Vol. 13 - A Long Winter

On missing the mark and getting the message right

A long winter of severe illness and death.

That’s what President Biden, in a recent message to the nation, promised legions of Americans who choose to remain unvaccinated.

He was talking to a very specific set of people, to be sure; those adults who refuse to vaccinate themselves against this disease and who refuse to vaccinate the children with whose wellbeing they are charged.

It was meant as a scare tactic, as little else—neither facts, nor data, nor science—seems to be reaching the willfully unvaccinated.

But his words hit hard with an unintended audience, one who has spent most of the post-vaccination phase of this arduous era in a state of slight terror.

That is, parents of children under five, the only people in America who are still unable to be vaccinated, especially as we grapple with the recent news that Pfizer’s efficacy trials on kids under five have been thus far unsuccessful.

A long winter of severe illness and death.

I looked at my two children, my son nearly four and my daughter just five months old, and wondered if my wife and I were doing all we could be doing to keep them safe.

I know the available data. I know the anecdotes. I know as much as a parent can know about Covid-19 and the Omicron variant. And what I know is that, even if either or both of my children get sick, they’ll most likely be fine. Neither is immunocompromised nor do they have any preexisting conditions that render them high risk.

Still, I don’t want them to get sick.

A long winter of severe illness and death.

I don’t want them to get sick for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the very small chance that they could become very sick.

I don’t want them to get sick because my son’s school is starting back up after a long holiday break and he needs to be back in his routine, back with his friends, back with people who aren’t his mom and dad. I don’t want them to get sick because, selfishly, I want to get back to work. I don’t want them to get sick because I don’t want them to potentially experience the residue of long Covid. I don’t want them to get sick because I don’t want them to spread this disease to other people. I don’t want them to get sick because I don’t want them to be intubated. I don’t want them to get sick because I don’t want them to die, slim a chance as that may be.

A long winter of severe illness and death.

A parent friend of mine recently wondered on Twitter what we as parents as under-fives are supposed to do. She pointed out the fact that there has been nothing concrete for us to work with, no guidelines or protocols, no bullet points, data sets, or direct-action suggestions from anyone, not the White House, not the CDC, not Dr. Fauci, regarding what parents of children who are not yet candidates for vaccination can be doing right now.

There have only been vague directives, nebulous timelines and, of course, the morbid promise of a long winter of severe illness and death.

As a parent of two children under five, I would love to know if there is anything I can be doing to keep my children safer; whether there is a local or regional threshold of daily cases that, if reached, should indicate that I keep my kids home; whether we should keep our son out of school for the first week or two or three into the new year, at least until this thing steadies a bit; whether there are any questions, steps, or protocols that I haven’t even thought of, all to keep my kids safe.

Even if those directives change with new information, as science so rapidly does, I expect to change my expectations, just as I have been for the last two years.

And even if the directive is “Sit tight, we’re working on it,” I would love to hear something, anything from the top about what I can do or expect as a parent of two kids who have no protection beyond masks, social distance, and good judgement.

Because all we have right now is encouragement to get our kids vaccinated and that is simply not a solution for millions of parents in America.

A long winter of severe illness and death.

Since the President spoke those words, and since they were repeated by his Covid-19 coordinator Jeff Zients, they’ve been at the forefront of my mind, as I’m sure they have with millions of parents of millions of children who are not yet candidates for vaccination.

I wonder how many children will be part of the collateral damage that has been lightly implied throughout this entire ordeal as we spoke of herd immunity, reigniting the economy, or sending our kids back to school.

When the President uttered the line, “For the unvaccinated, you're looking at a winter of severe illness and death for yourselves, your families and the hospitals you may soon overwhelm,” he intended it for a very specific audience.

It reached an audience, to be sure. But maybe not the right one.