![]() ![]() “Vaccination is not a per-individual benefit, it’s for societal benefit, and when someone is injured by that vaccine, I think society owes that individual compensation,” says Walter Orenstein, associate director of the Emory Vaccine Center in Atlanta. Without a robust compensation program, the resulting loss of trust further fuels anti-vaccine advocacy and increases vaccine hesitancy, hindering efforts to reach herd immunity. They also need to know that, insofar as there are real dangers involved, people will be cared for and not stranded in that rare situation.” “People need to be confident that vaccines are safe and effective when they make a decision to get vaccinated. A previous survey found that one in five people cite side effects as the top reason for not getting vaccinated. ![]() As of March about 216 million people are fully vaccinated in the U.S., but 16 percent of Americans still refuse to get the vaccine, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. “Vaccine hesitancy stems from lack of public trust,” says Maya Goldenberg, who studies vaccine hesitancy at the University of Guelph in Ontario. When people don't know if they'll be compensated for legitimate vaccine injuries, or when those who do get them feel dismissed and abandoned, it erodes vaccine confidence. This ambiguity isn’t just a problem for those with injuries. Some experts question whether it ever will. But only one of these programs covers COVID-19 vaccines, and so far it hasn’t actually paid any claims. programs exist for compensating people with severe side effects likely caused by immunizations. “It’s adding insult to injury.”Įmily discovered that two U.S. “We did everything we were told to do, and we shouldn’t be paying the price in more than one way,” Emily says. Though he’s expected to fully recover, his parents are watching the medical bills roll in, despite their insurance coverage. After discharge, Aiden discovered that any activity that raised his heart rate could still trigger mild chest pain. He woke his mother at dawn, and Emily recognized the signs of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart known to occur in rare cases after the Pfizer vaccine.Īiden spent four days in the acute cardiac unit at their local hospital, where he was given anti-inflammatory drugs for the pain. “I began to get frightened because I was able to fall back asleep and then woke up an hour later with the same pain,” Aiden says. He dismissed it, assuming it was related to his asthma, but the pain kept waking him up that night. The very next day Aiden began feeling mild chest pain. And though Emily had heard about possible side effects, she knew they were usually mild.Īiden got his first dose of the Pfizer mRNA vaccine on May 12, 2021, the day it came available for people his age. ![]() Aiden was “pretty excited for it” because it meant doing more activities and worrying less about getting sick. “We take COVID extremely seriously, so our plan has always been to vaccinate,” Emily says. From the start, 14-year-old Aiden Ekanayake and his mom Emily didn’t question whether Aiden would get a COVID-19 vaccine. ![]()
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