Forecasting the future is difficult. But here’s an easy prediction: The anti-vaccination movement in the U.S. and globally is going to result in the deaths of more children.
This grim portent comes to us courtesy of UNICEF, which is reporting that 30,601 confirmed cases of measles have been reported in Europe and Central Asia this year through Dec. 5. That’s up from 909 cases in those regions in 2022, or an increase of 3,266 percent.
In the United States, measles has remained more or less under control since the 2019 spike to 1,274 cases: 41 cases reported so far this year, down from 121 in 2022. The 2019 surge was attributed to pockets of unvaccinated people spreading the virus. A spike also appeared in 2014, when more than half the 667 cases were attributed to unvaccinated Amish communities in Ohio.
That epidemiological pattern is what should give you qualms about what lies ahead for the U.S. That’s because the anti-vaccine movement is in full cry across the country, fueled by right-wing ideology and the presidential campaign, such as it is, of prominent anti-vaccine agitator Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
For anti-vaxxers, it has been only a short step from opposition to COVID vaccine mandates to opposition to all childhood immunization mandates. This has often borne the banner of “health freedom,” the idea being that individuals should have the untrammeled right to decide for themselves what to put or not put in their bodies.
95 percent
That may be marginally defensible when it concerns individuals’ decisions to eat or drink themselves to death, but obviously vaccination is in a different category: A vaccine defends not only patients themselves, but everyone around them — fellow pupils, teachers, family members, strangers with whom they come into contact.
Vaccination works best when it reaches coverage of about 95 percent of a population, producing what is sometimes described as “herd immunity,” in which a disease is so well suppressed that even the few unvaccinated members are protected.
Kennedy’s entry into the political fray poses a particular peril to public health because political reporters, who may be tasked with interviewing him on policy, may be ill-equipped to challenge the fire hose of misinformation and disinformation he dispenses with cocksure certainty.
Veteran pseudoscience debunker David Gorski says reporters on the Kennedy beat must develop “a deep knowledge of the anti-vaccine claims that he’s been making since at least 2005 and then using that knowledge every time he tries to deny being anti-vaccine.”
Thanks to the sustained assault on vaccination and science waged by right-wingers devoted to burnishing their own partisan bona fides rather than working in the public interest, vaccine coverage of kindergarten children has been declining since 2019 and remains well below the 95 percent target, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The share of children with a nonmedical exemption from vaccination, such as a parent’s purported religious or moral objections, reached 3 percent in the 2022-23 school year, “the highest exemption rate ever reported in the United States,” the CDC reports.
Can vaccine-resisters be reached with a rational counter-argument? One would think so. They tend not to be low-income, low-information residents — two of the most-vaccinated states are West Virginia and Mississippi.
Rather, they tend to come from more affluent, educated families, the sort of people who think they’re so smart they can decide health care policies for themselves, no matter how complex the issue.
In this respect, however, they’re just being stupid — and irresponsible. They should be receptive to reason. Let’s hope that it doesn’t take outbreaks of dangerous diseases like measles in their school districts to open their eyes.
Michael Hiltzik is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times.
