This trend comes amid a wave of incorrect information and incorrect information about COVID-19 and vaccines that have helped stop pandemic-related deaths. measles, polio and other harmful diseases.
“They’re asking if they’re necessary or if we can give them away later,” said Jason Terk, a Texas pediatrician and spokesman for the American Academy of Pediatrics.
“It’s most parents, but we’re seeing a higher number. “
The anti-vaccine movement has proliferated as its social media posts are amplified through conservative political figures such as foreign-influenced operations, whose vaccine disinformation efforts predate the pandemic.
With the regimen’s declining immunization rates, considerations are developing about a resurgence of diseases that had been largely eliminated in many parts of the world.
In the United States, the percentage of kindergarten children with vaccines dropped by one percentage point to 94% in the 2020-21 school year, representing about 35,000 unvaccinated children.
“I call it parallel contagion,” Terk said. It turns out that this has a hesitation in COVID-19 vaccines and a growing distrust of vaccines and the organisms we have trusted to stay healthy and well. “
Dramatic changes have been noted in some states, at the height of the pandemic: Researchers found a 47% drop in vaccination rates in Texas among five-month-olds and a 58% drop among 16-month-olds between 2019 and 2020.
The researchers, writing in the clinical journal Vaccine, said the declines were the result of shelter-in-place restrictions and vaccine exemptions, also an “aggressive anti-vaccine movement in Texas. “
Washington state reported a 13 percent drop in formative year vaccination rates in 2021 from pre-pandemic levels and Michigan’s vaccination rate for young children fell last year to 69. 9 percent, the lowest in a decade.
Adults too
Inoculation rates among adults and teens have also declined for protective vaccines against diseases such as flu, hepatitis, measles, tetanus and shingles, according to fitness consultancy Avalere, which analyzes insurer claims.
This led to about 37 million doses of vaccination being missed between January 2020 and July 2021 for adults and young people over the age of seven, Avalere found.
The declines at the beginning of the pandemic can be attributed to shelter-in-place orders and social distancing, but “there is a threat of bleeding” due to incorrect information about COVID vaccines, which affects other vaccines that have a long-standing history of protection, Avalere noted. managing director Jason Hall.
Social media has helped create a coalition made up of true vaccine advocates, libertarians, and conservative political figures. These segments have been amplified through disinformation actors from Russia and elsewhere, said David Broniatowski, a professor at George Washington University and associate director of the school. Institute of Data, Democracy and Politics.
“People have opposed vaccines since vaccines existed, but they’ve become more complicated in the last 10 years and that’s largely due to the ability to organize on social media across borders,” said Broniatowski, who researches misinformation about vaccines.
He said that while anti-vaccine activists, libertarians and foreign agents necessarily coordinate, “they have discovered common cause” by opposing vaccination mandates.
“One of the key adjustments noted is the shift from focusing on vaccines as an fitness factor to a civil and political rights factor,” he added.
Conspiracy theories have increased the pandemic, according to a 2021 YouGov survey, which found that 28% of Americans and a significant number from other countries say the destructive effects of vaccines are “deliberately hidden. “
Foreign actors
Broniatowski said foreign disinformation agents “use vaccines as a corner that can mobilize a component of the population. “
A 2018 article co-authored with Broniatowski in the American Journal of Public Health found that Twitter’s anti-vaccine activity was amplified through Russian trolls from 2014 to 2017 as part of an effort to promote discord and undermine acceptance as truth in the fitness system.
Research from the Center for European Policy Analysis has shown that China and Russia have promoted incorrect information about the COVID-19 vaccine, in part to show that Western governments are incompetent and trustworthy.
“There has been a concerted effort by those actors to diminish the position of science because it serves its political goals,” Broniatowski said.
The challenge is also unfolding globally. A United Nations report last year found that 23 million young people worldwide had gained the vaccination regimen in 2020. In the Americas region, the percentage of fully immunized youth has dropped to 82%, from 91% in 2016, due to points such as lack of funding, incorrect information about vaccines, and instability.
Most likely, this will lead to more health risks due to diseases that have been contained more frequently.
“We had safe thresholds of protection to prevent those diseases from being applicable from a public fitness perspective,” Terk said.
Please indicate the appropriate maximum category to facilitate the processing of your application
Thank you for taking the time to provide your feedback to the editors.
Your opinion is for us. However, we do not guarantee individual responses due to the large volume of messages.