Health workers in the United States warn of a “looming disaster” with low vaccination rates and new measles injuries, as well as the appointment of Robert Kennedy Junior, who is skeptical of vaccines as Minister of Health.
Since the beginning of the year, 90 measles were recorded in Texas and about 10 cases in the neighboring New Mexico state and some injuries throughout the country, which raised fears of the return of this infectious disease, which was almost completely eliminated thanks to the vaccination campaigns.
“The measles are a harbinger of a future crisis,” children, a specialist in infectious diseases in Children, told the French Press Agency.
Amid the increasing lack of confidence in the health authorities and pharmaceutical companies, more parents decide not to vaccinate their children.
As a result, the percentage of children in nurseries who received the vaccine against measles, although it is mandatory, at the national level from 95% in 2019 to less than 93% in 2023. Some states show more severe decreases, such as Idaho, where rates reached less than 80%. .
Experts warn that this trend may get worse with the newly appointed Minister of Health Robert Kennedy Junior, who has repeatedly questioned the safety of vaccines and spreading misleading information about them, in what may lead to the return of diseases that have been eliminated or were about to disappear. “It is a disaster looming on the horizon,” Ofit said, commenting on this.
Exemption
“The disaster has started. Our fortification rates are low enough to have weak children with these diseases.
In this state, there was recently to thick cough injuries that caused the death of two children, according to the local media. As with measles, experts say that vaccine exemptions are the cause of this.
In most parts of the country, parents can mention a reason other than medical contraindications to spare their children mandatory vaccination. Many states allow vaccine exemptions for religious reasons, while others allow or both “philosophical” objections.
In Texas, the second largest American state in terms of population, “You can simply say that you do not agree” to take the vaccine, according to Terry Burke of the Ameonisation Partnership Association.
Most of the measles injuries recorded in Texas this year in a province that included a large number of the “militant” MINNITE sect, which reminds of what happened in 2019 with the Kofid’s Kofid’s pandemic in hard -line Jewish societies in New York and New Jersey, with more than 1,100 injuries.
An increasing politicization
Richard Hughes, an expert in health policies at George Washington University, said that despite the different reasons behind these exemptions, from religious beliefs and fear of side effects, up to lack of confidence in health authorities or difficulties to access health care, there is an undeniable trend that is linked. The negative reaction left by the Kofid-19. “
He explained that the population is “disappointed by the government’s response” that varied between contradictory messages regarding masks to compulsory vaccination, adding, “It may have been better to continue to encourage people to receive the vaccine rather than forcing them to do so.”
What exacerbated the misleading information that was circulated on social networks.
At the same time, the fear associated with infectious diseases between the population faded, according to Paul Ofit, who explained, “We have removed the measles. People do not realize to what extent this virus makes you sick and how many lives are harvested.”
Before developing the vaccine in the early 1960s, the United States recorded between 3 to 4 million injuries annually, and between 400 to 500 deaths related to the disease.
But besides these factors, there is also the increasing politicization of vaccination in the country as elected officials intensify bills to get rid of mandatory vaccination locally, prohibit certain types of vaccines or even facilitate the use of exemptions.
The texts on this topic are now twice as it was before the pandemic, said Jennifer Hericks, who is involved in a national monitoring process.
This was translated, for example, by stopping vaccination statistics in Montana and stopping the promotional campaigns of vaccines in Louisiana, both of which indicate a transformation in the public health policy after that practice was the cornerstone of it.
Hughes warned that “this is a harbinger of what we started to see while we were about to see at the federal level, with Robert Kennedy Junior.”