For decades, vaccines have kept Americans healthy – effectively mitigating the spread of dangerous, even deadly illnesses like measles and polio to the point of largely eradicating them.
But growing anti-vaccination sentiment, championed by a powerful and far-reaching grassroots campaign, has imperiled that progress on devastating disease prevention. Even Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., current Secretary of Health and Human Services, who has stated in the past that “autism comes from vaccines” – a widely debunked claim – has taken up that mantle.
Now, broad swaths of the nation no longer have the mutual protection (or “herd immunity”) needed to keep such illnesses from taking hold, a new study finds. In 68% of U.S. counties and jurisdictions, immunization rates have fallen below 95%, the level needed to stave off outbreaks, researchers at NBC News and Stanford University have found.
The joint study also discovered that 77% of counties in the U.S. have reported “notable” declines in childhood vaccination rates over the years. And “as childhood vaccination rates fall, we’ll see more diseases like measles,” Dr. Sean O’Leary, an infectious diseases expert with the American Academy of Pediatrics, told NBC News.
O’Leary was clear about the outcome of this trend: “We’ll see more children die – tragically – from diseases that are essentially entirely preventable.”
These findings are revealed as Kennedy prepares to hold a federal vaccine panel that will vote on recommendations for Covid boosters, chickenpox and Hepatitis B inoculations. Several members of the panel have expressed vaccine skepticism.
It Impacts Women, Too
In addition to the chief concern of children’s health, the rampant spreading of illness would take a heavy toll on women’s professional and personal wellbeing, too, as we remain America’s primary caregivers to both young and old. Indeed, women are 10 times more likely than male parents and partners to take time off from work to tend to their sick children.
St. Louis has become a microcosm of these broader concerns, the NBC News and Stanford researchers found. There, vaccination rates have fallen from nearly 90% in 2010 to 74% in 2024 – even lower than the 77% vaccination rate in Gaines County, Texas, where a measles outbreak ripped through the local population earlier this year.
“That’s a heavy, heavy fact,” Virginia Wilson, head nurse at the Premier Charter School in St. Louis, said to NBC. “We’re just in a waiting phase before measles comes and rocks the state of Missouri” and the many other at-risk parts of the country.
Though there are other factors at play in the growth of the issue – access to healthcare and insurance coverage and easing school requirements among them – experts point to the spreading of vaccine misinformation as a significant driver.
“It makes me sad,” Dr. Thomas McKinney, a pediatrician at Affinia Healthcare in St. Louis, added. “The vaccines that we’re giving have been such an important tool in preventing so much illness in kids, and just the community as a whole.”
