The following was written by a 13-year-old girl who was asked to share her thoughts on vaccination for COVID.
With all the new vaccination rules and enforcement, it’s easy to say “just get vaccinated”. For any fully developed adult, that may be easy, but for somebody who still lives under the roof of their parents and who can’t even be legally considered an adult, it seems like something unreachable, without the permission of your guardians.
Especially with people shaming you for not getting vaccinated, always a question of “why aren’t you vaccinated?”, to which you just answer that you’re still trying to find the right clinic, as to not outright say your parents don’t wanna vaccinate you. After all, nobody wants to hang out with the unvaccinated, sick kids who will spread the deadly, horrible disease, right?
Being vaccinated is almost like a social class now. The vaccinated people are at the top of this hierarchy, and the unvaccinated ones stay at the bottom.
If I had the autonomy to choose, I would 100% get vaccinated.
This isn’t because I’m some apocalypse-fearing lunatic who never leaves the house- quite the opposite.
I just want the privilege of a normal life- going outside with friends, having fun with people, going to places that I could go to before.
But now it’s unreachable.
And what makes this already crappy situation even worse is the amount of embarrassment you feel, knowing everyone around you gets to enjoy their everyday life, while you have to sit and wait, until maybe, just maybe your parents will let you get vaccinated.
I know the risks of this vaccine, but without it, I will slowly lose permission to leave my house and go places. I miss the times when I could meet up with friends, without having their mothers tell them “they can’t hang out with unvaccinated kids.”.
I didn’t choose to be unvaccinated- my parents did. Why do I have to suffer the consequences of THEIR actions?
I know they want the best for me, I do. I just can’t help feeling angry at them. Because I’m having to face this ‘status’ of being unvaccinated. And I think it’s unfair- there are people out there who will shame anyone unvaccinated, without looking at other factors.
What if they have some rare condition and the vaccine could affect them?
What if they can’t do it because they’re minors who need adults’ permission?
But at the end of the day, nobody cares. Because all they want us to do is get vaccinated and hopefully not die because that extra hospital bed is needed for the covid patients.
Ultimately, I do understand where my parents come from. But it is also hard knowing that I can not do the things I used to be able to do before this.
Parents, don’t blame your child for wanting a vaccine due to the internet.
Some kids just wanna go back to normal life and without it, they can’t.
This is one example of what the fear-mongers have foisted on the country. They have created this stigmatized social class over a virus that literally is becoming the common cold. Only one in 50,000 kids who get COVID will die from it and the rate is much lower if you are healthy. The chances of myocarditis and other serious adverse reactions are approaching 1 in 100.
Then there is the fact that the newest variant, Omicron, appears to be targeting the vaxxed. The vast majority of cases in this country are among the vaxxed.
Kids should not be vaxxed for COVID.