Tag: Parents

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Health

Return to Work? Not With Youngster Care Nonetheless in Limbo, Some Mother and father Say.

Return to Work? Not With Child Care Still in Limbo, Some Parents Say.

When the pandemic began, Brianna McCain quit her job as an office manager to take care of her two young daughters. She was ready to go back to work last spring. But she didn’t make it because her children are still at home.

She was looking for a job with flexible hours and the option to work from home, but these are hard to find, especially for new hires and hourly workers. She cannot take a personal job until the school opens for her 6-year-old, and her Portland, Oregon district has not announced its plans. She also needs childcare for her 2 year old, which costs less than she deserves, but childcare availability is well below pre-pandemic levels and prices have gone up to cover the cost of Covid security measures.

“Especially with a new job, there is no flexibility,” says Ms. McCain, whose partner, a warehouse worker, cannot work from home. “And with the unknowns from Covid, I don’t know whether my child will be pulled out of school for quarantine or whether school will end.”

Especially with the proliferation of the Delta variant, many parents of young children – those under the age of 12 who cannot yet be vaccinated – are saying that they will not be able to return to work or apply for new jobs while insecure is about when their children can safely return to full-time school or childcare.

Businesses struggle to hire and retain workers for other reasons, too, and many parents have had no choice but to work. (In a recent survey by the Census Bureau, 5 percent of parents said their children are currently not attending childcare due to pandemic-related reasons.) But for the group of parents who still have children at home – they are disproportionately black and Latinos and some have medically vulnerable family members – that’s a big challenge.

“You can’t part with childcare and the pandemic,” said AnnElizabeth Konkel, economist at Indeed Hiring Lab. “It’s important that we don’t forget the workers who wrestle with it day in and day out.”

In an Indeed poll this summer, a third of job seekers said they didn’t want to start in the next month, and a significant proportion said they would wait for schools to open. Among those who were unemployed but not looking urgently, almost a fifth said that care responsibilities were the reason. People without a college degree were more likely to give such a reason – and were less likely to be able to work from home or afford nannies.

Summer is always a challenge for working parents, and this is especially true this year. To meet safety guidelines, many camps are open with shorter schedules and fewer children. Others have closed due to a lack of staff. And many parents are uncomfortable sending their children because of the risk of exposure to Covid.

Autumn is getting more and more uncertain. Some jobs have paused reopening plans because of Delta, and parents fear schools may follow suit. Certain companies, including McDonald’s, and states like Illinois, are trying to forestall this by offering childcare allowances to help parents get back to work. According to Bright Horizons, the employer-based childcare company, 75 companies started offering additional childcare this calendar year, and others, like PayPal, expanded their expanded pandemic benefits this year.

Most school districts still say they plan to open full-time, without the shortened timetables that many had last spring. And the five largest nationwide have released plans to reopen, according to the University of Washington’s Center on Reinventing Public Education, which has been tracking districts’ responses to the pandemic. However, some plans are still sparse in detail, and the districts in which union negotiations are ongoing were unable to answer all of the parents’ questions.

“What surprised us most this summer is the lack of publicly available clarity about what to expect,” said Bree Dusseault, who leads the data work. “Families need to know so that they can structure their lives.”

Parents in districts who have already announced plans to reopen are also faced with uncertainty. Will there be pre- and post-school childcare and after-school activities? Do families have to be quarantined for two weeks if there are cases in schools? Could schools close again if cases continue to increase?

For Alexis Lohse, mother of two in St. Paul, Minnesota, Delta is one detour too much. She lived in poverty as a single mother. At 30, she was the first in her family to go to college and earn a master’s degree. She got a job in the state government, and just before the pandemic, she had the chance of a long-awaited promotion.

But when the schools closed, she couldn’t pursue it. She continued to work, but put aside all opportunities for advancement and reduced her hours. (Her husband, a postman, couldn’t do that.) Now her county is classified as Highly Vulnerable by the CDC, and with the school opening right after big gatherings at the Minnesota State Fair, she’s skeptical that full-time school will happen.

“I don’t know how to get back on track, especially with the questions out there – how schools reopen; If; Variants; the behavior of everyone else; that schools open and close at bizarre, random hours, “she said.

The safety net that she has built has been torn away, she says: “I know how difficult it is and how little infrastructure our country has to support parents. And it just feels so frustrating that I hit the same brick walls that I hit 16 years ago in the pandemic. “

Many parents of preschool children struggle with a shortage of childcare places. Research shows that a third of day care centers have never opened again; those that are still closed catered disproportionately to Asian, Latin American and black families. Those that have opened are on average 70 percent full. They struggled to hire qualified teachers; must keep classes small to limit exposure to the virus; and have raised prices to cover new health and cleaning measures.

Daphne Muller, Los Angeles mother of two and a technology company consultant, says she calls preschools almost every week to see if there is room for their youngest: “I don’t feel like I have any career plans myself. I don’t want to take a job and have to quit. “

Parents must also plan for disruptions, such as quarantine times after exposure or when the number of cases in the community increases.

Bee Thorp, a mother of two in Richmond, Virginia, said her children’s daycare closed three times for two weeks each time last year, as well as cutting cleaning times. Her husband, a lawyer, was much less flexible than she, so the extra care fell on her.

“That means I’m not really looking for a job,” she said. “I can’t ask in an interview, ‘Do you mind if I pick up two weeks without notice?’ It’s frustrating to hear comments about people not applying for jobs. Maybe people want these jobs; they just can’t. “

Other parents are not yet ready to send their unvaccinated children to school. Amy Kolev is a mother of three and a construction project manager based in Glen Burnie, Maryland. When the virtual school got too tough, she and her husband, a software programmer, decided to quit. She longs to return, but does not risk exposing her children.

“I will be back when my children are vaccinated and not the day before,” she said.

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World News

She Mentioned She Married for Love. Her Dad and mom Referred to as It Coercion.

She Said She Married for Love. Her Parents Called It Coercion.

SRINAGAR, Kashmir — Manmeet Kour Bali had to defend her marriage in court.

A Sikh by birth, Ms. Bali converted to Islam to marry a Muslim man. Her parents objected to a marriage outside their community and filed a police complaint against her new husband.

In court last month, she testified that she had married for love, not because she was coerced, according to a copy of her statement reviewed by The New York Times. Days later, she ended up in India’s capital of New Delhi, married to a Sikh man.

Religious diversity has defined India for centuries, recognized and protected in the country’s Constitution. But interfaith unions remain rare, taboo and increasingly illegal.

A spate of new laws across India, in states ruled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., are seeking to banish such unions altogether.

While the rules apply broadly, right-wing supporters in the party portray such laws as necessary to curb “love jihad,” the idea that Muslim men marry women of other faiths to spread Islam. Critics contend that such laws fan anti-Muslim sentiment under a government promoting a Hindu nationalist agenda.

Last year, lawmakers in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh passed legislation that makes religious conversion by marriage an offense punishable by up to 10 years in prison. So far, 162 people there have been arrested under the new law, although few have been convicted.

“The government is taking a decision that we will take tough measures to curb love jihad,” Yogi Adityanath, a Hindu monk and the top elected official of Uttar Pradesh, said shortly before that state’s Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance was passed.

Four other states ruled by the B.J.P. have either passed or introduced similar legislation.

In Kashmir, where Ms. Bali and Mr. Bhat lived, members of the Sikh community have disputed the legitimacy of the marriage, calling it “love jihad.” They are pushing for similar anti-conversion rules.

While proponents of such laws say they are meant to protect vulnerable women from predatory men, experts say they strip women of their agency.

“It is a fundamental right that women can marry by their own choice,” said Renu Mishra, a lawyer and women’s rights activist in Lucknow, the Uttar Pradesh state capital.

“Generally the government and the police officials have the same mind-set of patriarchy,” she added. “Actually, they are not implementing the law, they are only implementing their mind-set.”

Across the country, vigilante groups have created a vast network of local informers, who tip off the police to planned interfaith marriages.

One of the largest is Bajrang Dal, or the Brigade of Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god. The group has filed dozens of police complaints against Muslim suitors or grooms, according to Rakesh Verma, a member in Lucknow.

“The root cause of this disease is the same everywhere,” Mr. Verma said. “They want to lure Hindu women and then change their religion.”

Responding to a tip, the police in Uttar Pradesh interrupted a wedding ceremony in December. The couple were taken into custody, and released the following day when both proved they were Muslim, according to regional police, who blamed “antisocial elements” for spreading false rumors.

A Pew Research Center study found that most Indians are opposed to anyone, but particularly women, marrying outside their religion. The majority of Indian marriages — four out of five — are arranged.

The backlash against interfaith marriages is so widespread that in 2018, India’s Supreme Court ordered state authorities to provide security and safe houses to those who wed against the will of their communities.

In its ruling, the court said outsiders “cannot create a situation whereby such couples are placed in a hostile environment.”

The country’s constitutional right to privacy has also been interpreted to protect couples from pressure, harassment and violence from families and religious communities.

Muhabit Khan, a Muslim, and Reema Singh, a Hindu, kept their courtship secret from their families, meeting for years in dark alleyways, abandoned houses and desolate graveyards. Ms. Singh said her father threatened to burn her alive if she stayed with Mr. Khan.

In 2019, they married in a small ceremony with four guests, thinking their families would eventually accept their decision. They never did, and the couple left the central Indian city of Bhopal to start a new life together in a new city.

“The hate has triumphed over love in India,” Mr. Khan said, “And it doesn’t seem it will go anywhere soon.”

In Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh state, the B.J.P.-led government passed a bill in March modeled after the Uttar Pradesh law, stiffening penalties for religious conversion through marriage and making annulments easier to obtain.

The government is not “averse to love,” said the state’s home minister, Narottam Mishra, “but is against jihad.”

Members of Kashmir’s Sikh community are using Ms. Bali’s marriage to a Muslim man, Shahid Nazir Bhat, to press for a similar law in Jammu and Kashmir.

“We immediately need a law banning interfaith marriage here,” said Jagmohan Singh Raina, a Sikh activist based in Srinagar. “It will help save our daughters, both Muslims and Sikhs.”

At a mosque in northern Kashmir in early June, Ms. Bali, 19, and Mr. Bhat, 29, performed Nikah, a commitment to follow Islamic law during their marriage, according to their notarized marriage agreement.

Afterward, Ms. Bali returned to her parents’ home, where she said she was repeatedly beaten over the relationship.

“Now my family is torturing me. If anything happens to me or to my husband, I will kill myself,” she said in a video posted to social media.

The day after she recorded the video, Ms. Bali left home and reunited with Mr. Bhat.

Even though a religious ceremony between people of the same faith — as Mr. Bhat and Ms. Bali were after her conversion — are recognized as legally valid, the couple had a civil ceremony and got a marriage license to bolster their legal protections. The marriage agreement noted that the union “has been contracted by the parties against the wish, will and consent of their respective parents.

“Like thousands of other couples who don’t share same the religious belief but respect each other’s faith, we thought we will create a small world of our own where love will triumph over everything else,” Mr. Bhat said. “But that very religion became the reason of our separation.”

Ms. Bali’s father filed a police complaint against Mr. Bhat, accusing him of kidnapping his daughter and forcing her to convert.

On June 24, the couple turned themselves into the police in Srinagar, where both were detained.

At the court, Ms. Bali recorded her testimony before a judicial magistrate, attesting that it was her will to convert to Islam and marry Mr. Bhat, according to her statement. Outside, her parents and dozens of Sikh protesters protested, demanding that she be returned to them.

It is unclear how the court ruled. The judicial magistrate declined requests for a transcript or an interview. Her parents declined an interview request.

The day after the hearing, Manjinder Singh Sirsa, the head of the largest Sikh gurudwara in New Delhi, flew to Srinagar. He picked up Ms. Bali, with her parents, and helped organize her marriage to another man, a Sikh. Following the ceremony, Mr. Sirsa flew with the couple to Delhi.

“It would be wrong to say that I convinced her,” Mr. Sirsa said in an interview. “If anything adverse was happening, she should have said.”

A written request for an interview with Ms. Bali was sent via Mr. Sirsa. He said she did not want to talk.

“She had a real breakdown,” he said, repeating Ms. Bali’s parents’ claims that their daughter was kidnapped and forced to marry Mr. Bhat.

Mr. Bhat was released from police custody four days after Ms. Bali left for Delhi.

At his home in Srinagar, he is fighting the kidnapping charges. He said he was preparing a legal battle to win her back, but he feared the Sikh community’s disapproval would make their separation permanent.

“If she comes back and tells a judge she is happy with that man, I will accept my fate,” he said.

Sameer Yasir and Iqbal Kirmani reported from Srinagar, Kashmir, and Emily Schmall reported from New Delhi.

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World News

Mother and father Who By no means Stopped Looking out Reunite With Son Kidnapped 24 Years In the past

Parents Who Never Stopped Searching Reunite With Son Abducted 24 Years Ago

For nearly 24 years, the father crossed China by motorbike. With banners displaying photos of a 2-year-old boy flying from the back of his bike, he traveled more than 300,000 miles, all in pursuit of one goal: finding his kidnapped son.

This week, Guo Gangtang’s search finally ended. He and his wife were reunited with their son, now 26, after the police matched their DNA, according to China’s public security ministry.

In a scene captured by Chinese state television, the trio clung to each other tearfully at a news conference on Sunday in Liaocheng, Mr. Guo’s hometown in northern Shandong Province.

“My darling, my darling, my darling,” Mr. Guo’s wife, Zhang Wenge, sobbed as she embraced the young man. “We found you, my son, my son.”

“He’s been delivered into your hands, so you need to love him well,” Mr. Guo said, trying to comfort her even as his own voice shook.

The apparent happy ending captivated China, where Mr. Guo has become something of a folk hero. His cross-country odyssey, during which he said he was thrown from his bike at least once and slept outdoors when he could not afford a hotel, inspired the 2015 film “Lost and Love,” starring the renowned Hong Kong actor Andy Lau.

After the reunion, Chinese social media filled with congratulatory messages. Hashtags about the Guo family were viewed hundreds of millions of times. “Today, ‘Lost and Love’ finally has a real happy ending,” the movie’s director, Peng Sanyuan, said in a video on Douyin, a social media app.

Child abduction is a longstanding problem in China. There are no official statistics on the number of children kidnapped each year, but officials at the Ministry of Public Security said this month that they had located 2,609 missing or abducted children so far this year. Various reports estimate the number of children abducted annually in China may be as high as 70,000.

Historically, child abduction was linked, at least in part, to China’s one-child policy. At the height of the policy’s enforcement in the 1980s and 1990s, some couples resorted to buying young boys on the black market to ensure they would have a son, according to research by scholars at Xiamen University in Fujian Province. Chinese society has traditionally favored sons.

As the central government began easing enforcement of the policy in the early 2000s — before ending it in 2015 — reported abductions fell sharply. Technological advances such as a nationwide DNA database of missing children, stiffer criminal penalties and greater public awareness of child trafficking have also helped curb the problem, said Zhang Zhiwei, executive director of an anti-trafficking center at the China University of Political Science and Law.

Still, the threat of abduction continues to weigh on many Chinese. On Monday, several police departments in the eastern city of Hangzhou issued statements denying viral rumors about attempted kidnappings.

Mr. Guo’s son, named Guo Xinzhen at birth, disappeared on Sept. 21, 1997. He had been playing at the door of his home while his mother cooked inside, according to interviews the elder Mr. Guo has given over the years.

A frantic Mr. Guo and his wife, along with family, neighbors and friends, fanned out across the region to search for the boy. But after several months, the effort waned. That was when Mr. Guo attached large banners printed with his son’s photo to the back of a motorcycle and set out to find the boy on his own.

“Son, where are you?” the banners said, alongside an image of the boy in a puffy orange jacket. “Dad is looking for you to come home.”

Over the years, Mr. Guo wore out 10 motorcycles, traveling from Hainan in the south to Henan in the north, chasing down any tidbits of information, he has said. Once, on a rainy day, a rock slipped off a truck bed in front of him, sending his motorcycle toppling. He had so many near-miss traffic incidents that he lost count. But he always set out again.

“If I’m at home, the human trafficker is not going to deliver him back to me,” he said in a 2015 interview with state television.

In 2012, Mr. Guo founded an organization to help other parents find their missing children, and he said he has helped dozens of other families find their loved ones, even as his own search remained unsuccessful. His story rose to national prominence with the 2015 film. Earlier this year he also began promoting anti-trafficking awareness on the social media app Douyin, where he had gained tens of thousands of followers even before his son was found.

The latest development in Mr. Guo’s story also seemed like something straight out of a screenwriter’s imagination.

In June, law enforcement officials in Shandong received notice of a potential match for Mr. Guo’s son in Henan Province, according to the public security ministry. It was not immediately clear how officials had identified him, though they said they had used “the newest comparison and search methods.” Further blood work confirmed that the 26-year-old man, who some local news reports said was working as a teacher, was Mr. Guo’s son.

The authorities later said that they had arrested a woman surnamed Tang and a man surnamed Hu. According to the state news media, Ms. Tang snatched the boy and delivered him to Mr. Hu, who then sold him. CCTV, the state broadcaster, said the two had confessed.

Ahead of the reunion, a dazed Mr. Guo and his wife bought more than 1,000 pounds of candy to distribute to neighbors in celebration. Mr. Guo also cleaned out his home, tossing out old belongings to commemorate a new beginning.

In an interview ahead of the reunion with Chen Luyu, a talk-show host, the parents veered between jubilation and paralysis. Sitting at their dining table, Ms. Zhang, Mr. Guo’s wife, broke down several times, wondering if their son would blame her for not watching him closely enough.

Mr. Guo said he bore no resentment toward the couple that had raised his son. How his son would treat that couple going forward was up to him, he said.

“If the child wants to be filial to his adopted parents, then you just need to openly and sincerely accept that,” he said.

State media reports said that the younger Mr. Guo had said he would continue living with the couple that had raised him, who he said had treated him well. But he said he would visit his birth parents often.

The elder Mr. Guo told Ms. Chen, the television host, that he was content with whatever the future brought.

“Our child has been found,” he said. “From now on, only happiness is left.”

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Health

What Mother and father Have to Know In regards to the C.D.C.’s Covid Faculty Pointers

What Parents Need to Know About the C.D.C.’s Covid School Guidelines

But the variant can fuel outbreaks in unvaccinated communities and populations.

“We are vaccinating more people every day, but we are not on our way to interrupting the transmission until the fall,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, a pediatric infectious disease specialist in Colorado. “Unless we can do that, almost everyone I know in the field is very concerned about an increase in falls.”

Children are far less likely to develop the virus or its variants than adults. Less than 2 percent of children with Covid-19 end up hospitalized, and even fewer – 0.03 percent of cases or less – have died, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. A small percentage can also develop a rare but potentially serious inflammatory disease.

The emergence of the delta variant is an urgent reason to continue a large number of mitigation measures, especially in primary schools, said Dr. Linas, who has an 11 year old daughter who has not yet been vaccinated.

The agency recommends what is known as a “layered” approach, which suggests that schools combine multiple risk reduction strategies to reduce risk. (This was also known as the “Swiss Cheese Model”.)

In addition to masking, distancing, and vaccination, schools could introduce regular screening tests for the virus. Fully vaccinated students and staff do not need to participate in screening programs or quarantine if they have been in close contact with someone with Covid-19 unless they have symptoms as per guidelines.

The guidelines also highlight the importance of ventilation and encourage schools to bring more fresh air into the home by opening doors and windows or changing HVAC settings. “I’m pleased that ventilation is specifically mentioned as a stand-alone element,” said Joseph Allen, a healthy building expert at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. “We’ve been talking about it for 18 months now.”

At this stage of the pandemic, the agency said a number of overarching rules made no sense. Immunization rates vary tremendously across the country, and communities with low immunization coverage can experience significant outbreaks, especially as Delta spreads.

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Health

As Mother and father Forbid Covid Photographs, Defiant Youngsters Search Methods to Get Them

As Parents Forbid Covid Shots, Defiant Teenagers Seek Ways to Get Them

She showed up anyway. At worst, she figured, the school would just turn her away.

Apparently, they took note only of her mother’s consent. Saying nothing, Elizabeth stuck out her arm.

Now she is in a pickle. The school is requiring students to be vaccinated for the fall semester and she says her father has begun warring with the administration over the issue. Elizabeth is afraid that if he learns how she was vaccinated, he will be furious and tell the school, which will discipline her for having deceived vaccinators, a stain on her record just as she is applying to college.

Gregory D. Zimet, a psychologist and professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine, pointed out the irony of an adolescent being legally prevented from making a choice that was strenuously urged by public health officials.Developmentally, he said, adolescents at 14 and even younger are at least as good as adults at weighing the risks of a vaccine. “Which isn’t to say that adults are necessarily great at it,” he added.

In many states, young teenagers can make decisions around contraception and sexually transmitted infections, which are, he noted, “in many ways more complex and fraught than getting a vaccine.”

Pediatricians say that even parents who have themselves been vaccinated are wary for their children. Dr. Jay Lee, a family physician and chief medical officer of Share Our Selves, a community health network in Orange County, Calif., said parents say they would rather risk their child having Covid than get the new vaccine.

“I will validate their concerns,” Dr. Lee said, “but I point out that waiting to see if your child gets sick is not a good strategy. And that no, Covid is not just like the flu.”

Elise Yarnell, a senior clinic operations manager for the Portland, Ore., area at Providence, a large health care system, recalled a 16-year-old girl who showed up at a Covid vaccine clinic at her school in Yamhill County.

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Health

Mother and father and caregivers reported psychological well being points extra usually than others through the pandemic, a C.D.C. examine says.

Parents and caregivers reported mental health issues more often than others during the pandemic, a C.D.C. study says.

Parents and unpaid caregivers of adults in the United States reported far higher rates of mental health issues during the coronavirus pandemic than people who held neither of those roles, federal researchers reported on Thursday.

About 70 percent of parents and adult caregivers — such as those tending to older people, for example — and about 85 percent of people who were both reported adverse mental health symptoms during the pandemic, versus about a third of people who did not hold those responsibilities, according to new research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The study also found that people who were both parent and caregivers were eight times more likely to have seriously considered suicide than people who held neither role.

“These findings highlight that parents and caregivers, especially those balancing roles both as parents and caregivers, experienced higher levels of adverse mental health symptoms during the Covid-19 pandemic than adults without these responsibilities,” the authors said.

“Caregivers who had someone to rely on for support had lower odds of experiencing any adverse mental health symptoms,” they said.

The report follows innumerable anecdotes and several studies suggesting spikes in mental health problems among parents and caregivers during the pandemic. But the new C.D.C. report noted that “without prepandemic mental health data in this sample, whether adverse mental health symptoms were caused by or worsened by the pandemic is unknown.”

The study is based on data from online English-language surveys administered to panels of U.S. residents run by Qualtrics, a company that conducts commercial surveys, for the Covid-19 Outbreak Public Evaluation Initiative, an effort to track American attitudes and behaviors during the pandemic. The data was gathered from Dec. 6 to 27 last year, and from Feb. 16 to March 8 of this year, and relied on 10,444 respondents, weighted to match U.S. demographic data, 42 percent of whom identified as parents or adult caregivers.

The study noted that the results might not fully represent the U.S. population, because of factors like the surveys only being presented online and in English.

The surveys included screening items for depression, anxiety, Covid-19 trauma and stress-related disorders, and asked respondents whether they had experienced suicidal thinking in the past month. About half of the parent-caregivers who responded said that they had recently had suicidal thoughts.

Elizabeth A. Rohan, a health scientist at the C.D.C. and one of the study’s authors, said in an interview that what set this research apart was a large sample size and a broad definition of caregiver, which allowed for a more inclusive picture of people in that role.

“Our net captured more people than other surveys,” Dr. Rohan said.

Dr. Rohan said that the study reinforced the need to destigmatize mental health issues among caregivers and for better support systems. Communication is key, she said, and “it doesn’t have to be professional help.”

She added, “We cannot underestimate the importance of staying connected to one another,” which is helpful whether the person is “a trusted friend, a family member or a professional.”

If you are having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK). You can find a list of additional resources at SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.

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Business

Biden urges mother and father to get children vaccinated after CDC panel endorses shot

Biden urges parents to get kids vaccinated after CDC panel endorses shot

United States President Joe Biden makes remarks on the Covid-19 response and vaccination program on May 12, 2021 in the South Court Auditorium of the White House, Washington, DC.

Nicholas Comb | AFP | Getty Images

President Joe Biden urged parents on Wednesday to vaccinate their children just before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approved the use of the Pfid and BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for teens ages 12-15.

The previous Wednesday, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) issued its recommendation, which was accepted 14-0 with one abstention. CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky gave final approval to the approval later that day.

Speaking at a press conference, Biden said the approval was “another big step in our fight against the pandemic”.

Almost 17 million Americans can now get vaccinated, Biden said during a speech on the White House’s Covid-19 response and vaccination campaign. “I encourage each of them and their parents to get their vaccination shots right away,” he said.

In the clinical study of 12-15 year olds, the vaccine was found to be 100% effective at two doses. The most commonly reported side effects were pain at the injection site and in joints and muscles, fatigue, headache, chills and fever, said Pfizer scientist Dr. John Perez told the CDC panel on Wednesday. Side effects usually subsided within a day or two, he said.

The Biden government is working to make the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine available in more locations in the United States, including pediatrician offices and local pharmacies, according to senior government officials.

The CDC, in partnership with states, has made efforts to enroll more pediatricians and general practitioners as Covid vaccination providers to expand access to shots in the coming weeks. The CDC will also work with community health centers to provide vaccinations for adolescents.

The CDC panel’s approval comes ahead of the summer camp season and July 4th – a date the Biden government hopes will mark a turning point in the nation’s fight against the virus. According to the Johns Hopkins University, more than 3.3 million people have died of Covid-19 worldwide, almost 600,000 of them in the United States.

Vaccinating children is seen as critical to ending the pandemic. The nation is unlikely to achieve herd immunity – if enough people in a given community have antibodies to a given disease – until children can be vaccinated, health officials and experts say.

As of Tuesday, more than 150 million Americans ages 18 and older had received at least one dose, according to the CDC. Around 115 million American adults are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC. About 13% of adults say they definitely won’t get a vaccine, while 21% say they will “wait and see” or just get one if needed, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

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Health

Dad and mom Are Reluctant to Get Their Kids Vaccinated for Covid-19, Ballot Exhibits

Parents Are Reluctant to Get Their Children Vaccinated for Covid-19, Poll Shows

The willingness of the American public to get a Covid vaccine is reaching a saturation point, according to a new national poll. This is yet another indication that achieving widespread immunity in the United States is becoming increasingly difficult.

Only 9 percent of respondents said they hadn’t received the shot yet, but they intended to, according to the poll published in the April issue of the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Vaccine Monitor. And with federal approval of the Pfizer vaccine for teens 12-15 years old imminent, parents’ willingness to get their children vaccinated is also limited, the survey found.

Overall, just over half of respondents said they had received at least one dose of the vaccine, which is in line with data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We are in a new phase of vaccine demand,” said Mollyann Brodie, executive vice president of Kaiser’s Public Opinion and Survey Research Program. “There won’t be a single strategy to drive demand from all of the remaining people. There will have to be a lot of individually targeted efforts. The people who are still on the fence have logistical barriers, information needs and many do not yet know whether they are authorized. Any strategy could get a small number of people to get vaccinated, but all in all, it could be very important. “

As more scientists and public health experts conclude that the country is unlikely to reach the herd immunity threshold, the Biden government has stepped up efforts to reach those who still hesitate. On Tuesday, the government announced steps to encourage more pop-up and mobile vaccination clinics, and to distribute the recordings to general practitioners and pediatricians, as well as local pharmacies.

The survey also found that confidence in the Johnson & Johnson vaccine had taken a significant blow after the 10-day hiatus, while authorities investigated rare cases of life-threatening blood clots in people who took it. While 69 percent of respondents said they had confidence in the safety of the vaccines manufactured by Pfizer and Moderna, only 46 percent believed the vaccine from Johnson & Johnson was safe. Among adults who were not vaccinated, one in five said the news of the Johnson & Johnson shot had caused them to change their minds about a Covid-19 vaccine.

The poll found that some of the most prominent Republicans were making some progress. In this group, 55 percent said they had or intended to get a shot, up from 46 percent in March. The percentage who will “definitely not” receive the vaccine also drops from 29 percent in March to 20 percent.

The results were based on telephone surveys of a nationally representative sample of 2,097 adults from April 15 to 29.

The so-called “wait and see” group – people looking for more information before making a decision – was within 15 percent, constant from 17 percent in March. The proportion of people who said they were only vaccinated when required by employers or schools was 6 percent, compared with 7 percent in March.

The Pfizer vaccine is expected to be approved within a few days for children ages 12-15. Among parents surveyed, three in ten said they would vaccinate their children immediately, and 26 percent said they wanted to see how the vaccine works. These numbers largely reflected the zeal with which these parents themselves sought vaccination.

Updated

May 6, 2021, 9:42 a.m. ET

Similarly, 18 percent said they would only do this if a child’s school required it, and 23 percent said they would definitely not have their children vaccinated.

A consortium of universities that includes Harvard, Northeastern and Rutgers conducted online surveys during the pandemic and recently focused on parents. The group’s most recent poll, conducted in April and reaching 21,733 adults in 50 states, found that the gap between mothers and fathers when it comes to the vaccine for children had widened.

The resistance of fathers seems to be weakening somewhat and has fallen from 14 percent since February to 11 percent. But more than a quarter of mothers, the researchers say, still say they are “extremely unlikely” to vaccinate their children. Both sexes are more resistant to the vaccine in younger children than in teenagers. Other research shows that mothers tend to have more influence on the final decision than fathers.

Parents’ answers could change over time, experts say. Just as adults were far less hesitant last summer, when the vaccine was still a concept, parents who were interviewed a few weeks ago when the upcoming approval for children under 16 had not been fully discussed could possibly be more likely to point to a hypothetical situation than responding to a reality.

However, pediatricians and others who are believed to be trusted sources of information are already aware that there is still much work to be done to increase the confidence of vaccines in this newest cohort.

Dr. Sean O’Leary, a Denver pediatrician who is vice chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ infectious diseases committee, predicted that just as adults had flooded Covid vaccine providers in the first few weeks of distribution, parents and pent-up teenagers would too pounce on it at the beginning.

Dr. However, O’Leary, who often speaks to pediatricians about how to motivate patients to accept vaccinations, fears the slowdown will inevitably occur. To convince reluctant parents, he said, “We need to have the vaccine available in as many places as possible.”

He added, “When parents and patients are in the pediatrician’s office and the doctor can say, ‘Hey, I have it,’ it can kick start saying, ‘Let’s go ahead and do this.” ”

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Mother and father, Cease Speaking In regards to the ‘Misplaced Yr’

Parents, Stop Talking About the ‘Lost Year’

“They had a sense of resilience and ‘grit’, even prepandemic which I think served them well,” she said. “I see an ability to pan.”

In Dr. Luther’s research actually regressed reports of loneliness for seventh and eighth grade students between spring 2020 and spring 2021 – a reflection of how she suspects how alienating and lonely middle school is for many of them in “normal” times. (“The loners, the introverts, the kids who weren’t popular – they’re fine, thank you,” she said.)

Other new data suggests that the youngest teens may have got through the pandemic year with slightly less wear and tear than older teens. In the fall of 2020, a research team led by psychologist Angela L. Duckworth of the University of Pennsylvania surveyed more than 6,500 high school students in a large, demographically diverse school district where families could choose whether their children would attend remotely or in school Person.

They found that students who attended school from a distance, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, exhibited significantly lower social, emotional, and academic wellbeing – with the exception of ninth graders, whose level remained roughly the same. (And who for most of the 20th century were considered to be in the same developmental category as seventh and eighth grade students, teaching in middle schools.)

Overall, according to Dr. Steinberg, the youth who fared best during the pandemic were more likely to be the ones who were able to keep in touch with their friends. And for many middle school students, that means having parents willing to relax their usual rules on social media and screen time.

“Social media mitigates some of the effects of isolation,” he said.

This message, often echoed by experts and educators, should provide some relief to the many parents who feel guilty about the screen time they have given their children over the past year.

Rabiah Harris, a Washington public middle school science teacher, holds a PhD in education that, as the mother of a nearly 12-year-old, allows her to take a philosophical viewpoint.

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Convincing skittish mother and father to vaccinate their kids key to curbing Covid, says Dr. Hotez

Convincing skittish parents to vaccinate their children key to curbing Covid, says Dr. Hotez

To curb the spread of Covid-19 in the future, U.S. officials must convince skeptical parents to vaccinate their children, said Dr. Peter Hotez on Wednesday.

“There will have to be a lot of public communication and a lot of advocacy that needs to be done because parents will be a little skeptical about … a brand new mRNA technology for their children,” said Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development Texas Children’s Hospital said CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith”.

Hotez’s comments came after Pfizer announced earlier in the day that its vaccine is 100% effective in children ages 12-15. Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer, said the company will soon submit the new data to the Food and Drug Administration and other regulators. He added Pfizer would request a change to its emergency permit to include anyone 12 and older.

“We see adolescents going to pediatric intensive care units, they get sick, especially those with underlying risk factors,” said Hotez. “If we really want to stop virus transmission, 80 to 85% of the population will have to be vaccinated now that we have variant B.1.1.7, which is so highly transmissible, and I think we could do that.” that by involving young people. “

Hotez said he thinks the US could “vaccinate maybe 75% of adults” by the summer but warned that “we are in the running with this B.1.1.7 variant,” leading to higher mortality and hospitalization rates .