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Home > Portable Practical Pediatrics > 6 Ways Covid Vaccine Hesitancy is Harming Children (Pedcast by Doc Smo and Sonya Corina Williams)
Podcast: Portable Practical Pediatrics
Episode:

6 Ways Covid Vaccine Hesitancy is Harming Children (Pedcast by Doc Smo and Sonya Corina Williams)
Category: Kids & family
Duration: 00:11:37
Publish Date: 2021-02-06 20:12:59
Description: Photo Compliments of Eleanor's Family   As things stand right now, there are only two ways out of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: wait until everyone has gotten infected resulting in about 3,500,000 Americans dying and countless others becoming chronically ill or protect our population and children as soon as possible by means of a vaccine. You see, your children's health and well-being depend on adults opting for vaccination. Stay tuned and I will explain why. Musical Introduction Decision Time is Here As they say where I live, it's time to fish or cut bait. We are fortunate to have two highly effective vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 and more in the pipeline that will likely be coming soon. We know the vaccines work and we know they are free from serious short term side effects. As of the time of this writing, which is only a month into the U.S. vaccine campaign, illness numbers in my community of Charlotte N.C. are already starting to fall quite significantly, especially among the health care workers who have been the first to get vaccinated. If you are part of the rest of the population, soon it will time for you to make the big decision... will you get vaccinated? I'm begging you to say yes to that question. In fact, I am making this podcast with the intention of using my name and my influence to convince you to go ahead and get vaccinated as soon as it is available to you. Let me explain to you why this is so important, especially for children. Children are Being Harmed by SARS-CoV 2 As you are probably aware, children aren't dying in large numbers from this coronavirus pandemic thank goodness but they are being harmed, nevertheless. Here is a short list of what many children are facing as a consequence of the pandemic- sleep problems, bodily complaints secondary  worry, depressive thoughts if not outright depression, as well as anxiety and panic attacks.  We also know that not being in school has led to other things that can harm children- fewer reports to social services of child abuse and neglect by teachers, fewer meals being provided at school to children whose families are struggling to feed them, and less time in the secure, safe, enriched environment that schools provide for a child. And what about the loss of quality education and social time in school? How does a child make up for a year of subpar learning and socialization with their peers? The answer is that they likely can't. Time will tell what effects this has on today's children, but I as a pediatrician who has spent his adult life with children of all ages, I can tell you that the loss of in-school time for today's children won't be positive for most and is likely to be devastating for many. What the Numbers Show So, you can see that the quickest way back to normalcy for children is through the administration of effective Covid-19 vaccines to at least 70% of the adult population. But unfortunately, for numerous reasons, acceptance of Covid vaccines by Americans is lukewarm at best. Here is a chart with the numbers from a recent survey published in Scientific American.   What is Causing People to Hesitate about Vaccination? So, what is causing people to hesitate about getting one of the Covid-19 vaccines? What is at the basis of their hesitancy? I'm sure you have heard of some of the wild rumors going around- the vaccine may, instead of preventing the disease, actually infect you or, the vaccine actually contains a microchip that allows the government to track your whereabouts through cells towers or, this is corporate America's way of using the U.S. population for biologic experiments. I've got to tell you; I haven't heard so much paranoid thought since I was a medical student interviewing schizophrenics on the locked psych ward. Has the stress of the pandemic, with the help of social media, tipped a large segment of our population into  paranoid thinking, devoid of attachment to reality? Or,
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