Basically all of my kids friends parents are vaccinated -- including the ones that had COVID19 already. Most of my kids friends grandparents are also vaccinated. It's getting incredibly easy to get a vaccine appointment in my area - I just did a search and there are ten available Johnson and Johnson appointments at Walgreens locations within 15 miles of me. That's literally just Walgreens - obviously you could get a vaccine at dozens of other locations. In other words, anyone in my bubble or bubble-adjacent who wants to get a vaccine has ready access to it and - for the most part - has gotten it. We've been very careful throughout the entire pandemic, but all of the evidence suggests that the Pfizer/Moderna/J&J vaccines are very safe, provide a decent length of protection, and the latest news indicates that the vaccines prevent you from being a carrier or spreader of the virus.
However, the reality is we have a shocking number of folks that have "vaccine hesitancy" and based on the polls I've seen saying only 22% of Catholics plan to get the vaccine and 40% of marines are declining the vaccine...we may never reach anywhere approaching 80-90% vaccination rates. So to me all I can do is make sure my immediate family, my extended family (uncles/aunts/grandparents), and my immediate friend bubble (the parents and grandparents and caretakers of kids my kids frequently play with) are vaccinated. After that, I just have to rely on the fact that our family has received vaccines for the adults and that all the evidence seems to indicate kids aren't rampant spreaders of COVID19 and aren't susceptible to nearly the same level of risks. Because if our goal here is to wait until we hit some magical 95% vaccination rate.....doesn't look like that's going to happen ANYTIME soon even if vaccines were 100% available. So for me it would be a yes with two caveats:
- I might call the host parent to inquire as to size of group etc.
- if the host was clearly a super anti-vaxxer nutjob I would have pretty serious issues going because I don't want to be involved in their propoganda even in a tangential fashion (e.g. "Oh EngineerOurFI who is a total masker was fine coming to little Susie's party, so I guess COVID isn't real" etc.) This is a hard one though because if your kid is close friends with this person's kid....you have to start thinking about how long this is going to go on. What if this family doesn't get the vaccine ever? Are you not going to allow your kid to hang out with that kid ever? I don't have an answer for that one, just asking the question.
Our family has made the conscious choice that going forward, since vaccines are now readily available in our area, we will not be
HOSTING any event at our house (Thanksgiving, Christmas, parties, whatever) where invitees are not vaccinated (assuming they are of age to receive vaccinations). However, as someone that is vaccinated, it honestly doesn't bother me to
ATTEND an event where there are some unvaccinated people because I know that my family will be fine. I just refuse to host any event where folks aren't vaccinated because I don't want to essentially enable the spreading at my house/my event due to some
idiots individuals not being vaccinated. This may cause issues with my mother, because she's become an anti-vaxxer over the past 12 months (/facepalm) and I'm literally about to call her today to have what will likely be an uncomfortable conversation where I let her know that she politely won't be invited to events at my house until she gets the vaccine (just now having this conversation since the vaccines have become drastically more available/accessible in our area).
If either of my kids had substantive pre-existing conditions (they do not) then I probably would feel differently until such time as the kids could be safely vaccinated, of course.