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Courtney, 36
My husband and I are both vaccinated. My 5-year-old can’t be yet. I live somewhere with poor vaccine uptake and assume most of those people will lie and not wear masks given the general behavior of my region throughout the pandemic.
I am likely to be more cautious now that anti-vaccine people have no societal pressure to wear masks because no one will know they are violating the rules. The asymptomatic-transmission possibility through me to my child and the lack of sufficient data on possible long-term impacts in kids combine to make me feel like my child is considerably less safe after this. While the asymptomatic-transmission risk is small compared to if I were unvaccinated, it is still present (according to epidemiologists I saw critique this decision, protection from asymptomatic transmission is roughly 70–80 percent with the least-threatening variant) and a gamble I am not comfortable making. Other viruses can cause long-term issues from childhood infections and we do not have enough time passed to know if that is a risk here.
I am very frustrated that the general statements from authorities today seem to be coming from a place of trusting the behavior of anti-vaccine people, which seems foolish. Instead of having collective public-health policy protection, now people with children or who have immune-system problems that make vaccines less effective have to attempt to protect themselves without the benefit of collective actions.
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