On July 20 2025 05:51 BlackJack wrote:
“Do you plan to refuse or choose not to get 1 or more recommended vaccines (including seasonal flu or COVID-19 vaccines) for your child after birth?”
Including the COVID vaccine by name in that survey seems like a pretty big spoiler. What's the uptake for the latest booster globally? 20%? 10%? Which would mean 80-90% of all people are not fully vaccinating themselves. On that scale birthing-people are well above average.
“Do you plan to refuse or choose not to get 1 or more recommended vaccines (including seasonal flu or COVID-19 vaccines) for your child after birth?”
Including the COVID vaccine by name in that survey seems like a pretty big spoiler. What's the uptake for the latest booster globally? 20%? 10%? Which would mean 80-90% of all people are not fully vaccinating themselves. On that scale birthing-people are well above average.
Well, I learned 4 things today.
1. I'm as susceptible as anyone when it comes to clickbaity content that confirm my own biases. They could have easily separated seasonal vaccines from the "if your kid doesn't have these, they might die or be crippled for life" in that study. In my defense I did check the journal and it's in the top quartile.
2. Holy moly, 50 shots? Do Americans have to do everything the hard way? Like, I got way fewer than that (similar to drone) and we had vaccinations in schools, which made it all very little hassle for my parents.
3. Taking all recommended vaccines for your children is no longer the default position for new parents. This is pretty grim no matter what.
Seasonal vaccines aren't frivolous, but they're definitely not as "cost effective" as the others. Having said that, kids are a pretty good at passing on their illnesses to parents and grandparents so vaccinating kids does have a positive effect.
4. Maybe not straight dumbassery, but the fact that parents' default position is more "choose your own adventure" than "follow official guidelines" will have serious knock-on effects for the healthcare system and you would reasonably expect a sicker population on average based off of this. This will translate to higher premiums as preventative care is orders of magnitude cheaper than treating people when stuff hits. I don't know how much the flu shot costs, but hospitalising grandma because she got the flu from her grandkids is going to be a hell of a lot more.