Opinion | Under the new anti-vax regime, the viruses are the winners

A couple of years ago in this column I quoted a Philadelphia children’s doctor lamenting the alarming increase in the number of parents deciding against having their kids vaccinated for measles.

Dr. Paul Offit fretted that the growing anti-vaccine campaign was being fueled by selective memory — a selective memory that can only result in serious consequences.

“Most everybody who was born before a vaccine was available had measles. I had measles as did all my friends. I lived, but not everybody did,” he noted. “It is galling that people think if they don’t see somebody die right next to them then it never happened.”

Vaccinations have been overwhelmingly successful in combatting childhood diseases that historically caused so much angst among American families. Doctors throughout the country have been warning for years that the movement to skip the vaccinations would revive the viruses.

So here we are in 2025, with measles outbreaks now a common occurrence once again. A little more than a week ago, nine measles cases were reported in Wisconsin’s Oconto County.

As of July 31, the Centers for Disease Control reported 1,333 measles cases so far this year in 40 states. That figure, incidentally, includes 453 cases of measles in adults over the age of 20.

As Offit pointed out, deaths have been rare among those who caught the virus. But that’s undoubtedly not much consolation to the three families in Texas who lost children earlier this year because they decided to forego the measles vaccine.

Meanwhile, 81 out of 382 kids under age 5 who caught the disease wound up in the hospital. So did 40 of the 491 between 5 and 19 years old. Of those 453 adults who caught measles, 48 of them spent time in the hospital.

So, yes, like a lot of old timers like me who caught measles as a kid, we typically had to spend a few days not going to school and didn’t know anyone who died, but that didn’t mean there weren’t those who did. That’s making it  a risky bet to forego a vaccine that costs around $20 (and often can be obtained for free) under the assumption that the virus will spare your child.

But this is 2025, and instead of moving on to a more healthy future, we’re making Donald Trump’s America great again. Who knows? Maybe we can bring back polio, too.

We now have a secretary of Health and Human Services — the federal office that was once run by two competent Wisconsinites, Tommy Thompson and Donna Shalala — who is more than happy to gamble that people don’t need those vaccines.

Donald Trump’s choice of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime spreader of false claims about vaccinations, has led tens of thousands of parents to opt out of inoculation routines that include protection from measles, mumps and rubella as children begin attending school.

Just last month, Kennedy dismissed all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, before saying that his hand-picked replacements would review the U.S. childhood immunization schedule.

According to a piece in the New Yorker, the replacements have included an anti-vaxxer who was charged by Maryland for practicing medicine without a license, Robert W. Malone. 

Malone has promoted the use of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin for the treatment of COVID. And Kennedy added James Pagano, an emergency-medicine physician who has written two novels but appears to have published virtually nothing on vaccines.

Kennedy’s reconstituted committee will soon be voting on recommendations for flu and RSV vaccines for the upcoming winter and will continue to vote on access to and recommendations for both new and existing vaccines.

And for good measure, the secretary has decided to axe the United States support of humanitarian vaccine aid to underdeveloped countries that’s been in existence for 25 years and been credited with halving the infant mortality rate in that time.

Health officials contend that anti-vaccine advocates in official positions do indeed contribute to vaccine hesitancy. They point to Florida’s surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, an appointee of GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis, who presided over a 3% drop in vaccinations in his state within two years of taking office.

In January 2022, Ladapo advised that children shouldn’t get COVID shots, a move that the Florida chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics called irresponsible.

That same year, he appeared on a podcast hosted by Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, a prominent anti-vaccine doctor in Ohio. When she made false claims that vaccines cause autism, Ladapo did not correct her, nor did he correct her claims that no vaccine has been proven safe or effective.

Last year, the CDC and FDA sent Lapado a letter reprimanding him for spreading misinformation about COVID vaccines and fueling vaccine hesitancy.

Dr. Lisa Gwynn, a pediatrician in Florida’s Miami-Dade County, said she spends a lot of her time countering vaccine misinformation.

“Probably 50% of our job now in pediatrics is explaining to parents the importance of vaccinating their children,” she told NPR.

It’s hard to explain how as a nation we ever came to this. One might have thought that vaccinations that over decades have conquered the diseases that threatened the lives of children would not only be welcomed by society, but improved in the future through research.

Instead, we’re regressing to a time when ignorance and distrust ruled the world. And lives hang in the balance.