She was just 17, had her driver’s license and was loving her first job at Selma’s Pizza in Ladera Ranch. Kennedy Stonum, a junior at San Juan Hills High School, was in perfect health and spurned COVID-19 vaccines on the theory that, if she was ever infected, it would be a mild case.
It was not.
Stonum fell ill in January. Her infection erupted into a series of rare complications. On Feb. 11, she died.
“Like most teenagers, she felt indestructible,” Kennedy Stonum’s father, attorney Lee Stonum, told CBSLA. “What happened to Kennedy was exceedingly unlikely and very, very rare. And none of that matters to me now.”
Clearly, stubborn gaps in California’s vaccination efforts remain. While nearly three-quarters of Golden State residents have received two shots, far fewer have gotten the booster that scientists say triggers deeper immune responses and may provide much longer-lasting protection, according to data from the California Department of Public Health.
Black and Latino residents continue to have the lowest vaccination rates in the state, with Southern California’s inland counties less protected than their coastal neighbors.
In Kennedy Stonum’s age group — 12- to 17-year-olds — 65% have been fully vaccinated. But far fewer — 31.1% — have been boosted. Orange County’s tweens and teens were most likely to get boosters, at 30.5%, followed by Los Angeles County at 29.8%, San Bernardino County at 21.2% and Riverside County at 20.8%.
Elementary-school-age children have the lowest vaccination levels of all, reflecting the relative newness of their eligibility, as well as parents’ hesitancy about getting youngsters vaccinated when disease is usually mild in them. Less than a third of kids ranging in age from 5 to 11 — just over 30% — are fully vaccinated.
And while Los Angeles and Orange counties are near the state average — 29.5% of youngsters in Orange, and 29.1% in L.A., are fully vaccinated — the inland counties lag far behind. In Riverside County, only 17.9% of kids are fully vaccinated, while in San Bernardino County just 15.8% were vaccinated.
Life and death
As the Stonum family tragically learned, it can be a matter of life or death.
“She had done this calculus: ‘I’m young, I’m healthy, if this happens to me it won’t be that big a deal,’ ” Lee Stonum said of his daughter. “But with irrational concerns about infertility — ‘this is new we don’t know what long term effects are’ — and the general vaccine hesitancy that pervades particularly South County, I want parents and kids to see her story and think, ‘Maybe I should change the math on that calculus a little.’ “
Kennedy Stonum was so sick she was intubated and getting round-the-clock dialysis because her kidneys were not functioning well, he said. It looked like she was rallying and doctors discussed taking her off intubation and dialysis and moving her out of the ICU. Then she took a very sudden turn for the worse, and died less than 36 hours later.
Vaccination might have saved her life. State data for Jan. 31 through Feb. 6 showed that:
- Unvaccinated Californians were 5.4 times more likely to get COVID-19 than those who got a booster dose.
- Unvaccinated people were 10.5 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than those who got a booster dose.
- Unvaccinated people were 16 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than those who got a booster dose.
But despite overwhelming evidence of the vaccines’ safety — nearly 5 billion people worldwide have gotten at least one dose with little drama — a quarter of eligible Californians are not inoculated.
“Encouraging someone who is hesitant or resistant takes time, and also requires a deeper conversation with a provider they trust to get the person comfortable or to see the value in getting vaccinated,” said Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong, deputy county health officer in Orange County, by email. “This is an issue not just in our county, but globally.”
Countering misinformation
Dr. Elizabeth Hudson, regional chief of infectious diseases for Kaiser Permanente Southern California, said there are many reasons why people, especially in communities of color, shun the vaccine, but many are tied to the historic unjust treatment from the medical system. For others, it’s misinformation and disinformation, from believing that vaccines can cause infertility (they don’t) to worrying that they change your DNA (they don’t do that, either), she said.
“Many parents of children who are eligible to get vaccinated, and are not, also worry about the perceived ‘newness’ of the vaccines and what this could mean for their kids down the road,” Hudson said by email. “This is, of course, also misinformation, as the mRNA vaccine technology has been around for more than 30 years.
“It is important to counter these messages with the truth about vaccines,” she said. “Vaccines are safe and effective and have now been given to hundreds of millions of people all over the planet to good effect. We in the medical community need to continue to educate our patients so they can make decisions on vaccination that are based on truth and not fiction.”
Peer education is a longstanding approach in public health for other health issues, said Richard Carpiano, a public health scientist and medical sociologist at UC Riverside. Using it to encourage teens to get vaccinated is a great idea, especially for youth who may be in communities where disinformation abounds.
That’s exactly what public health officials are doing.
“There has been a deluge of social media fear-mongering,” said Deborah Allen, deputy director for health promotion for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. “Parents also have very legitimate concerns — they want to be reassured these stories they’re hearing aren’t true. It’s a tough one.
“They aren’t seeing kids getting very sick, but we need to worry about kids passing infection onto their grandparents or someone they’re living with who has cancer or is immunocompromised. We’re asking people to latch on to this idea of herd immunity. Usually you get vaccinated to protect yourself, but here you’re also getting vaccinated to help others.”
Getting information from a trusted source can be a potent counter-offensive. To that end, the county has trained 1,000 parents and 500 youth ambassadors to share vaccine facts with friends and neighbors through its COVID-19 Community Ambassador Program. Youth ambassadors have taught science classes at their schools and made their own fact-based videos to share, and weekly calls with doctors help ambassadors get answers to the latest questions and concerns they’re hearing.
“There’s a lot of excitement about getting hold of the science,” Allen said. “People really want to understand and have this be less mysterious.”
Ambassadors also can get a stipend. Folks who are interested can visit https://bit.ly/35qr9rw or email TK12Ambassador@ph.lacounty.gov
The state last fall launched an ambassador program, including a series of videos produced in 12 languages, said a spokesperson for the California Department of Public Health by email. California also continues to work closely with schools, providing materials to promote COVID-19 vaccines as well as helping facilitate school-based clinics to make vaccination as easy as possible.
In Orange County, there are several ongoing efforts, Chinsio-Kwong said. Community-based organizations go door to door to encourage vaccination. Local health systems, health plans, hospitals, primary care providers and pediatricians reach out to get more information to families. Some schools offer vaccinations on site. The county has three community point-of-distribution sites, and pharmacies, employers and retailers are working on the issue as well. Resources for upcoming educational events are on the Orange County website at www.ochealthinfo.com/covid.
Riverside County, which has been working with schools and community-based organizations as well, has started using social media as a tool and is looking at expanding beyond Facebook and Twitter, said Jose Arballo Jr., a spokesman for the Riverside University Health System — Public Health.
Drafting doctors
L.A. Care Health Plan, the largest publicly operated health plan in the country, has launched an initiative to put vaccine-hesitant members in direct contact with what officials deem a highly trusted source: their primary care providers.
“With the COVID-19 Educate + Vaccinate Program, we’re asking high-volume primary care doctors to reach out to their unvaccinated patients, have the conversations they need to have to help patients understand the risks, and that vaccines are safe and effective and save lives,” said Dr. Richard Seidman, chief medical officer.
Vaccination tracks with income, and among those who qualify for public health insurance, vaccination rates trail averages by some 20%.
There’s an ongoing disparity, and L.A. Care Health Plan is also trying to combat it with incentives. It has has offered gift cards to more than 166,000 members between Nov. 1 and Feb. 22, Seidman said.
Between vaccinations and natural infections, some hoped that herd immunity might be within reach, forcing COVID-19 to fizzle out — but this virus is a wily one. It has proven to be a highly adaptable and changeable, which makes herd immunity less likely to be achieved, said Kaiser’s Hudson.
“Those who are unvaccinated are most susceptible to the virus and can, unwittingly, lead to the spread of new variants,” she said. “It is the viral replication in those people that leads to these new mutations and variants. When we have fewer people who are susceptible via vaccination, that means we’ll have less chance of more variants arising.”
Kennedy Stonum’s father wants people who haven’t been vaccinated to know about his daughter. She loved playing soccer. She was looking at colleges and planning for the future. She displayed great responsibility. She thought she’d be fine.
He wants everyone to know she’s gone.
“I want to tell them to trust the science,” Lee Stonum told CBSLA. “I want to tell them that YouTube and TikTok aren’t research. I want to tell them that even if it’s a one in a million chance, those statistics don’t matter when it’s your child.”
Several people who’ve been hesitant have been vaccinated or boosted in the wake of Kennedy’s death, he said. That may well save lives.
“At least, a little bit of good can come from this,” he said.
Source: www.mercurynews.com