Sesame Street is produced, in part, by our tax dollars, and aired through public television. Parents are the arbiters of their children's best interest, and this includes medical decisions. It is not the role of the government to fund money to produce propaganda in the name of "educational television" to cause children in elementary school to believe that they should be vaccinated, and (implicitly) that their parents are "wrong" in not having them vaccinated. That is not the role of government. I know that the Soviet government and Nazi Germany lionized children who snitched on their parents for thoughtcrime, but this is still America, and our tax monies should not be used to undermine the status of parents as the arbiters of their children's best medical interest.
This isn't an advocacy for parents being the final arbiters in things such as genital mutilation or not providing medical treatment for inoperable cancer, but the COVID-19 vaccine being administered to a 5-11 year old is not that kind of decision. Nor is a 5-11 year old child capable of making that sort of decision. These sort of things are propaganda aimed at children. That's not OK on the taxpayer's dime. The idea that vaccinating 5-11 year old children against COVID-19 is the best course of action for such children is far from settled science at this point.
Well, "Big Bird" was at no point literally advocating for 5-11 year olds to be vaccinated. The message was that COVID vaccinations are good and necessary, which according to the scientific consensus happens to be an objective fact. There's nothing bad about teaching children the scientific consensus, unless you're advocating for the parents' "freedom" - even if they don't hold a scientific degree themselves - to decide what the scientific consensus is.
