Jennifer Garner’s BTS Post Is Perfect: 3/3 Masked, 2/3 Vaxxed

Jennifer Garner posts back-to-school Instagram about her kids being vaccinated

Jennifer Garner just sent her three kids, Violet, 15, Seraphina, 12, and Samuel, 9, back to school this week and her honest Instagram post is an all-too-real insight into what parents everywhere are dealing with right now during back-to-school season. Garner, like a lot of moms, is in a mixed-vaxxed household. Vaxxed teens, unvaccinated tweens, it’s a whole LOT but Garner is grateful for whatever she can get right now and her heartfelt post is right on the money.

“The school year starts in dribs and drabs, but today’s the real deal for my family — we are back. 3/3 masked, 2/3 vaxxed (soon, please, 11 and under), every one eager, tentative, bold, vulnerable and — as far as I can tell — smiling under the 3-ply,” she shared alongside a cute, smiling selfie.

Garner went on to express her gratitude to the school, which has, I’m sure, had to deal with a plethora of opinions from parents, on all sides of the aisle, on masks, shutdowns, and distance learning for a year and a half.

“Thank you teachers, thank you, administrators, thank you school staff — for being on the receiving end of a year and a half of feelings (kids’ and parents’) — big and loud, quiet and deep,” Garner wrote. “Thank you science for getting us this far and this much closer to health and freedom. Thank you for moms in your corner and gallows humor and the sun that rises, no matter what. And please, God, hold us in the palm of your hands.”

Thankfully, the bulk of the comments on Garner’s posts are positive, including lots from fellow moms who are happy and grateful for the vaccines already available and a school system that follows the science and believes that wearing masks is the safest environment for learning.

Of course, there were anti-vaxxers in the comments, but I’m not interested in giving them any airtime, plus they’re all beginning to sound like broken records “you don’t know what’s in the vaccine/I trust my immunity” yeah, yeah, we get it.

Garner’s post is also a reminder that kids under 11 still don’t have an FDA-approved vaccine yet. Right now, it seems like that age group may get the shot at the end of this year.

Though the data is promising, Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, told NPR that simply looking at the timeline, if Pfizer submitted the data from the kids clinical trials to the FDA for review by the end of September (as they’ve stated they likely will, assuming all trials go to plan), the actual FDA approval may not come until the end of the year. “I’ve got to be honest, I don’t see the approval for kids — 5 to 11 — coming much before the end of 2021,” Collins stated late last month.

Until then, as Garner states, we’ll all be smiling under our 3-ply.