Calla Walsh spent her 16th birthday in quarantine after contracting COVID-19 in the summer of 2020. She thinks she caught the virus while attending Black Lives Matter protests in Boston but can’t be sure. The experience of being sick — even while relatively asymptomatic – combined with her time as a frontline worker made her want to get vaccinated as soon as possible.
After visiting her pediatrician for an unrelated issue a while later, Calla’s doctor mentioned that she was eligible for the vaccine because of her restaurant hostessing job. Calla made an appointment to get her vaccine, full of relief and optimism. She says she couldn’t sleep the entire night before because she was thinking about the ways her life would change after being fully inoculated. The only place she could find an open appointment was in a town an hour away from where she lives. Her father took her – both to drive her to the appointment and to sign the consent form that would allow Calla to be vaccinated.
Despite rising COVID infections in young people, not every teen’s parents are as supportive as Calla’s.
It’s been nine months since the first COVID-19 vaccine was given in America, and in that time, more than 210 million people have been vaccinated against the deadly coronavirus. Although the vaccine is now available to anyone over the age of 12, some teens and children under 18 are left fighting for parental consent to get vaccinated. (Consent laws vary by state and some states have exceptions to parental consent laws specifically for the COVID vaccine.) In April, Teen Vogue talked with young people fighting with their families about the vaccine. Now, six months later, we checked back in with Heather, whose parents were preventing her from getting vaccinated, and talked to others with vaccine-hesitant parents about their vaccination status.
When Heather first spoke to Teen Vogue, her parents were intent on making her wait until her 18th birthday to get vaccinated. That way, they said, they wouldn’t be responsible for what happened to her afterwards. Heather was 17 and stuck – in California, minors need parental consent to be vaccinated. She had resigned to waiting for her 18th birthday when one morning, she woke up to an alert on her phone that vaccine appointments were currently open in her area. She was worried supplies wouldn’t last until her 18th birthday (which was still a month away), so she asked her parents again. This time, her luck changed.
To Heather’s surprise, she was able to convince her parents to consent to her vaccination. She thinks that part of the reason they consented was because they saw that the vaccine hadn’t negatively affected her older brother, who was fully vaccinated. Both Heather’s parents went with her when she got vaccinated.
“I feel safe knowing the chances of my bringing COVID home is less likely,” she said. “My parents are still unvaxxed so the last thing I want to do is go out and bring it back to them.”
Though both of Heather’s parents are essential workers, neither is vaccinated. She and her brother talk about the benefits of being vaccinated but her parents are steadfast. Heather thinks that one of the reasons they don’t want to get vaccinated is because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has repeatedly issued specific guidelines only to walk them back later – which experts say is a function of the unpredictability of the pandemic.
Dahlia, an 18-year-old headed to college to play soccer in the fall, was able to decide for herself. She says her parents are split when it comes to the vaccine – her dad is inoculated while her mom isn’t, but they left the decision up to her. She took the time to talk to her pediatrician and her friend’s dad, who is a surgeon, before deciding to get the vaccine, partly because when she contracted COVID in December of 2020, it was harder on her body than she expected. “I struggled a lot getting back to athletics because my lungs were compromised,” she said. After she got vaccinated, her college announced it would require incoming students to be inoculated, which makes her hopeful that she can have a more normal college experience.
Amelie Beck was about to turn 15 when she enrolled in a clinical trial to assess the vaccine’s efficacy and safety in 12-15 year olds. “I wanted to be in the trial because my sister is a brain tumor patient who has multiple medical problems,” she said. “I was in constant fear I’d contract COVID and make my sister sick.” The trial consisted of three appointments with blood draws, deep nasal swabs, and an hour of travel to the trial site but Amelie says it was worth it and she wasn’t scared of being part of the trial. “I had been looking for a light at the end of the tunnel for so long,” she said. “I trusted fully and wholeheartedly in the scientists and doctors. I was very grateful to be one of the teens who helped get the vaccine approved in 12-15 year olds.”
Amelie’s cousin, Jacqueline Teague, who is 16, got vaccinated as soon as she was eligible. Together, the two booked their grandparents’ vaccination appointments after their grandparents found the process arduous and impossible. After that experience, Amelie and Jacqueline began wondering how they could help other people which led them to found VaxConnectKY. In the months since, they have helped schedule thousands of appointments.
They’re not the only young people focused on vaccine advocacy. In California, Arin Parsa founded Teens for Vaccines in 2019 during a measles outbreak when he was 12-years-old. Now, he describes the organization as a “youth collective of ambassadors … who really believe in the lifesaving power of vaccines. No one should get sick, live in fear, or die from preventable diseases.” Arin and his ambassadors have published a guide for how teens can talk to their vaccine-hesitant parents about their wish to be inoculated. He encourages teens to have an empathetic mindset but stay persistent. And if all else fails, the organization outlines minor consent laws and local immunization coalition contacts.
There’s a deep mental health component to the inability to get vaccinated, Arin says. “Teens are struggling... because they can’t protect themselves and their loved ones. They live in fear.”
Kathryn Poe’s fears about the pandemic were magnified by the fact that when COVID hit America, they were regrowing their immune system after a bone marrow transplant two years before. Kathryn has a rare blood condition that necessitated the transplant. Although there isn’t robust research regarding the vaccine and bone marrow transplant recipients, Kathryn says it was never a question of whether or not they would get the vaccine. With their immature immune system, their doctors said it was clear that contracting COVID could be dire.
During the nightmare of the last 18 months, disabled and chronically ill people have watched as their neighbors and colleagues and the country at large discuss whether or not fear of the virus was overblown if it “only” killed elderly, disabled, and chronically ill people. The question was loud: who falls into the category of acceptable losses in our society? Kathryn said the conversations were a “stark devaluing.” “Because I’m a disabled person … I was pretty actively hearing, [my life] is an acceptable loss,” Kathryn said.
Still, they say they try not to default to anger about people who refuse to get vaccinated – and thus put chronically ill people, disabled people, elderly people, and young children at risk. “I think it’s worth recognizing that people are really scared and I’m not the only one who’s scared,” Kathryn said. But, they said, it’s time to think about how we can protect each other. “Sometimes we have to be really brave with how we protect others and that can be really scary,” Kathryn said. “I would just ask people to step out of their comfort zone with me because I have to be uncomfortable. You can also be uncomfortable. This whole situation is uncomfortable.”
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Want more from Teen Vogue? Check this out: Vaccine Rebels: The Teens Defying Their Parents to Get the COVID Vaccine
