. The Visa ones that go anywhere. The Visa ones that go anywhere. Do you have any, you know, message to other families that have been thinking about it but haven't quite committed to it yet? I guess, you know, it's okay to feel nervous, but it's better and safe for your family.

Even Hector said, in the end, it wasn't so bad. I feel okay, but I don't like needles. But you did it. Yep. And cut. Cut. About 80 children and parents got vaccinated last Friday at Kramer Hill. Most of those were day of signups and walk-ins.

The combination of the toy and the gift card giveaways, the inconvenience of having to keep kids home for quarantine, and the trust that many in the community seemed to have for Kramer Hill ended up being enough to convince a lot of parents to get themselves and their kids vaxxed. Gizmondi, the principal, says she's hoping to hold a similar vaccine clinic at the school every month through the end of the school year. If that rate continues for the next seven months

of our school year until June, by next school year, we'll have above 75% of our student population vaccinated, which combined with our staff rates would make it a place where herd immunity exists. We got to do a message from our sponsor, but once we get back, we're going to talk about how vaccinating kids looks across the rest of the country. It's Today Explained.

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Anya Kamenetz, education reporter at NPR. We just heard about one school's uphill battle to get its kids vaccinated. How does that story Miles brought us stack up with the rest of the country? So the latest data I've seen from the CDC says about 17% of 5 to 11 year olds have gotten at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine. Of course, that's going to vary widely by location. Vermont is way up there around 45%. And Mississippi is more like 4%. Those numbers seem low, obviously. Is it just because we only recently authorized vaccines for kids? Or is there something else going on here? You know, I think the timeline's part of it. I think there's been a lot of conversation about

how COVID is less dangerous for children, which is true. However, you know, you also have to hold in your head that the vaccine is much less dangerous than getting COVID. However, you know, you also have to hold in your head that the vaccine is much less dangerous than getting COVID. So, you know, there's really no reason not to get the vaccine from a risk perspective. But specifically for kids, this vaccine rollout is coming at a time when the anti-vaccination movement is stronger than it's been in many decades. President Biden has ordered employers to make sure workers are vaccinated, though, you know, courts are now holding that up. Is there a kids mandate on the table anywhere? There is, and it takes a couple of different forms.

San Francisco, as well as most recently New York City, have decided to include children 5 to 11 in their vaccine mandate, which is for kind of like voluntary indoor activities. So if you want to sit inside a restaurant, you might go to a gym, an entertainment venue like a concert or a Broadway show, you need to show your vaccine card, your vaccine pass, and that's now been adopted for children as well. This is something that's going to keep kids safe and families safe. Go get your child vaccinated. So long as they've gotten that first dose by December 14th, they can continue to participate, indoor dining, entertainment, all these great things. The school vaccine mandate is really different because kids are required by law to go to school, right? So in California, Governor Gavin Newsom kind of went out ahead and ordering the COVID-19 vaccine be on the list of required vaccines for every school kid once it gets final approval from the FDA.

We want to end this pandemic. We are all exhausted by it. And the purpose of this is to continue to lead in that space. LAUSD, San Diego public schools have also passed their own COVID vaccine mandates for kids. There's also kind of a softer way of introducing this. So when you look at like the indoor vaccine mandate, that's like, in theory, this is a voluntary activity, right? You don't have to go to a restaurant. Similarly, across many different states, they are putting in vaccine mandates for school athletes. So you don't have to play sports, but if you want to play sports, you need to get your vaccine. And this is kind of a way to start the ball rolling.

I have also heard school leaders say, you know, the football players are admired by other students. And so if they get their vaccine, maybe this will start a trend. Clear eyes. Vaccinated. Can't lose. Clear eyes. Vaccinated. Can't lose. Clear eyes. Vaccinated.

Can't lose. Clear eyes. Vaccinated. Can't lose. But of course, these mandates for kids are getting pushback. Yes, they are. There are organized groups that are against vaccine mandates, especially for kids. Parents gathered outside LAUSD's district office today

to let administrators know how they feel about the mandate. There are protests. There have been lawsuits. We have to fight back. We have to stand up for our children. We have to stand up for our rights. Are there science-based reasons to be hesitant about mandating vaccines for kids? Obviously, the reason these vaccines weren't authorized for kids is because they were spending more time to make sure they'd be safe. One of the reasons it took longer to get the data back for kids was that actually serious complications of COVID are so rare in children

that it took longer. You kind of needed to look at more kids over more time to even establish the efficacy of the vaccine, if that makes sense, because there were so few kids, even who weren't getting the vaccine, who were getting hospitalized or having bad outcomes. So, you know, if you looked very narrowly only at the risk to children themselves, some would argue they would rather kind of take their chances without the shot. That's obviously not what the CDC says. They say, you know, the shot is way safer than the chance of getting COVID. And there's also a reason that some authorities are saying we shouldn't mandate a vaccine that hasn't been fully approved by the FDA. That's still under emergency use authorization.

But obviously making kids get vaccinated to go to school is not a new idea, right? Is there any recent precedent for a vaccine mandate? Yeah, most recently. And, you know, you may not know this if you've been out of school for a few years, the chickenpox vaccine. Oh. Most kids got chickenpox

when they were younger, if you were born in the 80s or even the 90s. I remember. Arthur has polka dots. Most people are fine. Some people were not fine. However,

there is a chickenpox vaccine and it became mandatory in most states by 2006. And now there's no chickenpox. They don't get the chickenpox anymore in school? It's plummeted, plummeted more than 90%. However, that is kind of our last success story in the realm of requiring vaccines and wiping out infectious diseases. Were there other like attempts? Yeah, there's been the flu shot. There's been HPV, human papillomavirus, and the rotavirus vaccine.

But none of those have managed to get mandated in more than a handful of states. And why is that? Well, as you may have heard, you know, in the last 20 years or so, a really powerful kind of form of anti-vaccination movement has risen across the country, right? And specifically, there was this retracted paper by a discredited scientist with financial ties about vaccines and autism, and specifically the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine and autism. And this kind of took hold in the public imagination. There were all these emotional

stories. There's so many parents and kids with autism who were looking for answers, looking for remedies. And there's this very powerful movement that's grown up with social media. So we opened Facebook. Here I typed in the word vaccinations in the search bar. We can see clearly here one of the top results is vaccines cause autism. We know that this has been debunked, but it's something that just won't go away. And as a result, there's just like more anti-vaccine sentiment than there's been in a really long time, almost since the turn of the century. Facing those headwinds, it was very hard for states to institute new mandates in the last 10, 15 years or so.

Have vaccine exemptions played a role in these other shots? Yes, this is really interesting. So basically, like I mentioned, there's always been sort of people against vaccines. And most of the time, authorities have allowed for exemptions for people, whether it's for religious purposes or just personal belief exemptions.

They're a little bit of a pressure valve in the system. So like if you have a mandate, but then people who are really, really motivated can kind of cop out from the mandate, then it kind of works out okay because herd immunity is strong enough to cover those folks who don't want to get vaccinated. What happened with the really virulent, you would say, anti-vaccination movement in the last 10 years or so, so many people started taking exemptions that we started to have outbreaks,

right? Measles outbreaks. Measles was virtually eliminated from the U.S. a decade ago, so we were surprised to hear that measles infected at least 19 people who visited Disney theme parks in California. New York City has declared a public health emergency in an effort to combat a growing measles outbreak. City health officials say there have been 285 confirmed measles cases in Brooklyn and Queens since September. Most were members of the Orthodox Jewish community. The only way to stop this outbreak is to ensure that those who have not been vaccinated get the vaccine. And so New York and California said, no more exemptions. Except if it's a medical thing, you know, that rarely happens. But we're not going to let you just say,

it's because of my beliefs that I don't want to get my kid vaccinated. So what's interesting now with the COVID vaccines is that some legal scholars I talk to who are tracking these things, are tracking legal challenges to COVID mandates around employees and other organizations. They're concerned that with this particular Supreme Court, and specifically when Amy Coney Barrett came onto the court, there's been decisions that would suggest that if a vaccine mandate case gets to the Supreme Court, that they're going to uphold a federal mandate for religious exemptions. What that means is it's not going to be up to the Supreme Court that they're going to uphold a federal mandate for religious exemptions.

What that means is it's not going to be up to the states anymore. Everybody's going to have to allow religious exemptions. And that opens the door in such a way that it makes the mandates almost useless because if enough people are motivated and organized to take the exemptions from the mandates, it's not going to be a mandate anymore. You can't use the mandate in the powerful way that it's been used in the past to kind of force people into herd immunity. It sounds like all signs are pointing to these vaccine mandates for kids in schools failing.

Does it look sort of likely to fail? School vaccine mandates have stood since 1922. There's a very specific Supreme Court ruling that says, yeah, these are constitutional. It is a public health measure. The public health should overtop any concern for personal liberty in this particular case. Okay, so there's very strong law on the side of a school vaccine mandate. The question is, just because you can doesn't mean you should. The medical experts I talked to, specifically the experts on anti-vaccination movements and how they get so strong and so organized, said they think it's a little premature because

there's so much controversy over this disease. There's so much controversy over the public health measures that surround this disease. And the vaccines are not fully approved yet for children. Maybe let's take a couple of years, let's take a breath here and resolve it possibly another way, try to form more consensus and, you know, kind of like softer measures like the athlete mandate, right, or a mandate for school trips or, you know, the state of Massachusetts said that if enough kids are vaccinated in a school, the kids who have the vaccines can take their masks off. So that's a very clear way of kind of saying, yeah, we're going to make life easier for

you if you get a vaccine, but we're not going to make you. Anya Kamenetz, she's an education reporter with NPR. She's also the author of an upcoming book on kids and COVID. It's called The Stolen Year, How COVID Changed Children's Lives and Where We Go Now. The first part of our show today was produced by Miles Bryan. He produced the second part. He also screamed vaccinated at one point a bunch. He was edited by Matthew Collette and Jillian Weinberger.

The show today was engineered by Afim Shapiro and fact-checked by Laura Bullard. Special thanks to Veronica Ramirez and her family, along with Jesse Gizmondi and the rest of the Kramer Hill staff. The rest of the team here at Today Explained includes Victoria Chamberlain, Halima Shah, Hadi Mawagdi, and Will Reed. Our supervising producer is Amina Alsadi. Our veep of audio here at Vox is Liz Kelly Nelson. And Jillian Weinberger is our deputy.

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