‘Vaccine laziness’
Connecticut’s only Gen Z senator urges young people to get shots
STAMFORD — When state Sen. Will Haskell looks at COVID-19 vaccination rates among young people, he doesn’t just see fears about the shot or its side effects.
“I think that there’s some degree of vaccine hesitancy on our generation and skepticism. But I also think that there’s just some degree of vaccine laziness,” said the state’s only Gen Z senator.
“People that think the COVID-19 vaccine is something that you worry about if you’re over the age of 70. (They think) if you’re in your 20s, then you don’t really need to stress out about this virus, it doesn’t need to impact your daily choices, and you don’t need to sign up to get a vaccine,” said Haskell, a Democrat who represents Bethel, New Canaan, Redding, Ridgefield, Weston, Westport and Wilton.
But with vaccine hesitancy consistently high among young adults, Haskell wants more people to understand that those assumptions couldn’t be more wrong.
While the number of residents wary of the COVID vaccine drops in the United States week by week, that drop might
mostly affect older adults. Compared to older age groups, people between 18 and 44 are less likely to want a vaccine than their older counterparts, according to data from the Delphi Research Group at Carnegie Mellon University. Hesitancy only increases when researchers homed in on adults between 18 and 24.
To keep vaccinations it in the forefront of young adults’ minds, Haskell encouraged other young people from Democratic groups from across the state join him in getting vaccinated at Stamford Hospital Tuesday. Even vaccine selfies can go a long way.
“Just posting that you got the vaccine normalizes it in a way people underestimate,” said 27year-old Eloisa Melendez of Norwalk who got vaccinated alongside Haskell.
Cesarina Thompson — dean of the College of Education, Nursing and Health Professions at the University of Hartford — thinks that kind of positive peer pressure is one of the best ways to combat hesitancy among young adults.
“There’s a lot of peer pressure in deciding your behavior at those ages,” said Thompson, who is also the school’s vaccine coordinator.
A survey administered by the University of Hartford to its students showed that 10.3 percent of students would not get a vaccine if offered. Another 12.7 percent of students were not sure if they’d get the vaccine yet.
While the university has leaned into an on-campus publicity campaign for the vaccine in recent weeks, Thompson has her sights set on an even loftier goal — an on-campus vaccine clinic.
Thompson said discussions with the state Department of Public Health are ongoing, but she wants students getting the shot to be as easy as possible. In an ideal world, every student would end the semester with a vaccine.
For Daira Rivera, 22, getting the vaccine transcends just keeping herself safe from COVID — Rivera has a three-year-old.
“It’s so she understands the importance of science,” said Rivera, a Greenwich resident. “Science is real, and people pay thousands of dollars to go to school for this.”
Rivera said she has noticed a notable amount of anti-vaccine sentiments. Rivera said another mother in her neighborhood seemed shocked when Rivera told her she was getting the vaccine.
“It was it was a huge thing for her. She just couldn’t believe that I would be doing that to my family,” said Rivera, rolling her eyes.
In a way, Rivera said she views getting her COVID vaccine as a way to stand up to people’s preconceived notions about what a mother should do.
Protecting families and communities is at the heart of what Haskell wants young people to do as more vaccine becomes available.
“It’s a public service that we’re providing to the larger community, and failure to do so for young people, in my mind, is short sighted in terms of their own health and well being,” he said.
Norwalk’s Darius William, 22, took it one step further: “It is a dereliction of their civic duty.”