The Gen Zer from Ohio who made a splash two years ago for defying his mother to get his childhood immunizations has a message for teenagers seeking Covid-19 vaccinations and getting pushback from their parents — get one if you can.
Ethan Lindenberger, 20, got his first dose three weeks ago and said doing so “could save someone’s life.”
“Teens faced with this have to weigh things like, ‘I know vaccines are lifesaving, but I don’t want to become homeless,’” he told NBC News. “So I tell them, if you can’t have that loving conversation with your parents and you’re of age, weigh those consequences seriously.”
“Don’t get yourself kicked out or seriously in trouble … but, if you’re able to have that conversation, please get your shots as soon as possible,” he went on to say.
Summer Johnson McGee, dean of the University of New Haven’s School of Health Sciences, said she wholeheartedly approves that message.
“Ethan’s advice is spot on for encouraging teens to undertake education and straight talk with parents about their desire to be vaccinated,” she said. “Teenagers who do not share their parents’ views on vaccination are in a tough spot, but should advocate for their own decision-making to be vaccinated if they wish.”
Lindenberger gained national attention in 2019 when he posted on Reddit that he had never been vaccinated because his mother believed that vaccines are dangerous. He wound up getting his shots over his mother’s objections and later testified before a Senate committee about how misinformation that appears on Facebook, Twitter and other social media fuels the anti-vaccination movement.
Doing so brought him both widespread praise from some but scorn and even death threats from the movement’s supporters.
Lindenberger spoke out as a nationwide push is on to get as many teenagers as possible vaccinated now that everyone over 12 is eligible to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccinations.
There are some 25 million children between the ages of 12 and 17, according to Census Bureau data compiled and analyzed by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. And while the rates of death or serious disease from Covid-19 are lower in children than in adults, public health experts have called getting this population vaccinated a critically important step toward completely reopening the nation’s schools and the economy.
Still,a recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Vaccine Monitor found that nearly a quarter of parents surveyed would not allow their teenagers to be vaccinated and 18 percent said they would only do it if the schools mandated it.
Parental consent is something children have to contend with across the country but it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach as states have differing rules.
Nearly all states require consent from a parent or guardian to administer a Covid-19 vaccine shot to children between the ages of 12 and 15, the group the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approved for shots earlier this month, according to a recent CNN analysis.
There are exceptions in just five states: in North Carolina, teenagers can receive vaccinations without parental consent; in Tennessee and Alabama, teenagers 14 and older don’t need consent; while in Oregon that age is set at 15; and finally in Iowa, it’s left up to the health care provider to decide.
In all other states, those between 12 and 15 are required to have parental approval before receiving the Covid-19 vaccination. For teenagers between the ages of 16-18, though, it’s all over the map.
In California, for example, minors can’t get the Covid-19 vaccination without their parents’ consent, according to the vaccine information website TeenVax. But a 16-year-old in South Carolina can do so without parental permission.
Just how many teenagers are in this predicament remains unclear. But Kelly Danielpour, who runs VaxTeen, said that among the dozen or so queries she gets every day, many are from teenagers contending with parents opposed to them getting vaccinated against Covid-19.
“I started this site prepandemic,” The 18-year-old who lives in Los Angeles said. She said she was inspired by teenagers on Reddit who wanted to be vaccinated, in spite of their parents’ anti-vaccinated beliefs, to start an organization intended for her peers specifically. One of her primary objectives at the time was fighting misinformation about the HPV vaccine
“But since the pandemic, getting Covid-19 vaccinations has become the most prevalent issue,” Danielpour, who has already received the Moderna shots, said. “I am lucky because my parents are pro-vaccine, but there seems to be a lot of teens whose parents are opposed to letting them get vaccinated.”
The first step, she said, is arming the teenagers with information and resources they can use when talking to their parents — and in some cases that’s worked. She said she recently heard from a teenager whose parents relented after she made an argument for getting vaccinated against Covid-19 using VaxTeen information.
But if that doesn’t sway the parents’ opinions, she said, she tries to get the teenagers information on “minor self-consent.”
“It’s an issue of access, as well as consent,” Danielpour said.
Arin Parsa, the 13-year-old founder of the Teens for Vaccines advocacy group, said in an email to NBC News that his group has been “in the trenches helping many teens who face vaccine-hesitancy as well as extreme anti-vax views in their families.”
“People often don’t realize that lack of teen rights for immunizations is not only a public health issue but a severe mental health issue for many,” Parsa wrote.
Lindenberger knows firsthand how complicated family dynamics can be when children and parents fall on opposite sides of the vaccination divide. In fact, he finds himself at odds with his mother again with regard to the Covid-19 vaccine.
“What I hear from her are a lot of the same arguments she uses to oppose other vaccines,” he said.
Lindenberger said his father, with whom he lives in Norwalk, Ohio, was supportive of his decision to get vaccinated against Covid-19.
But he said he’s heard from teenagers eager to get vaccinated who have been thwarted from doing so by their parents.
“I’ve had a few people reach out to me wanting to know how to deal with parental pushback against getting vaccinated,” Lindenberger said.
And he acknowledges that there is no easy answer.
“If your parent is opposed, clearly there are issues that need to be worked out. It’s not as simple as getting vaccinated and telling your parents to kick rocks,” Lindenberger said. “There is a complex family dynamic here.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
