President-elect Donald Trump’s pick of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has thrust the debate over vaccine efficacy into the national spotlight.
The facts about vaccine safety have never been more important, and they must prevail over misguided theories from immunization skeptics, who may soon have a champion at the wheel of our nation’s largest U.S. health agency.
Vaccinations save lives. For centuries, these therapies have protected global populations from the spread of some of the world’s deadliest communicable diseases.
Before the smallpox vaccine, more than 2 million people were dying every year from the outbreak. The smallpox vaccine itself is credited with saving nearly 200 million people.
The World Health Organization estimates that 20 million people can walk today thanks to polio immunization. Vaccinations administered by the Expanded Program on Immunization are believed to have saved 154 million lives around the globe from influenza, diphtheria, encephalitis, hepatitis, measles, pertussis, meningitis A, invasive pneumococcal disease, rotavirus, polio, rubella, tuberculosis, tetanus and yellow fever.
Over the last 50 years, these immunizations have reduced global infant mortality by a staggering 40 percent.
Prior to 2020, Americans worried little about the spread of infectious diseases, thanks to easy access and a high degree of public trust in the effectiveness of vaccines. But this changed during the pandemic, as falsehoods about the COVID-19 vaccination ran amok, advanced by popular podcasters and other influencers.
Some high-profile celebrities spread misinformation about vaccine safety, while others in Congress politicized vaccine safety by making the debate about personal rights, rather than a public health issue.
Even now, some states are halting their COVID-19 vaccination programs altogether, further complicating the job of protecting the health of vulnerable populations.
The “anti-vaxx” movement is now on the national stage and many Americans have begun to question vaccine safety and usefulness. Ongoing skepticism surrounding the COVID-19 vaccine has resulted in fewer people staying up-to-date with their COVID-19 shots.
Even more dangerous is the ripple effect that COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy has had on other immunization regimens, which has reached record levels. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently announced that broad vaccination coverage among children born in 2020 and 2021 was lower than those born in 2018 and 2019.
There’s a reason why outbreaks of measles, mumps and rubella rarely occur — and why, when they do, they can be traced to groups of unvaccinated individuals. It’s because the MMR vaccine, which children traditionally receive at an early stage of life according to CDC guidelines, works.
Vaccine opponents would have the public believe that such therapies are unsafe and have little impact. But one only has to look as far as whooping cough in the U.S. to demonstrate the vital role they play in protecting the health of our nation. Unfortunately, whooping cough cases quadrupled over the last year, thanks to a drop in vaccinations during the pandemic.
We have the science and the tools necessary to protect Americans from communicable and virulent diseases. The health of millions of Americans depends on vaccines.
According to the Associated Press, Kennedy has become “one of the world’s most influential spreaders of fear and distrust around vaccines.” He founded the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense and has been on record saying that “there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.”
Prior to a deadly measles outbreak in Samoa that killed 83 people, Kennedy’s organization reportedly “spread misinformation that led to the decline in measles vaccination that preceded the lethal eruption.” Kennedy himself met with prominent anti-vaccination advocates in Samoa four months before the outbreak occurred there, forcing the island to declare a state of emergency.
He’s also compared vaccine mandates to “Nazism,” and has advanced the long-rebuked theory that vaccines cause autism. And he has reportedly encouraged the public to “resist” guidelines by the CDC — an agency he claims is “corrupt” — that recommend when children should be immunized.
Such views could have severe consequences for public health. They serve to validate the suspicions of a growing number of Americans who already doubt vaccine efficacy. And they could lead to many more disregarding the need to have themselves and their families immunized against deadly diseases.
The voice of the scientific community — and the demand for medical and public health experts to step forward, convey the facts and advocate strongly for the efficacy and safety of vaccines — has never been greater than at this moment.
The health and safety of every American is at stake. It’s time to communicate real information about vaccines, not disinformation, to ensure that access and availability remain for all.
Lyndon Haviland, DrPH, MPH, is a distinguished scholar at the CUNY School of Public Health and Health Policy.
