Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic many Southern states have chosen to go their own way. Their strategies, or lack thereof, have been fueled by misguided governors and state legislatures, an onslaught of misinformation, as well as a general refusal to follow scientific guidelines and recommendations. Now their citizens are paying the price.
Most leaders in Southern states seemingly did not take this pandemic seriously from the beginning. They did not actively promote or encourage vaccination. Tennessee went as far as taking steps to stop promoting all vaccinations at one point while firing the medical director of Vaccine Preventable Diseases and Immunization Program. Now Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia and Tennessee are all in the bottom 10 of states for the percentage of citizens fully vaccinated. The consequences of this are playing out in our hospitals across the South. Numerous reports this week point to hospital systems at their capacity and nearing their breaking point, physicians searching far and wide for available beds, and emergency rooms boarding patients for 24 hours or longer. ICU beds, medical staffing, emergency response systems and other resources are at a premium.
The sobering news is that it didn’t have to be this way. A comparison to states in other regions with higher vaccination rates shows those states are not suffering the fourth wave of cases and hospitalizations to the extent of their Southern neighbors. We are going through all of this again when we have a free, safe and effective vaccine that performs incredibly well at protecting against severe disease, hospitalization and death. Our medical colleagues are exhausted — and where we were once heralded as heroes, we are now being accused of fear-mongering and politicizing the real consequences of this disease we are facing daily.
One notable and ugly example was at a recent Williamson County, Tennessee, School Board of Education Meeting. Pediatricians and other physicians presented evidence-based guidelines for the safe return of children to in-person learning, only to be heckled and threatened. To be clear, the American Academy of Pediatrics and CDC have both released guidelines that outline the safe return to in-person learning for students, which includes vaccination for all eligible children and adolescents 12 years of age and older and universal masking of all students, teachers, staff and visitors, regardless of vaccination status.
Pediatricians are fierce advocates for children, always with the health and well-being of children in mind. This is just one example of how misinformation and the lack of discourse have worked to erode trust in public health, going as far as vilifying pediatricians as they seek to keep children healthy and safe as they receive their education.
Children under 12 years of age are not yet eligible for COVID-19 vaccinations. This has led to the other half of this disheartening turn of events we are seeing all throughout the South. Rising numbers of cases and hospitalizations in children are at pandemic highs for many areas. Our low rates of vaccination have provided the virus with numerous vulnerable hosts, and it has now seized upon unvaccinated children as well. Adults have ample opportunity to receive the vaccination, which would have protected not only themselves, but our children. This is a devastating blow to many of us who have seen children bear the brunt of this pandemic in so many ways outside of the direct effects on their physical health, only to see them now being directly affected in such a devastating way.
It is not reasonable to compare number of deaths of children versus adults and make the false assumption that children are not impacted because their numbers are lower. It is a tragedy that those precious children lost their lives, and many others will be hospitalized, diagnosed with Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome (MIS-C), or suffer long-term side effects.
We also need to consider the other ways that COVID-19 impacts children. When a beloved family member dies, they are devastated. This has been the experience of over 120,000 children in our country. If their parent can’t go to work, the family bills mount up. They may have no access to school during quarantine, so their learning suffers. They miss seeing their friends — and their mental health suffers. Negative effects of COVID-19 are enumerable, especially for our children.
This week should be a wakeup call to the South. To our governors, our state legislators, our school boards and to those who have not been vaccinated: As health care professionals we urge you to finally take this seriously and enact necessary measures to mitigate what we are seeing as much as possible.
The South is a region known for its hospitality and how we care for each other. For those considering a religious exemption to vaccination or to opt out a child of wearing a mask, please consider if that is a truthful attestation of your religious beliefs. We should be good neighbors and help keep our children safe. We fear of the dark days ahead for our region, our friends and families and our colleagues in health care. Please get vaccinated, mask up and urge others to do the same.
Jason Yaun, MD, FAAP is vice president of the Tennessee Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Follow him on Twitter: @JasonYaunMD
Anna Morad, MD, FAAP is president of the Tennessee Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Follow her eon Twitter: @morad_aw