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California Governor Gavin Newsom on Friday issued a statewide COVID-19 vaccine mandate that will compel school students—from kindergarten to 12th grade—to roll up their sleeves to take a COVID-19 vaccine once approved for their age group by the Food and Drug Administration.
“We have to do more,” Newsom said last week at a San Francisco middle school, according to The Associated Press. “We want to end this pandemic. We are all exhausted by it.”
The COVID-19 vaccine will find its place among other mandatory vaccines in the school system, like mumps and rubella and will impact the 7 million children in the state. The report pointed out that about 40 to 50 percent of parents polled have expressed a level of vaccine hesitancy when it comes to their children, and for good reason.
Several Trends Journal articles cite Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures that show 99.997 percent of 1-to-20-year-olds recover from the virus. (See “U.S. SCHOOL UPDATE: CONFUSION REIGNS,” “KIDS DON’T SPREAD COVID,” “DRUG DEALERS: GET KIDS VACCINATED,” and “VAX KIDS? THE COVID RISK IS ‘TINY.”)
Under Newsom’s plan, the first students to receive the vaccines will be those in the seventh through 12th grades, and then kindergarten through sixth.
A poll conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 48 percent of parents of children between 12 and 17 years old say their child has received at least one dose of a vaccine. (The U.S. has approved the vaccine for anyone over the age of 16 and has approved the emergency use authorization for those between 12 and 15.)
“The share of parents who say they want to ‘wait and see’ before getting their 12-17 year old vaccinated has decreased to 15%, down from 23% in July. Just 4% of parents say they will only get their teenager vaccinated “if their school requires it,” and one in five (21%) say they will ‘definitely not’ vaccinate their child, similar to the share measured in previous months,” the KFF report said.
Newsom’s mandate is the first imposed by a state on school children, and will likely start a trend. The state will allow medical and religious exemptions for students.
The report pointed out that the state has one of the highest vaccination rates in the country, with 84 percent of those 12 and older who have received at least one jab, and 70 percent fully vaccinated, the AP reported.
Fabio Zamora, the father of a student in California, told the wire that he believes that it is the parent’s decision.
“The government in no shape or form should be having mandates like that,” he said. “I don’t care for that. I’m a veteran. I served this country, and fought for those rights.”
TREND FORECAST: The more schools, from kindergarten to college—that mandate COVID vaccinations, the faster the online learning trend will accelerate.
As we have noted, trends are born, they grow, mature, reach old age and die.
Online learning is still in its infancy and will provide rich OnTrendpreneur® opportunities for those who design new strategies to capitalize on this multi-trillion dollar mega-trend.