A tribute to the parents of unvaccinated children, the unsung heroes of the pandemic

 Last update: Thursday 10/14/21

Sir Francis Bacon once wrote, "He who hath children hath given hostages to fortune." His bygone aphorism acquired new bite during the COVID pandemic 

Concern for their unborn children caused many pregnant mothers hesitate to take vaccines that had not undergone extensive testing for adverse side effects that might not appear until after their children were born. Concern for their unvaccinated children made fathers and mothers reluctant to send their children to face-to-face classes, even though the so-called "remote learning" alternatives hastily improvised by local schools were markedly inferior to traditional classrooms. Deficiencies in "remote learning" were often addressed by one parent (usually the mother) giving up their job to stay at home to help educate their children. Now that vaccines for children 12 and over are available, vaccinated parents' concern for their unvaccinated younger children makes them hesitant about returning to normal living (wearing masks, of course) lest they become breakthrough cases who might bring the virus home to their younger children.

Much ado has been made, and rightly so, about the heroism of the doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals who worked long hours, often under inadequate protective conditions, in order to tend to the severely ill and dying victims of the  virus. But little note has been taken of the quiet heroism of the millions of parents who carried burdens not borne by parents in any generation before them in their efforts to keep their children safe from the virus. Whipsawed by the flip-flops of the CDC and confused by the self-serving edicts of ambitious politicians, this generation of parent heroes has persevered. 

Hopefully, they will persevere, even if the current wave of guarded optimism among our pandemic pundits proves to be unfounded, i.e., even if more deadly variants emerge among the billions of unvaccinated persons in the poorer countries of the world, variants that elude the boosters of our best vaccines. Hopefully, our parent heroes will persevere for as long as their children are at risk. 

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