Back-to-school chores were the main reason why most American families didn't get their children vaccinations. Resistance to general school vaccine mandates has grown since the battles over Covid shots two years ago. According to a new survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 35 percent of parents don't want their children to be required to get immunizations in order to attend school.
All of the states and the District of Columbia require vaccinations for children. Some permits a few limited exemptions.
The Kaiser foundation has been issuing monthly reports on changing attitudes towards Covid vaccines. The surveys show a growing political divide over the issue, and the latest study shows the same.
Forty-four percent of adults who identify as Republicans or lean that way think that parents should have the right to opt out of school vaccine mandates, up from 20 percent in a prepandemic poll conducted in 2019. 88 percent of adults who identify as or lean Democratic endorsed childhood vaccine requirements are the same as in 2019.
According to the survey, 28 percent of adults think parents should have the authority to make school vaccine decisions, a stance that was held by just 16 percent of adults.
The shift in positions seems to have less to do with rejecting the shots and more with endorsing the parents' rights movement. Eighty percent of parents said that the benefits of vaccines outweigh the risks, down slightly from the previous year.
The idea of taking away parents' rights has been circulating. It is very appealing to a certain segment of the population when it is framed that way. The right to be safe in school from vaccine-preventable diseases is something that needs to be considered.
The doctor said that he wasn't overly worried that school vaccine mandates would be lifted but that the growing embrace of parents' rights might slow compliance with state-mandated immunizations.
He said that a lot of kids missed their vaccine because they weren't going to the doctor. There's a dip in vaccine coverage around the world. This isn't a good time to consider a repeal of these laws.
Interviews with a nationally representative sample of 1,259 adults were used to conduct the latest survey.
It showed that the latest Covid booster, a "bivalent" shot that targets both the original coronaviruses and the Omicron variant, has not been well received. Only 4% of adults said they had gotten the booster. One in four of those 65 and older said they had been too busy to get it.
More than four in 10 adults who had received previous Covid vaccines said they didn't need the new shot, according to a survey.
Half of the respondents expressed concern about rising rates of Covid this winter, but only a third of them personally feared getting very ill from Covid. More than two-thirds of Black and Latino adults were worried about Covid rates.
More than half of parents worried that their children could get sick from Covid-19, the flu or R.S.V., a sign that Covid-19 was becoming normalized in the public's perception.
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