Opinion: U.S. can’t afford to go backward on immunizations

A sad irony of the modern age is that, not so many years after science miraculously engineered immunizations against dreaded diseases, a growing number of people are refusing them. Worse, parents are refusing them for their children.

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data showing that vaccinations for kindergartners nationwide fell during the 2023-24 school year for all types of vaccines. The percentage of children receiving immunizations ranged from 92.3% for diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis to 92.7% for measles, mumps and rubella.

While those figures may seem comfortably high, they are not.

Health officials say a rate of 95% is needed in order to prevent a single infection from becoming a dangerous outbreak.

As KSL reported last month, vaccination rates are dropping in Utah, as well. Meanwhile, measles, a disease once considered eradicated, has begun to surge again in various U.S. locations, such as Oregon.

Statistics from immunize.utah.gov show that only 87% of Utah kindergartners were adequately immunized during the last full school year. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, that figure was at 90%. The percentage of students seeking exemptions from shots has gone from 5% before the pandemic to 7.9% today.

Those figures are for in-person kindergarten students, only. The state said the few students who attend virtually have much higher exemption rates.

These statistics may be hard to digest. The important thing to note is that the trend is troubling, and the long-term impacts on society could be devastating.

It may be easy for today’s young parents to not understand the constant terror with which similar parents lived about 70 years ago. Their children were in constant danger of contracting diseases, such as polio or measles, that could cripple or kill them.

No example is stronger than that of polio. The CDC reports that between 1951-54, an average of 16,316 paralytic polio cases were reported each year in the U.S., with 1,879 deaths. The polio vaccine was licensed in 1955. Since 1991, all natural transmissions of the disease have been eliminated from the Western Hemisphere.

What a blessing this has been, especially considering there is no cure for the disease. What a shame it would be to forget this.

During 1958-1962, an average of 503,282 measles cases and 432 measles-associated deaths were reported each year, the CDC said . A measles vaccine was first available in 1963, after which cases dropped dramatically. The CDC says only 89 cases were reported in 1998, with no deaths. All the cases were likely brought into the country from elsewhere.

The vaccine didn’t just save lives — it saved money. “In 1994, every dollar spent to purchase measles-containing vaccine saved $10.30 in direct medical costs and $3.20 in indirect societal costs,” the CDC said.

But in 2024, 264 measles cases have been reported nationwide as of Oct. 4, with 110 of those being children under 5. Out of all these cases, 41% have required hospitalizations due to complications.

PBS recently quoted Dr. Raynard Washington, chair of the Big Cities Health Coalition, representing 35 metropolitan public health departments, saying these rates also coincide with a worrisome steady increase in cases of whooping cough and other diseases that could be prevented with vaccines.

“We all have been challenged with emerging outbreaks … across the country,” he said.

It doesn’t need to be so.

The irony is that international groups such as GAVI, the vaccine alliance , are finally bringing much-needed vaccines to developing nations that have been plagued by certain preventable illnesses.

This is no time for the United States, the world’s wealthiest and most advanced nation, to forget one of the reasons for its progress and revert back to a time of health uncertainty.