As long as I can remember, I’ve always gotten vaccines for various diseases when they became available. We also had our kids vaccinated for everything, and almost always because the doctors recommended it.
Now — if you read the news, we were being misled all these years. Before the Covid pandemic, the U.S. was a world leader in vaccinations, with 95 percent of the population being vaccinated. But — since 2020, the uptake for all of the 15 federally recommended childhood vaccines has dropped by (at least) 2 percentage points. That represents more than 70,000 children. Cases of chicken-pox, whooping cough, and pneumococcal diseases are all up. And measles, which had been entirely eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, is back.
Why the drop in confidence in vaccines? Probably partly because of people’s concerns over Covid shots spreading to other vaccines. But the anti-vac movement actually started a long time ago. As far back as 1998 a study was published that linked the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine with autism. Even though the study was later proven to be false and improperly conducted, the seed was planted.
Over the past 30 years in America, vaccines have saved the lives of more than 1 million children — and — a lot of money. It’s estimated they’ve saved at least $540 billion in health-care costs. They also don’t cause autism.
It appears that anti-vaccine groups seized upon rare cases and the anger of Covid vaccine mandates, to undermine confidence in all vaccines. The Republican Party embraced vaccine skepticism following the lead of Donald Trump, who repeatedly discredited claims of vaccines and autism during his first presidential campaign — that made it a political issue. Support among Republicans for requiring children to receive the MMR shot to attend public school dropped from 79 percent in 2019 to 57 percent last year.
The president-elect has pledged to “Make America Healthy Again” by putting Robert Kennedy Jr., who claims vaccines have “caused more deaths that they’ve averted,” in charge of Health and Human Services. In that position, he could pressure the CDC to stop recommending certain vaccines, which would eliminate insurance coverage for those shots. And that of course could potentially change the cost of vaccines as well as access to them.
No one really knows, but maybe we’re not on the path to making America healthy again — maybe we’re headed toward making American sick again….
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