Chalk up yet another deadly disaster to the authoritarian bungling of public health “experts”: City Health Department data show that rates for standard childhood vaccinations have plummeted.
The first three months of fiscal 2023 saw a drop in routine pediatric vaccination levels from 64.5% a year ago to 59.2%, a five-point drop. The rates were “negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic among other factors,” as the report blandly puts it.
In fact, they were crushed, in good part because city, state and federal officials lied again and again to the public about the efficacy of numerous COVID interventions including masking, social distancing, school closures and vaccines.
This completely wrecked their credibility on medical issues in general — and vaccines in particular.
For the record: Vaccines greatly reduce your chances of getting COVID, and of having a severe case if you still do; they don’t stop you from spreading it. (And the natural immunity from having had COVID is better than immunity from a jab.)
Closing schools seemed sensible in the earliest days of 2020, but the data soon proved that young kids basically never get the bug. Most masks do nothing to reduce transmission, nor does six feet of social distancing. And making toddlers mask in school risks major developmental harm.
Heavy-lockdown states fared no better in health outcomes than mainly-open ones — and fared worse economically and most likely in mental health, too.
Every element of the public-health establishment from Dr. Anthony Fauci on down got many of these points wrong, even long after the science was clear. Worse still, government pushed censorship (as “misinformation”) of any discussion of the downsides of any intervention. And that included the real risks to younger men of cardiac problems associated with vaccination.
In short, the public-health establishment earned a ton of distrust. Tragically, that’s now feeding doubts about MMR jabs, leaving more New York kids vulnerable to measles, mumps and other childhood diseases that actually present real danger to the young — unlike COVID.
So what is the city doing in response to this catastrophe? “Confronting rising vaccination hesitancy through media campaigns, providing educational forums to providers and community-based organizations, and providing tools to talk about vaccine confidence with patients and parents.”
More lectures, in short, from the lost-credibility crew.
America needs a trustworthy public-health establishment, but getting it requires some kind of truth-and-reconciliation commission, with significant firings and massive, unflinching and public mea culpas from city, state and federal health departments — and reforms aiming to ensure they never make the same mistakes again.
Do it for the children.