Yea, I gave a few very sweaty side-hugs and everyone that asked to hug me confirmed they were fully vaxxed first. And they’re people I know and trust to not be lying. For myself and many other people, it was the first time we’ve seen a ton of our friends in 2 years.
But there were also a LOT of strangers there because even I don’t know 800 people who will show up to a bike ride in 94F heat. Bikes rides bring out lots of types of people, political leanings not specified A lot of portland tends to fall into the “crunchy liberal” anti-vax crowd vs the “trump supporter” anti-vax crowd.
Far less babies and kids than you’ll usually see at a Kickoff ride, though, and I noticed a lot of the co-parents I know with kids only had one adult there, and no kids. I suspect a lot of people left unvaxxed kiddos at home.
The latest data I saw (I think from gallup? maybe pew? I get a ton of emails IDK, lol) actually shows that political affiliation has little impact on vaccine hesitancy. It’s mostly education level. People with lower education levels are way more likely to avoid the vaccine on both sides of the political spectrum, whereas college educated democrats and republicans are both getting vaccines in high (and similar) numbers.
I have definitely seen education level impacts hesitancy as well though. There are lots of factors. I’ve also seen a lot of “vaccine apathy” articles lately.
Found it. You’re right, there is a political divide but the class divide is large (and larger than the racial gap). That makes sense because there is a class divide politically; democrats are likelier to be rich than republicans.
NY Times
It is common to hear about two different demographic groups that are hesitant to receive a Covid-19 vaccination: Republican voters and racial minorities, especially Black and Latino Americans.
The two groups seem to have different motivations. For Republicans, the attitude is connected to a general skepticism of government and science. For Black and Hispanic Americans, it appears to stem from the country’s legacy of providing substandard medical treatment, and sometimes doing outright harm, to minorities.
These ideas all have some truth to them. But they also can obscure the fact that many unvaccinated Republicans and minorities have something in common: They are working class. And there is a huge class gap in vaccination behavior.
Here is a look at vaccination behavior by racial groups and political identification, based on polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation:
By The New York Times Source: Kaiser Family Foundation
Here are those same groups subdivided by class, using a four-year college degree as the dividing line between working class and professional:
By The New York Times Source: Kaiser Family Foundation
As you can see, working-class members of every group are less likely to have received a vaccine and more likely to be skeptical. “No matter which of these groups we looked at, we see an education divide,” Mollyann Brodie, who oversees the Kaiser surveys, told me. In some cases, different racial groups with the same education levels — like Black and white college graduates — look remarkably similar.
This poll did not break out Asian-Americans, but other Kaiser surveys have, and it’s consistent: Asian-Americans have a higher median income than Black, Hispanic or white Americans and also a higher vaccination rate.
All of which points to the fact that the class divide is bigger than the racial divide.
ETA: Also sorry if I’m writing in a confusing way, meds + no sleep.
Which is also very interesting. I would have thought there were bigger racial gaps; though maybe mistrust is so heavily tied to economic/education level?
It feels intuitive to me that people in the same economic class would be more similar to each other (in a lot of ways) than people who happen to belong to the same racial/ethnic group, but might not have anything else in common. It’s super interesting for sure! I feel like you see similar things with marriage age, family structure, educational attainment, religion, beliefs on gender equality, etc. within social classes.
Just wondering what everyone is seeing on vaccines for the littles lately? Basically no one I know in real life is concerned about Covid for their kids. Whether or not they got the vaccine for themselves, most people seem to believe that a new vaccine has worse (possible) future outcomes for their kids, than the risk of Covid.
I’m trying to be reasonable, DH and I are both vaccinated, so we’re feeling ok venturing out a bit more. I know the kid risk is low, but then again, Covid hasn’t been studied for the long term, and I feel it’s best to keep the kids from exposure if I can.
I’m sorry this is rambly. I guess I’m wondering for those of you with kids (or IF you had kids), are you booking the first possible appointment, waiting a while, or skipping it for your kiddo altogether?
I know that my grandson (who is 5, and we’re in the same household) will have an appointment as soon as they open up. His mom is very pro-vax and we’re in a high vax area.
I think that even where I see parents hesitant, the over 12s are so excited that they are pushing for it and vaccinated. The parents of younger kids that I know, including me, are glad to wait a bit before deciding. My guess is that we’ll do it but maybe not right away. My view is that if we can control spread by vaccinating teens and adults, that buys us time to where risk is low.
And my kid reacts hard to all of his vaccines, and has big feelings. I think that to space vaccines out in a way that I’m comfortable, we’d be looking at no sooner than 22 months
Everyone I know with older kids is chomping at the bit to get them vaccinated. They are so excited. Younger kids a bit less so, my pediatrician has told us the current risks a non vaccinated toddler is about the same as a vaccinated adult. (Of course we don’t know if a minor case has long reaching effects.) But still, if the vaccine is approved for my 2 and 4 year old, we will almost certainly get it ASAP. But I don’t want them to rush approval.
We will most likely hold off on getting Puglet vaccinated. We live in a high vaccinated area of the country and I know he’s low risk being a kid. It’s a tough call, I go back and forth a bit but today that’s how I’m leaning.
We will likely get the wiggler vaccinated ASAP. I don’t really see any reason to hold off? If he’d ever had a significant vaccine reaction perhaps I’d feel differently, but he’s barely noticed his toddler vaccines.
I signed up to get information about vaccine studies if there are any in my area–I don’t know for sure that we would sign him up for a study, but since there aren’t any nearby we haven’t had to make that decision.
We will be getting Kiddo (6) vaccinated ASAP. By then it will have been tested like crazy, not only because of the scrutiny the vaccine has had to go through already but because I imagine the standards for pediatric medicine are very particular.
For context, in past years we got his flu shot through the school but their flu shots (or flu mist) were administered a month or more after I had already gotten my flu shot and it made me antsy that there was that much of a delay - I considered making an appointment just to take him to the pediatrician to get his shot, but ended up not because I worked full time across town so that was a +3 hour commitment and disruption to our week versus just waiting longer for it to happen with no additional effort on my part.
Our daycare is returning to normal operations next week.
(This week they went to no masks outdoors.)
Children and vaccinated staff will no longer wear masks, classes will be combined as ratios allow, etc.
Unvaccinated staff (?!- originally she said the whole staff was vaxxed) and parents still have to wear them.
I am emailing my pediatrician to ask a recommendation if our 4-year old should continue to mask at school. (Our 2-year old has not worn a mask, they started in the 3-year old classroom, though they moved all the older 2 year olds early to get them into masks.)
A lot of portland tends to fall into the “crunchy liberal” anti-vax crowd vs the “trump supporter” anti-vax crowd.
