A nurse manages a patient in Utah a measles, mumps and rubella. Other states loosen up vaccination mandates, scale the efforts in the promotion of vaccine and take other steps that will probably reduce vaccine rates. (George Frey | Getty Images)
Other states loosen up the vaccination mandates, scale the efforts of vaccine promotion and take other steps that probably reduce vaccine rates themselves as a great measles outbreak spreads out in Texas.
In the meantime, experts in public health fear that the confirmation of the skeptical vaccine Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as secretary of the US Ministry of Health and Human Services, could give fuel for such efforts, which could lead to the resumed infectious diseases. Kennedy has done numerous unfounded or wrong Claims About vaccines, including linking with autism and cancer and the statement that there is “poison” in the Coronavirus vaccine.
This week the US Food and Drug Administration, which Kennedy is now monitoring, Canceled the upcoming meeting of a scientific body that is expected to discuss the flu vaccine of the next year. This week too, A child not vaccinated died of measles in Texas – the country First measles death in a decade. The outbreak, which has buried itself in neighboring New Mexico, has now grown in more than 130 cases.
The vaccination rates are already lower than before pandemic. The COVID-19 vaccines saved millions of lives, but many Americans are bursting in the vaccination mandate, and the disinformation and the rapidly developing advice to public health undermine the trust of many people in scientific authorities.
Public health will contain politics to a certain extent because it requires resources. … but it doesn’t have to be partisan.
– Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center in the children’s hospital in Philadelphia
The changing settings have an impact: the vaccination rates in children who were born in 2020 and 2021 report In the federal centers for the control and prevention of diseases. The anti-vaccine trend is “the antithesis of public health,” said Dr. Scott Rivkees, a pediatric endocrinologist who worked as a general surgeon in Florida from 2019 to 2021, opposite Stateline.
“The role of people in health departments and the role of people in health care and medicine is to promote health and ensure that the public is safe,” Rivkees told Stateline. “There is such a rich history of the legal precedent, such a rich history of public health that society benefits by vaccinating individuals.”
In all 50 states plus the District of Columbia, children Must receive certain vaccines to go to school. Each state offers an exception for children who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons. Thirty states and the district enable families to skip vaccinations for religious reasons, 13 states that grant exceptions for religious or personal reasons, and two states – Louisiana and Minnesota – do not require people that their objection is religious or personal.
Five states – California, Connecticut, Maine, New York and West Virginia – do not allow medical exceptions.
Republican civil servants have introduced laws in more than a dozen countries to loosen vaccination rules or to reduce their exploit in other ways.
Legislation in Arizona It would make it easier to claim a school exemption while GOP-sponal invoices in ConnecticutPresent MinnesotaPresent up-to-date York And Oregon would restrict or forbid vaccination mandates for adults.
In IdahoA Senate body last week discussed A The invoice That would ban MRNA vaccines, including COVID 19 vaccines, for a decade. Montana And Mississippi However, the legislature took into account similar proposals. And in West Virginia – one of the five countries that currently do not allow medical exceptions to the requirements for school vaccine – the legislators are progressing an invoice That would enable religious and philosophical objections.
“Public health will take politics to a certain extent because it needs resources,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the vaccination training center at the children’s hospital in Philadelphia. Offit is in the FDA panel that should discuss the flu vaccine of the next year.
“But it doesn’t have to be partisan what happened.”
A shift in Louisiana
At the beginning of this month, Dr. Ralph Abraham, the first general surgeon of Louisiana, A memo To the employees of the Ministry of Health in Louisiana and say they should no longer recommend that Louisians get “all vaccines”. The memo also said that the agency would “no longer promote mass vaccination”. Instead, said Abraham, health staff should encourage residents to discuss the risks and advantages of vaccines with their doctors.
The memo ends the strong Ministry of Health of the Louisiana Ministry of Health Story To promote vaccinations by local public health departments, community -approval fairs and media campaigns.
“Vaccines should be treated with nuances and see differences between seasonal vaccines and vaccinations in childhood, which are an important part of immunity for our children. … like any other health procedure, a person’s personal decision is in mind, ”says the memo.
The agency did not respond to several inquiries about comments by e -mail and phone. But in A Letter written On the department of the department at the beginning of this month, Abraham wrote that the state had made several missteps during the pandemic, including: promotion “inaccurate and inconsistent guidance for masking, bad decisions for closing schools, unjustified mandates on civil freedom and wrong demands in relation to natural immunity”.
Abraham wrote that vaccinations can be good for some, but can be harmful to others and that public health has been driven by an ideology for decades that “the victim of some is less acceptable and necessary for the“ greater good ”.
“We should reject this utilitarian approach and restore medical decision -making to its right place: between doctors and patients,” he wrote.
Have the Republican legislators in Louisiana hugging This feeling that says that after the Covid 19 pandemic you want to see less state participation in vaccinations.
“I am pleased that Dr. Abraham chose this approach” required by COVID-19 vaccinations and prescribe that they Provide exemption information For parents. “I’m not against vaccinations. He is not against vaccinations. I am in favor that people can decide themselves. “
Jill Hines, co-director of health freedom, Louisiana, a group that opposes vaccination mandate dismissed the importance of termination of mass vaccine campaigns, since “everyone should have a family doctor if he wants you, and nobody refuses to access a vaccine”.
Kimberly Hood, former deputy secretary of the public health office in Louisiana, found that the state is largely rural and that many residents have no uncomplicated access to a health service provider.
“The non -observance of the vaccination may not sound like a big deal, but it actually invalidates what we have seen and learned in public health for many, many years, namely that they have to make it easy, affordable and accessible,” Hood told Stateline.
“It doesn’t just go back from the vaccination. Together we perform our kind of obligation, which it means to live together in a society. “
Stay the course in Mississippi
But in the neighboring Mississippi, which is also dominated by Republicans, GOP leaders have remained so far. In the past two years, more than two dozen anti-accy law templates have died in the legislation of Mississippi, including this year’s proposed ban on mRNA vaccines.
The state had to deal with the vaccine of the Covid 19 vaccine during pandemic, and in 2022 the Republican government signed Tate Reeves in law a measure Prohibition of covid-19 vaccination mandates.
But Mississippi claimed for years One of the highest vaccination rates in childhood in the nation. The State slipped from first to third place Between 2023 and 2024, after a federal judge decided that the state had to allow religious exceptions. The current childhood vaccination rate is 97.5%, well above the national average of 91%, but lower than that in 2019 to 99.3%.
“Our law is still in force, and if you have no medical or religious liberation, you must be completely vaccinated to attend school or go to day care in Mississippi,” said Dr. Daniel Edney, state health officer of Mississippi. “Science is clear and in Mississippi we are in science.”
Edney said that he had no political pressure to reverse the course. Unlike in Louisiana, where Republican governor Jeff Landry Abraham-a former Republican congress member with three temperatures, who was his transition committee Co-chairman Hat-as General Surgeon, was Edney Selected by The 11-member Mississippi State Board of Health. The governor chooses The members of this committeeBut they serve staggered four -year term.
“I have no pressure from the governor or the legislative regarding our approach to vaccines,” said Edney to Stateline. “We don’t concentrate on politics. We do not blow in the wind, based on the power management. “
