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Vaccine coverage for kids is falling off

The New York Times reports today that childhood vaccination rates have dropped in the post-COVID era. That's true, but the news is both better and worse than they suggest:

The news is better because the Times chart has a short y-axis that exaggerates the reported decline of 2-3 percentage points.

But the news is worse because the Times focuses on a few individual vaccines instead of the full 7-series recommended for newborns (which immunizes against 11 diseases). The coverage rate for that has dropped four points and is now a full eight points below our longtime target.

As for why this has happened, a different Times graphic tells most of the story:

The conservative jihad against the COVID vaccine spilled over into everything. Red states are vaccinating their kids less, and that probably accounts for most of the overall decline.

25 thoughts on “Vaccine coverage for kids is falling off

  1. Salamander

    This is a time bomb. Everything will be hunky dory for years, maybe decades, before the impact hits. And who knows if the country will be in a position to handle it then? Whether politically or infrastructurally?

    We can't even be sure whether or not the Democrats will get the blame!!

    1. Art Eclectic

      Being as Americans are stupid, it will take more than 1 outbreak and a bunch of resulting dead kids to get the point across. Joe Rogan and the other podcast warriors will find a way to pass blame off onto a variety of other sources until they finally have to admit that vaccinations would have worked and saved lives.

      As a people, we have become immune to dead kids if personal freedoms are on the line, so this will take awhile.

  2. rick_jones

    The news is better because the Times chart has a short y-axis that exaggerates the reported decline of 2-3 percentage points.

    Which Kevin seems to have repeated here…

  3. J. Frank Parnell

    I nominate the red states for a Darwin Award. What can be a more sincere pronouncement of a desire for self-destruction than placing your own children at risk?

  4. memyselfandi

    The 2nd graph ignores the impact of the maggots 'home schooling' their off spring, who are also very likely to be weapons of mass killing.

  5. Chondrite23

    We are probably already experiencing more childhood diseases among unvaccinated children. It just doesn’t make the news. Even if they get measles or mumps most kids recover. A few die. Some have life long disabilities. It doesn’t make the news like a mass shooting.

    Roughly 10,000 people a year die in alcohol related car crashes. That is three times the 9/11 death toll. But these don’t happen in one day in one big crash like 9/11. They happen bit-by-bit in out of the way places.

    1. Salamander

      A good point. I myself had measles, rubella, mumps, chicken pox, and probably a few more things that we have vaccinations for these days. I was vaccinated for and did not come down with smallpox, polio, or tuberculosis, which I think have become extinct enough that kids today don't need those "jabs."

      I survived, as most did, but who knows with what after effects? A disease doesn't need to be 100% fatal to make it worthwhile not to get it. (sorry about the "grammar.")

  6. KJK

    So these morons are ok with killing or maiming their children to show loyalty to Orange Jesus. Glad my granddaughters live in SD CA.

    I'm sure that "Worm Brain" will improve the trend when he gets to run HHS.

  7. bbleh

    They will immiserate themselves, impoverish their families, allow the infrastructure and the environment to collapse around them, and even watch their kids die needlessly, but they will NOT be told what to do by some bunch of ee-leetist know-it-all "doctors" and "scientists."

    They trust their (typically more than ample) guts, you see.

    Republicans: the party of ideas!

    1. ConradsGhost

      Humans as a race are by my estimation ~80% "followers" and ~20% "leaders." On a spectrum, of course, and everybody's a mixture. It's not a defect, it's a feature, a result of both genetics and socialization. People who have the wherewithal to climb the SES ladder are by necessity going to be on average more independent, or, less dependent on group identity. Folks toeing the MAGA line to the point of sacrificing their children makes sense from this perspective - in a very real way it taps into survival, where identification with the group feels, elicits a medulla response, is activated as a matter of survival. Abraham and Isaac, and all.

      There was a quote in The New Yorker last fall attributed to Ramaswamy: "People need to be led." The forces of evil have for thirty years relentlessly identified and propagandized fear of and hatred for the back stabbing enemy: liberals, Democrats, wokes, uppity blacks, Messkins, intellectuals, scientists, etc etc but really, Democrats and liberals. I think at this point the fact that MAGA ground troops are willing to sacrifice their children, and dissociate from this by any and all means available, is predictable.

      I remember when Biden won in 2020 folks were warning against counting TrumpCo out, that it was going to take ten years of electoral defeat to turn things away from autocracy. It's not decadal, it's generational and getting worse. The best near term outcome I can envision is a succession of catastrophic events - environmental, financial, structural, medical, social, cultural, governmental - that decimate areas of MAGA support to the point of collapse. Let the kakistocracy have the reins. Let them do their worst. Do not try and fix a fucking thing. Let Americans - not just MAGAnauts - feel what it's actually like when the worst are not only full of passionate intensity, but charged with making shit run, making shit work. This is what you voted for.

  8. Five Parrots in a Shoe

    "The great thing about knocking up an antivaxxer is that you'll only have to pay 6-8 years of child support."

    - a comedian whose name escapes me

  9. cephalopod

    I can't be quite so sanguine. The four worst states for child immunization are Idaho, Alaska, Minnesota, Wisconsin. While the first two are red, Minnesota is blue, and Wisconsin is very purple.

    And what two states had the most measles cases in 2024? Minnesota and Illinois.

    There is a lot of vaccine misinformation in immigrant communities. The Somali community in Minneapolis was targeted in particular, causing several measles outbreaks in Minnesota. It's no surprise that Guam was also a victim of both misinformation and an outbreak.

    The right-wing misinformation machine has gone heavily into foreign-language propaganda. If anti-vaxx rhetoric starts successfully taking over spanish-language media, we could be in for a lot of outbreaks all over the country. The worst case scenario is infection among groups with higher barriers to Healthcare access.

    1. FrankM

      Drive through Minnesota and Wisconsin during an election year. All along the Interstate all you see is Trump signs. Minneapolis-St.Paul is liberal; the rest of the state is ruby red. Same for Wisconsin. Outside of Milwaukee and Madison, it's solid Trump country. Illinois: same thing. Solid D in Chicago (and trending D in collar counties) and ruby red downstate. This same scenario plays out in most states with large cities.

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