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Letter: It’s not worth risking the kids

If we see a child floundering in a lake, playing on the tracks with a train coming or simply taking a bad fall from a bicycle, most adults will take immediate action to keep the child safe.

So it begs the question, why are so many risking our children’s health by failing to get vaccinated? It simply makes no sense. The COVID-19 vaccine has proved to be highly effective in preventing serious illness and death, and it is free. Lots of people do have a flu-like symptoms for a day or two, particularly after the second dose, but that seems little inconvenience compared to endangering our children and safely opening the schools and keeping them open.

Our case numbers in Routt County are rising rapidly, and, according to our local public health department, 15% of the cases in the past two weeks were children under 9. They were too young to be eligible for the vaccine, but we can be reasonably sure they were infected by someone who could have and should have been vaccinated.



According to Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccinologist and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, up to 30% of children infected will develop long-haul COVID-19. We have no idea which children will be affected or the extent of the damage that will do to their future.

Refusing to be vaccinated is putting our children, their health, their education and their future at risk.



It is not a risk worth taking.

Linda Delaney

Steamboat Springs


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