Dear LAS families,
Ready for a summer of fun?
If your child is 12 or older, you can enjoy it much more safely by getting them vaccinated for COVID. The VINI system will register anyone 12+ years old. Go here to sign up: https://vini.nh.gov/providers/s/. There are a lot of places offering vaccinations in our area, hopefully you can find one that works just right for you and your family.
To anyone who is feeling like, "I don't know if it's safe to vaccinate my child for COVID",
The risks regarding the possible side effects of the vaccine do not seem to be nearly as great as the risks related to children getting COVID-19. Most - but certainly not all - children get asymptomatic or mild forms of COVID-19, however there are additional risks beyond the infection such as long-term COVID-19, MIS-C, or asymptomatic children potentially passing COVID to vaccinated but elderly and/or medically fragile people. Anyone who is vaccinated will not need to quarantine if exposed to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19. Only if showing any symptoms would that be necessary. As many of you have suffered through quarantining at least once, you are well aware that it is complicated and stressful. There is no way to predict who will be okay and who will get really sick and who might not survive. There is a link in the next paragraph with information about side effects from the Pfizer vaccine in both the 12-15 age group and older age groups.
After watching this presentation from the CDC, reading this information about possible side effects that have been reported, reading these FAQs, and hearing multiple different physicians state that it is incredibly important to vaccinate, I feel good - no, I feel super excited - about bringing my 12, 14, and 15 year old kids to get vaccinated on Saturday. I will have soup and Motrin on hand in case they have any short term side effects. I will not premedicate them before they get the vaccine, because that can interfere with how well the vaccine works. The other half of my family is already vaccinated. For me, the risk of prolonging this pandemic, of the evolution of more dangerous variants of the virus (the more it spreads, the more variants will be created), and the potential of spreading COVID to an elderly or immunocompromised person outweighs the potential side effects of the medication.
Sincerely,
Heather Boyd, BSN, RN
Lincoln Akerman School Nurse
I have been vaccinated, and all of my children (ages 12, 14, 15, and 17) will be fully vaccinated by 6/20/21.
Sign up to get the COVID-19 vaccine for anyone 12 years and older here: