Why Does Giving My Baby the COVID Shot Feel So Scary?

I trust the COVID vaccine; I’ve gotten like five of them. So why does vaccinating my infant for COVID feel so scary?

—Hannah

This question is, I suspect, resonant for many people. And not just about the COVID vaccine; when we talk about vaccine hesitancy around childhood vaccines in general, I often hear a version of this. I believe in vaccines, but … my baby is just so little.

We are programmed in an evolutionary sense to protect our kids. Literally, to grab them from danger (saber-toothed tigers, fire, etc.). These instincts were honed over millions of years to protect from visible dangers, so those are the ones you most naturally are going to be reactive to. Think about how you’d feel if your stroller started rolling down a hill with the baby in it — the visceral panic and adrenaline that would grab you, the feeling that you’d literally die trying to catch it before something happened.

If you think about that moment — when the stroller is moving downhill — if I told you that to protect your baby you’d need them to get a small shot, you’d do it without question.

Fear of viruses is not baked into our evolutionary makeup in the same way. You can’t see them, and our ability to avoid them at all is quite new. When someone coughs near your baby, it might make you nervous, but it typically isn’t going to deliver the feeling of abject panic I’ve described above. The idea that you want to give your child a slightly painful shot to avoid a virus just does not feel the same way that getting a shot to avoid the stroller escape does. It doesn’t have the visceral and immediate value.

Infant shots are an investment now for a somewhat invisible benefit later. And even though that benefit is large, I do not think it’s surprising that we have to remind ourselves of it.

The COVID vaccine in particular probably prompts more fear because it’s new, and because there is a lot of scary misinformation out there. But fundamentally, I think it’s the same general issue as the above. It’s normal to be nervous — but still get vaccinated!