Trump has energized the vaccine skeptics, and that’s dangerous – Even a five-percent reduction in vaccine coverage could spark a large measles outbreak
By Julia Belluz
28 July 2017(Vox) – If there was ever a moment to fear the anti-vaxxers could win, this is it.Consider the following:
- The president courts known anti-vaccine crackpots like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and makes the same kinds of pseudoscience claims about lifesaving immunizations that they do.
- RFK Jr. has seized on the attention, holding a press conference in February — with another anti-vaccine sympathizer Robert De Niro — to promote his well debunked theories about vaccine safety.
- There was even an anti-vaccine march on Washington.
- Meanwhile, vaccine skeptics have been persuading more parents in a number of states to refuse shots for their children.
- A July 24 study in JAMA Pediatrics shows that even a 5 percent reduction in vaccine coverage could spark a large measles outbreak.
The developments are worrying enough that two top vaccine researchers published op-eds earlier this year, warning about the risk of more outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases like measles and mumps.“Even a modest decrease in [vaccine coverage] rates could be enough to cause future outbreaks,” wrote Peter Hotez, a pediatrician at Baylor College of Medicine, in the New York Times. “I’m worried that our nation’s health will soon be threatened because we have not stood up to the pseudoscience and fake conspiracy claims of this movement.” […]As for state-level analyses, Baylor’s Peter Hotez looked at the rate of nonmedical exemptions over the past 13 years in his home state of Texas. He found that in 2016, there were almost 45,000 children who refused vaccines — about double the number of exemptions in 2010 and a 19-fold increase compared with 2003. [more]
I was skeptical that the anti-vaccine movement was gaining traction. Not anymore.
