Over at the New York Times, Jessica Grose urges us to be optimistic about vaccines even with nutballs like RFK Jr. running around badmouthing them. And she's right. Here's the latest CDC data for childhood vaccines:
Vaccine takeup has been generally flat or up for the past decade and showed no sign of slowing down during the COVID pandemic. The takeup rate for the combined 7-vaccine series increased from 69.8% to 70.1% between 2019 and 2021.
Takeup of the COVID vaccine has been (slowly but) steadily improving too:
Things are pretty flat, but in the US the vaccine rate went up half a point in early 2023 and is now safely over 80%. That's pretty solid.
On the bad news front, only about 40% of Americans have received a booster COVID dose, the lowest of any major country. On the childhood front, vaccine takeup is strongly related to insurance. Here are the rates for the 7-dose series:
- Private: 78%
- Medicaid: 64%
- Other: 67%
- Uninsured: 45%
In a country as rich as the US, there's really no excuse for this. Every kid should have easy access to every vaccine.
The CDC series ends at 2021, and I don't think the current anti-vaccine movement really got started until then. Let's look at 2022 and 2023 before getting complacent.
In a country as rich as the US, there's really no excuse for this. Every kid should have easy access to every vaccine.
Why is it my responsibility if kids are too lazy to get a job down at the slaughterhouse? They're paying good wages and they offer insurance.
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/business/2023/07/06/pssi-child-labor-laws-fine-prompts-to-take-over-cleaning-jbs-marshalltown-iowa-plant-cargill-tyson/70374831007/
About COVID: How do you arrive at a 80% vaccination rate when only 40% had the newest booster--the shot that matters for the variants presently in circulation?
Everybody knows that vaccination should only go to those who can afford it. If the poor didn't want to catch diseases, they should've decided to not be poor. And diseases never leap from the uninsured to the insured, so it's all good. [cough} what's that news about a new strain of Covid emerging again [cough, cough]
/s
Is it ironic that the vaccine with the lowest VE has the highest rise in popularity?
Also, why not HPV?
I wonder how things will change this winter. There was so much illness among kids in the last year, there may be a lot of parents desperate to avoid all that sick time this year.
The local paper just had an article about combined covid, flu, and RSV vaccinations this fall. There could be a lot of demand for them.