Troubling trend on vaccines
Revising a recently approved state rule could make it easier for Oklahoma parents to opt out of getting their children vaccinated at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic is leading many parents across the country to do so anyway.
Health Commissioner Lance Frye wants to tweak a rule that was proposed by Health Department officials, and approved by the governor, before Frye was named to head the agency. Frye says his goal is to minimize traffic at local health departments so workers can stay focused on responding to COVID-19.
Oklahoma mandates that children entering school be vaccinated against several diseases including measles, mumps, rubella, polio and chicken pox. However, the state allows exemptions for non-medical reasons, and the number of religious and personal exemptions has climbed in recent years. That trend, and the Legislature's unwillingness to strengthen Oklahoma's law, prompted the new rule, which requires parents who want to opt out for religious or personal reasons to attend a vaccine education briefing at their local health department.
COVID-19 has already affected childhood vaccine rates.
In May, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that from mid-January through midApril, routine pediatric vaccine ordering and the number of doses administered had both fallen compared with the same period in 2019. Those declines “might indicate that U.S. children and their communities face increased risks for outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases,” the CDC said.
In a recent Washington Post op-ed, Nat Malkus, a resident scholar and deputy director for education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, noted a national survey in April of 1,000 pediatricians showed childhood vaccinations had decreased between 42% and 73%.
Since the pandemic began, “New York City has seen a 91% drop in vaccinations of children older than 2, and Michigan experienced a 66% drop in vaccinations for adolescents age 9-18 this spring …” Malkus wrote.
He noted that the pandemic hinders schools' traditional role of backstopping vaccination rates, because so many districts are planning to start the year with remote learning. Some districts across the country will maintain their immunization requirements, but, “Many other districts are going remote without mentioning immunization requirements at all,” Malkus wrote.
Malkus makes the point that children will mingle in homeschooling pods, “microschools” comprising several community families, and in informal child-care arrangements. The fewer of those children who are up to date on their vaccines, the greater the chance of contracting serious diseases.
“If authorities can't figure out how to solve the problem of falling vaccination rates while schools are closed,” Malkus warns, “we may have more dangerous outbreaks to worry about than just the coronavirus.” That's a frightening prospect indeed.