Unintended Consequences of Dumb Public Health Policies

The CDC is out with a report expressing concern about the rise in school children seeking exemptions from general childhood vaccines.  This is not good–there is very low risk from the normal childhood vaccines, and not getting vaccinated not only exposes the child to risk of very serious disease, but exposing all children the unvaxed child comes into contact with.  It is just plain dumb not to get your child vaccinated.  But this is happening because the public health authorities in most places mandated that children get CV-19 vax to go to school or for other purposes.  This was even dumber, as children are at incredibly low risk of serious disease from CV-19 infections and have been shown to not be a significant source of transmission.  There was no justification for this.

And the lies CDC and others told about the CV-19 vaccine effectiveness have percolated through the public consciousness and left people with the clear, and accurate, perception that the vaccines didn’t make a lot of difference in the spread of CV-19 or the seriousness of the resulting disease.  This is pretty common for a respiratory virus vaccine.  Of course, the CDC does nothing to recognize its own role in this rise in vaccine doubt.  So it will make the same mistake over and over.  The best thing the agency could do now is come out and say we made errors in regard to CV-19 vax recommendations but that doesn’t mean you should put your children at risk in regard to typical childhood vaccinations.  (CDC Report)