Realistically, we can’t get to 80 percent vaccine coverage without vaccinating kids and teens. That’s because around a quarter of American adults—including up to half of Republicans—don’t intend to get vaccinated, according to recent polls. Vaccinating kids and teens could somewhat make up for jab-resisting adults and nudge the country closer to population-level immunity. But millions of those kids and teens—the exact number is unclear—have anti-vaxxer parents. Some hesitant parents mistakenly believe kids and teens can’t catch—or die from—COVID. In fact, they can. As more older Americans get vaccinated—and as new, more transmissible variants of the novel coronavirus evolve and spread—more younger people are getting sick. Children now account for around 20 percent of U.S. COVID cases, as NPR reported. “All infections risk increasing variants, so controlling infection matters,” Jennifer Reich, a University of Colorado sociologist who studies immunization, told The Daily Beast. “Young people will also benefit from the vaccine directly. Although uncommon, COVID can cause a bad outcome in some young people. Although it is not yet well understood, there are reasons to believe that young people may face longer-term challenges following infection, including multisystem inflammatory syndrome. That is not inconsequential.”