As measles outbreaks have infected more than 800 people across 25 states, new studies suggest that rising misinformation on vaccines will make response difficult and could lead to thousands of future outbreaks.
A recent medical study modeled different potential outcomes and found that, should the country’s vaccination rate stay where it is, hundreds of thousands of measles cases could ensue in the next 25 years. Even worse, if vaccination rates continue to decline, the study found that number could jump into the millions.
Specifically, under a scenario where vaccinations remain at their current rate, 851,300 cases of measles could occur through 2050, while a decline of 10% in vaccination rates could spur as many as 11.1 million cases.
Those outbreaks are expected to have less of an impact in Connecticut, where the removal of exemptions has pushed the state’s vaccination rate well above the 95% mark necessary to achieve “herd immunity.”
While cases may still be discovered in the state, outbreaks like those in Texas and Kansas, where the disease has infected hundreds, are significantly less likely in the Nutmeg State.
Should national childhood vaccination rates jump 5%, the report found, only 5,800 cases would be expected through 2050, a drastic reduction compared to the other figures.
Of the two directions that vaccination rates can go, most data expects them to decline. The CDC reported that from the 2019-2020 to 2023-24 school years, national coverage of the MMR vaccine, which provides protection against measles, mumps and rubella, among five-year-old children fell from 95% to below 93%.
That’s striking because the MMR vaccine needs 95% of a population to be vaccinated to prevent the transmission of measles. The Kaiser Family Foundation found that 39 of 50 states now have vaccination rates below 95%, which correlates to growing outbreaks in a number of states.
Why are vaccination rates going down? In a new survey, the KFF found that while concern over measles is growing among parents, false claims about vaccine effectiveness and side effects are growing as well.
More than 60% of adults and parents have heard the retracted and false claim that the MMR vaccine causes autism in children, while the rate of people hearing the false claim that measles vaccines are more dangerous than measles itself has grown from 18% to 33% in the last year.
While less than 5% of adults believe false claims about vaccines, their widespread nature is leading to uncertainty, as more than half of adults are not sure if these claims are true. That’s especially true depending on party affiliation. Roughly 35% of Republicans, 26% of independent voters and just 10% of Democrats believe vaccines cause harm.
Meanwhile, twice as many Republicans and independents believe vitamin A can prevent measles and that its vaccine is more dangerous than the virus itself. One in three Republican parents lack confidence in the safety of MMR vaccines and one in six reported having no confidence in them.
While these conditions are ripe for further spread of preventable diseases nationwide, the impacts are expected to be more limited in Connecticut. Compared to the national average of 93%, Connecticut’s statewide vaccination coverage stands at 97.7% as of 2023-24, restricting the ability for one case of measles from a traveler or bad luck to spark an outbreak.
