Opinion | State Dems pushing back against anti-vax trend

Hats off to state Rep. Lisa Subeck and state Sens. Kelda Roys and Chris Larson for pushing back against the insane campaign to get Americans to shun vaccines.

The three Democrats have introduced legislation that at least in a small way might help increase the state’s vaccine rates by limiting the number of exemptions the state currently allows, which rank among the broadest in the country.

Alarmingly, the percentage of Wisconsin school children with vaccine waivers has doubled over the past 20 years, which the Department of Health Services considers troubling as it potentially exposes classmates to preventable disease.

“Vaccines are critical to the health of our children and communities and ultimately save lives,” Subeck, of Madison, pointed out. “Wisconsin’s continued decline in immunization rates is alarming, leaving Wisconsinites vulnerable to dangerous yet preventable contagious diseases.”

The number of students with a waiver for one or more immunizations rose from 3.4% in the 2004–05 school year to 6.7% in 2024–25 as the federal government continues to sow distrust over vaccinations.

Additionally, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show that 7.6% of Wisconsin kindergartners had an opt-out for non-medical reasons this past school year, more than double the national rate of 3.6%.

That helps explain why in 2025 there have been at least 36 confirmed cases of measles in Wisconsin, once considered eradicated, and 696 cases of whooping cough, resulting in 26 hospitalizations.

One of the bills would end the personal conviction waiver to opt out of vaccinations, an exemption that only Wisconsin and a few other states allow. The waivers for medical and religious reasons would remain.

Another bill would allow children 16 and over to make their own vaccination decisions. According to the bill’s authors, evidence suggests that when given control over their preventive medical care, teenagers often choose to receive vaccinations previously withheld by their families.

Whether the bills would pass this Legislature is, of course, the big question. The fealty Wisconsin Republicans afford Donald Trump is unending, but even some MAGA stalwarts are having misgivings about Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s attacks on a vaccination system that has saved countless American lives.

The latest outrage occurred last week when Kennedy’s hand-picked vaccine advisory panel voted to no longer universally recommend the first dose of the hepatitis B vaccine for newborns within 24 hours of birth, a sweeping overhaul of vaccine policy.

This despite the fact that a birth dose of the vaccine, recommended for newborns since 1991, is up to 90% effective in preventing infection from the mother if given in the first 24 hours of life. If babies receive all three doses, 98% of them have immunity from the incurable virus, with the protection lasting at least 30 years. Childhood infections of the virus was around 16,000 in 1991. In 2023 it was 7.

But under Kennedy’s stewardship, the health department no longer follows science. Kennedy believes that the vaccine causes autism, despite the hundreds of studies that prove that is bunk, and so the country has to live — or die — with it.

Let’s not forget, though, why the nation is being saddled with all this imbecility and why Wisconsin legislators feel a need to introduce bills to at least fight back in any small way they can.

We can all thank Donald Trump, who thought it would be cute to appoint a fanatical conspiracy theorist to one of the most important jobs in America.