“When it comes to measles, there will be outbreaks— with or without Kennedy. That is inevitable. The uptake of MMR will diminish bc trust was poisoned by COVID. The CDC made a huge error adding COVID to the routine childhood immunization schedule, and public health failures have bred vaccine hesitancy. For this reason I suspect measles is inevitable.” – Dr. Vinay Prasad
I have been a pediatrician for 40 years, and throughout my career parents would vaccinate their children without hesitation. Now, for the first time many of them are refusing vaccines, and they all give the same reason- the CDC added the COVID vaccine to the routine vaccination schedule. This huge error has bred vaccine hesitancy, and the return of measles is inevitable. Just yesterday, I spoke to six parents from starkly different economic, education, and cultural backgrounds, who all said essentially the same thing:
My friends and I were obviously going to vaccinate our children against measles, polio, and pertussis. It never occurred to us to question vaccines until February 2023. Then, a bomb dropped. The CDC added the COVID vaccine to the routine vaccination schedule. None of us will ever forget the moment we heard the news. It was all parents at the playground could talk about for months on end. We were shocked and distraught that the CDC would do something like this. Their foolish decision made us question all vaccines, and one by one, we all decided not to give our children any vaccines at all.
Vaccine hesitancy has nothing to do with trust in pediatricians and institutions. As everyone knows, parents make entirely rational decisions about vaccines based on the data and evidence alone. Of course, we had all studied the primary medical literature regarding the the pediatric COVID vaccine. We were deeply familiar with the randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trials, and could rattle the results off the top of our heads. They sound impressive at first glance.
“Among participants without evidence of previous SARS-CoV-2 infection, no Covid-19 cases with an onset of 7 or more days after dose 2 were noted among BNT162b2 recipients, and 16 cases occurred among placebo recipients. The observed vaccine efficacy was 100% (95% CI, 75.3 to 100).”
However, all parents know that detecting statistical significance for outcomes we care about, hospitalization and death, requires an RCT with a large N, and these trials were not adequately powered to demonstrate efficacy against these hard outcomes.
Parents are also keenly aware that many observational trials support the pediatric COVID vaccine. We all read articles such as COVID-19 Vaccine Is Strongly Effective For Children And Adolescents During Delta And Omicron. However, we knew these studies were “plagued by confounding“, rendering them useless.
So we all asked ourselves, if the CDC can’t produce the highest quality RCT data for the COVID vaccine, why in the world would I vaccinate my kids against measles, polio, and pertussis?
The answer was obvious.
One thing is certain, people like RFK Jr. played no role in our decision not to vaccinate our children. The mistrust and misinformation he’s spread about vaccines for decades didn’t influence any of us one bit. He’s totally blameless, even in Samoa. In fact, the best way to curb vaccine hesitancy is to approve RFK Jr, and redirect his energies to generating more data. Similarly, doctors who told us “not to trust public health” have zero responsibility for the fact that we parents no longer trust our pediatricians or the CDC when they say things like, “Vaccines are very safe“.
I know this may be hard for you to hear. You likely supported the pediatric COVID vaccine and now you have to accept responsibility for creating something called the “anti-vaccine movement”. Please, don’t blame me for this hard truth. I am just reporting what my patients tell me every day, though there’s nothing unique about my experience. Pediatricians from around the country will all tell you the exact same thing and research into vaccine-hesitancy supports our observations. In fact, thanks to the CDC, vaccination rates are even plummeting overseas. That’s how impactful this one decision by the CDC has been. When measles returns to the U.S., don’t blame RFK Jr. or the doctors who amplified and legitimized him. Blame the CDC for adding the COVID vaccine to the routine vaccination schedule.
If only they had let more unvaccinated children suffer and die from COVID, we wouldn’t be in this position today.