Actor Matthew McConaughey, a Texas native who is considering running for governor of the state, said this week that he isn’t ready to vaccinate his children against COVID-19.
“It’s scary. Right now, I’m not vaccinating mine, I’ll tell you that,” McConaughey said when asked about vaccine mandates for children by New York Times DealBook Summit host Andrew Ross Sorkin this week.
He added: "I couldn't mandate having to vaccinate the younger kids. I still want to find out more information." However, the Oscar-winning actor told Sorkin that he does take the pandemic seriously. When it comes to vaccinating his children, he said he wants to take time to learn more.
According to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll, around one-third of parents surveyed are in the same boat as McConaughey and also want more information before they get their children vaccinated. Another third wanted to get their children vaccinated right away and a third said they would not get their children vaccinated.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended Nov. 2 that children age 5 to 11 get vaccinated with the recently approved Pfizer BioNTech vaccine for children.
“Do I think there’s any scam or conspiracy theory? Hell no, I don’t,” McConaughey said of vaccines. “We’ve all got to get off that narrative.”
In fact, McConaughey said that his family has taken the pandemic very seriously. He lives with his wife, model Camila Alves, his children – 13-year-old Levi, 11-year-old Vida and 8-year-old Livingston – as well as his mother.
“I’ve been vaccinated, my wife’s been vaccinated. We’ve got a high-risk person in our household – my mother, who is 90 – she’s immunocompromised,” he said.
“Then, why don’t you want your kids to be vaccinated?” asked Sorkin.
McConaughey said that his family has always been “slow” about getting vaccines.
“We’ve quarantined harder than any of our friends have, and still are,” he added.
While McConaughey prefers frequent testing and quarantining, he acknowledged that not everyone has the resources or ability to avoid getting vaccinated.
“I’m in a position though, where I can do that,” he said. “I understand that not everyone can do that.
Even so, McConaughey said he would not support mandating vaccines for children yet. Earlier in the interview, he said that he supports mask mandates.
Current Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has resisted both mask and vaccine mandates in the state.
After McConaughey’s comments about vaccines for his children, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy stressed the importance of child vaccination on CNN.
“Many kids have died. Sadly, hundreds of children -- thousands -- have been hospitalized, and as a dad of a child who has been hospitalized several years ago for another illness, I would never wish upon any parent they have a child that ends up in the hospital,” he told the outlet.
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