Dr. Natasha Burgert is well aware of the concerns parents have about the Covid-19 vaccines.
The Kansas pediatrician, who is a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics, said she’s already been counseling some parents about their fears. And she worries that they are entering a particularly sensitive time — one that anti-vaccination activists could exploit.
“If the anti-vaccine industry starts doing what we anticipate, with those very graphic and emotionally charged videos, and bringing out their supposed experts, I think it’s going to affect a new group of parents,” she said.
Public health is at its best when it is pragmatic in the face of complex problems fraught with stigma and uncertainty, like moving in the direction of full vaccination in the face of many Americans’ entrenched or even defiant anti-vaccination sentiment.
Those are increasingly the kinds of people who are dying of Covid-19, as the demographics of those hit hardest by the coronavirus have shifted since the pandemic first hit the United States. The country’s most recent, devastating Covid wave, fueled by the highly contagious delta variant, showed the strength of the virus even in the face of mounting vaccinations, with more than 100,000 deaths reported in the past three months.
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