Vulnerable Children Suffer Most During Pandemic
by DAISY THOMAS
While the coronavirus vaccines roll-out across Utah and the nation for h ealthcare workers, long-term care facility staff and residents, first responders, and K-12 teachers and school staff, millions more won’t be eligible for their first of two doses for months, even as half
Common sense and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have recognized from the beginning that vulnerable populations will always have a higher risk of complications from any medical issues that arise, but the realization of just how many Utahns fall into that category needs to be acknowledged and addressed. Children with Down Syndrome are 10 times more likely to die from Covid-19 complications.
Children are also at increased risk for severe illness due to obesity, medical complexity, severe genetic disorders, severe neurologic disorders, inherited metabolic disorders, sickle cell disease, congenital (since birth) heart disease, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, asthma and other chronic lung disease, and immunosuppression due to malignancy or immune-weakening medications, per the CDC’s website.
These potential risks don’t even begin to address the co-existing mental health, educational, and childcare challenges that have devastated Utah’s working families.
And while vulnerable adults are at an even greater increased risk of complications than the healthy, pregnant and breast-feeding women are now eligible to receive the vaccine as well. However, with limited data of the vaccine’s risks to the woman, pregnancy, developing fetus, or breastfeeding child, the choice whether or not to vaccinate against the COVID-19 virus will remain a personal one, hopefully well-informed and based on their own health issues.
Good thing we still have bodily autonomy, despite many in the Utah Legislature’s attempts to keep us under control.
This is what happens when we fail to have all stakeholders come together in mutual respect to honestly discuss and end rampant, systemic sexism, racism, cis/heteronormative entitlement, and toxic masculinity.
But if we aren't also acknowledging that the US was built as designed, and how if we are to fulfill America's Promise, we need to be brave, to be bold, and to understand we all have a duty to be kind and respectful towards others.