The decreasing trust in agencies and institutions in America has a new twist: With the growing wariness of public health authorities and the various disputes over the benefits of the Covid-19 vaccines, the public is now more hesitant about childhood vaccination schedules in general: More than four in 10 Republicans and Republican-leaning voters now say that they oppose school districts requiring that children get some historically given childhood vaccines, such as for measles, mumps, and rubella.
The study by Kaiser Family Foundation shows that nearly 3 in 10 parents now oppose the general vaccination requirements.
The report comes after over 80 children in Ohio have been diagnosed with measles. In 2021, only 49 cases of measles were reported across five jurisdictions in America; so far this year, the number has reached 117, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Overall, nearly three in ten adults (28%) nationally now say that parents should be able to decide not to vaccinate their children for measles, mumps, and rubella rather than those vaccinations being required to attend public schools, up from 16% in a 2019 Pew Research Center poll conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic. Among parents, opposition to requiring those childhood vaccines now stands at 35%, up from 23% in 2019,” Kaiser Family Foundation says.
The KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor survey reveals that parents’ opposition to requiring those childhood vaccines stands at 35%, up from 23% in 2019.
Most of the public is still on board with vaccinations for these dangerous childhood diseases, but the number supporting mandatory vaccinations for children is down to 71%, from 82% in 2019, before the Covid pandemic and the vaccines that came on its heels.
“The growing opposition stems largely from shifts among people who identify as Republican or lean Republican, with 44% now saying parents should be able to opt out of those childhood vaccines, up from 20% in 2019. In contrast, the vast majority of Democrats and those who lean Democratic support requiring the vaccines for public school students (88%), little changed from 2019 (86%,” Kaiser said.
Also from the KFF report:
“Currently, all states and the District of Columbia require children to be vaccinated against certain diseases, including measles and rubella, in order to attend public schools, though exemptions are allowed in certain circumstances.
“Despite growing opposition to requiring childhood vaccines, the new survey captures modest shifts in the public’s view of their value. Today 85% of the public and 80% of parents say the benefits of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccines outweigh their risks, little changed from 2019, when 88% of the public and 83% of parents felt that way.
“Even among people who have not gotten a Covid-19 vaccine, a large majority (70%) say the benefits of these childhood vaccines outweigh the risks, though one in four (26%) say the risks outweigh the benefits.
“The new survey also finds that about four in ten adults report that they either have already gotten the recommended bivalent booster shot (22%) or say they will get it as soon as they can (16%). The bivalent booster targets both the original and omicron Covid-19 strains and has been available since September.
“Among adults ages 65 and older, who face higher risks from COVID-19, about four in ten (39%) say they have already gotten the bivalent booster, and another 16% say they intend to do so as soon as possible. Still, this currently leaves more than half of older adults without the protection of the bivalent booster.
“Democrats (38%) are much more likely than independents (18%) or Republicans (12%) to say that they’ve gotten the new booster.
Vaccinated adults who have not gotten a bivalent booster are largely skeptical about its value. Among this group, more than four in ten (44%) say they don’t think they need the new booster, and more than a third (37%) say that they don’t think its benefits are worth it. A similar share (36%) say they are too busy and haven’t had time to get it.
“Fewer cite other reasons such as bad side effects from earlier Covid-19 vaccines (23%), waiting to see if cases increase in their area (17%), or waiting until they travel or see vulnerable family and friends (12%).
“Among those ages 65 and older who are vaccinated but have not gotten the updated booster, about a third say that they don’t think they need it (36%) and that they don’t think the benefit of the updated booster is worth it (36%). About one in four (23%) say they have been too busy or have not had time to get the new booster yet.
“Most vaccinated Republicans or Republican-leaning independents who haven’t gotten the new booster say that they don’t think they need it (64%) or that its benefits are not worth it (61%). Among vaccinated Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents who have not gotten the updated booster, the top reason is being too busy (51%).”
Parents of children ages 12-17 said just 16% of their children had received a Covid booster shot. Only 14% of children ages 5-11 have been boosted. Over half of the parents surveyed said they would not get their children vaccinated or boosted for Covid.
This survey showed that parents are now more worried their children will get sick from RSV (56%) or the flu (51%). About 47% of parents were worried about their children getting Covid.
Designed and analyzed by public opinion researchers at KFF, the Vaccine Monitor survey was conducted from Nov. 29 – Dec. 8, 2022, online and by telephone among a nationally representative sample of 1,259 adults, in English and in Spanish., the foundation reported. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4 percentage points for the full sample. For results based on other subgroups, the margin of sampling error may be higher.
Read more at the KFF Covid-19 Vaccine Monitor website at this link.
School don’t set the vaccine requirements, the State of Alaska does. Your headline is intentionally misleading.
I know it’s more fund to be critical, Alaskans for Freedom, but the KFF report shows that they asked the question in a certain way — parents vs. schools. But you go ahead and assume we are intentionally misleading people. Or you can click on the KFF link and read more about their survey. Your choice. – sd
I did follow the link prior to posting my comment. They asked a loaded question to get the answer they wanted, and you played right along with it instead of pointing out the biased question.
You are quibbling over irrelevant minutia and engaging in pure sophistry here, AFF, by pretending to not understand the obvious point here, that being medical coercion by authorities, and the lack of parental control over their children. Could you possibly be any more disingenuous?
Alaskans for Freedom: I think you are nit picking. The State of Ak does require the vaccinations, however, it is the school nurses who enforce the mandate.(and Nurses are employed by the schools.)
I have no problem with requiring the traditional, proven vaccines as part of public education. Emphasis proven, traditional. Polio, mumps, etc.
I have 10,000 issues with requiring unproven, trendy, political vaccines like Covid.
Mumps, measles, etc are diseases our society has virtually eliminated in large part through the school vaccine program. Society does benefit.
The anti vax crowd is every bit as dangerous as the cult of Covid
Trendy is an unusual word for a proven treatment of a deadly disease
Lucinda, your divorcement from reality is at least consistent, even if your conflicted and contradictory faith-based and authoritarian political beliefs are not.
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“Proven treatment”! Make me laugh! Proven to be ineffective, unsafe and dangerous, you mean.
Wrong. Read actual facts about “vaccine ” history at RFK Jr Children’s Health Defense, and the site, Del Bigtree, that used to be headed by Big TV. I have a brain injury and have difficulty recalling names. I have 6 kids all born in Fairbanks, all unvaxxed, (it wasn’t easy), and all with zero allergies, asthma, “learning disorders”, or any weirdness at all that barely existed when I was a kid. They also rarely got ear infections. Not to mention stuff that shows up decades later that dummies don’t attribute to the crap in these idiot shots.
Please research this. The REAL and anecdotal evidence is overwhelming.
But illegals still allowed to enter the US without vaccinations and spread across the country. I cannot understand this border thing or the fact that the media doesn’t think it newsworthy.
Hmmm, I’m conservative but I believe in required vaccinations for school kids. People have forgotten how terrible polio was. I always hear how the younger generations are so much more “educated” than gen x, boomers and older but it would appear that isn’t true. Measles, polio and mumps were virtually eradicated but now there are cases popping up all over. Pretty ridiculous for people who think they are so “educated”.
Look up the history and stats. You may begin with Children’s Health Defense and Del Bigtree – can’t recall his excellent site and Google might not get you there. He was well known and created the Doctor Show or something on Big TV, until he couldn’t stand the bs lies anymore.
Parents have always had the ability to opt their kids out of required shots based on religion or whatever.
Which is ridiculous. What does ones religion have to do with vaccines? A BS excuse.
It’s not easy. After John, (He sure ain’t his daddy, as I call him), Coghill tried to ease it up many years ago – for conscientious objection like me kinda – the regulatory agency made it WORSE!
My address is a church in some old Alaska files somewhere. My religion is something like: if the state has religious beliefs about what I put into MY, (not “our”, not govs, not anybody’s), kids at all, its my religion that your religion of control of my kid’s bodies…has no … I can’t remember what I wrote but it was well written, articulate, honest and true, diplomatic, and my sincerest belief.
I had measles, mumps, chicken pox and somethingelse; I’m good. My 6 kids born in Fairbanks are exceptionally healthy and intelligent; far beyond their injected peers. And so far, my oldest ~ 40, still has nothing. These childhood vax’s cause alot of autoimmune and other diseases soon,or decades, can be many, decades later.
ANY mandatory medical crap has ALWAYS been BS.
Get a grip. Study this stuff from honest, uncompromised sources. Oh, and look up the BS of peer review. Bought and paid for.
Plus: Google is not your friend. Although, amazingly, there is still stuff on there. Look up Truthstream Media on You Tube ~ 5 years ago for facts on….lots but I’m thinking Lyme disease and more.
Learn something.
Seriously, I like MRA, but so many of you are programmed although you think y’all all such independent thinkers…
There is a difference between decades old vaccine that have likely improved over time, and the covid shot, which is not a true vaccine. Unfortunately, the covid mandates have ruined the public trust in other vaccines.
A vaccine is anything put into the human body that is designed to elicit an immune response. The Covid-19 vaccine is, in fact, a vaccine. Good grief. Try reading a book or something.
Wrong again, cman. A vaccine, as defined prior to the CDC’s and NIH’s 2020 politically-motivated redefinitions, is designed to prevent the contraction and transmission of a disease. The covid so-called vaccines do neither with any meaningful efficacy.
The definition of a vaccine hasn’t changed in decades, maybe centuries. Your paranoia doesn’t change that.
The CDC and NIH, along with the criminal and sociopath Anthony Fauci, would beg to differ with you. But the acknowledge of reality is far from being the forte of radical leftist extremists such as yourself.
Wow. What rock do you live under? It’s common, accepted knowledge that definition of vaccine changed in an hour.
While you’re at being ignorant, never use online, (anything imo but), dictionaries because they change in a minute too. I was going to sell my 80s Britannica Encyclopedias, by now, with the ACTUAL changes in new versions of so many books, example Uncle Tom’s Cabin and many more, I regret giving so many books away, and won’t get rid of my Scholastic paperbacks from my kid days. American Heritage is, or was; my last 4″ thick backpack one is 2000, but the hardbound my kids grew up with is much older. That sucker had a history!!
Please educate yourself.
Good. It’s a positive. See my other comment. If you want edification.
Schools do set a vaccine requirement! That’s part of federal funding! Schools get a big boost from feds! And have too follow their guidelines
Before making any decisions about not vaccinating your kids, parents should consult reputable physicians, not social networks that offer questionable surveys with biased questions.
If vaccinations are required for public school enrollment, these kids may be deprived of an education.
A poorly educated public can easily be influenced and therefore manipulated.
This could all have very negative and long-term effects on Americans.
Where do we draw the line as to how much decisional power parents should have?
“A poorly educated public can easily be influenced and therefore manipulated.”
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And the poorly-educated (and mis-educated) products of our government-controlled schools prove those facts on a daily basis.
Remember that the CDC included the COVID vax on the childhood vax list a few months ago. While the kiddos might need the normal MMR / tetanus jabs, they in no way require the COVID one.
Government at all levels brought this on itself with their continuing outrageous push for the COVID jab. Think of the Boy That Cried Wolf and you will be close. Cheers –
A gimarc. Which medical school did you graduate from?
Lucinda, your consistent “appeal to authority” arguments are not only flippant and specious, but inherently logically flawed. Indeed, the ‘appeal to authority’ is one of the classic failures in logical debate.
“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual”
— Galileo Galilei
Since you’re making that a prerequisite for commenting, which med school did YOU graduate from?
Get your kids out of public schools. What they are learning is not math English and science.
I’m an early-mid Boomer (b. 1949) and a part of the generation that was first subject to universal vaccination. Before age six, school age for most, we had about a half dozen vaccines. The polio shot didn’t come along until ’57 after I’d started school. The school took us all down to the health department and lined us up to get it – and nobody objected. I actually had most of the childhood diseases; mumps, measles, chickenpox. Few mothers worked in those days so it wasn’t that big of a deal to keep a kid home in bed for a few days. During the summer especially we lived in fear of polio and every Reader’s Digest had a story about some once vibrant teenager now confined to an iron lung. All tolled, though, we entered adulthood with less than a dozen shots, maybe including a tetanus. I don’t recall the flu shot existing until later so we did have a couple of school closures due to influenza.
Fast forward; the CDC vaccination schedule calls for 30 vaccinations between birth and age 6. Many parents believe the onslaught of vaccinations overwhelms the immune system of some children and causes developmental problems. There is way too much correlation between that MMR at about age 3 and the onset of autism indicia for the comfort of many parents. Did we go from half a dozen or so shots before age six to thirty shots for medical efficacy or for the profits of the pharmaceutical companies? Throw in the fact that today most mothers work so staying home with a sick kid for a week is a serious and usually intolerable burden. You pick it.
I’m not as old as you, but close. What I remember is how mumps, measles, etc could sweep through entire communities. Vaccinations brought an end to that for the most part.
My parents remember vividly the annual fear of Polio season.
I’m a reluctant accessory to the Social Contract envisioned by the Founders. There are some, limited items citizens should participate in as a way of self preservation.
Proven, effective vaccines are a good thing. Shutting down a nation over a hyped up version of the flu was not.
But I grant you it’s a fine line, easily blurred.
National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 – eliminated the potential financial liability of vaccine manufacturers, and the vaccine schedule has exploded into something monstrous ever since. In fact, it IS the reason that the bioweapon was rolled out as vaccine, because of the liability limitations. Couple that with the Repeal of the Smith-Mundt Act in 2012, making the use of propaganda by the government on its citizens legal, and we have the foundation for this grim circumstance that we now face.
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It has been and is a criminal enterprise. Vaccines contain many excipient ingredients and adjuvants that have zero justifiable reason to be in them, because those ingredients are in fact poison and/or contain significant potential to be harmful.
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This cannot be fixed until the 1986 Act is repealed, and vaccine manufacturers are destroyed for what they have done.
My mom worked nights at a hospital and I can remember her coming home Monday with polio vaccination. It was in a vial and it was pink in color and she put a couple of drops on a sugar cube and each of us had one. We got the chicken pox vaccine for our son, so he doesn’t have to worry about that or shingles later in life.
You do understand the difference between correlation and causation, yes? There is not a single, peer-reviewed study that has shown causation between vaccines and autism. I can’t believe that in 2022, anyone would still be pushing such nonsense.
ArtChance: Read the book Plague of Corruption by Dr. Judy Mikovitz. She did research on vaccines and indicated vaccines were related to Autism. Fauci saw to it she went to jail for her research. She was never tried tho. She escaped the wrath of many in the scientific world for her research. She is lucky she did not meet her demise as did others associated with the Director of NIH and the now Covid guru.The Health of the American people are left to a few who make decisions for all of us. I believe it is all about money and power of the Pharmaceutical Companies.I would not trust the FDA for any reason.
Art, you hit the nail on the head with the last paragraph. The concern about autism, which has skyrocketed in recent years was blamed by many scientists on the MMR, possibly due to the heavy metals used to increase shelf life combined with a triple dose at a young age. It was dismissed by our government, possibly due to pressure from the pharmaceutical industry to avoid lawsuits. In Europe, they listened to the science and stopped the practice of preserving vaccines with mercury and spread out the administration of these vaccines and the rates of autism dropped largely. No parent wishes to expose their child to preventable diseases, but autism is not reversible. Ask any parent with an autistic child if they trust the vaccination program in our country.
I have two grandsons who were happy, healthy little boys right up until that MMR at about age three. Neither will ever live independently.
And I might add, it was a professor at the University of Rutgers who made the discovery. Her research into autism was defunded shortly thereafter. By the government. Her main recommendations were adopted by the EU, yet we continue with the program of vaccines and at an early stage of child development, where in many cases, development stalls. It mainly attacks the processing between speech and the brain dealing with the processing of communications. This leads to behavior problems as the child cannot communicate their needs and gets worse as they enter puberty. This affects many, many children. The numbers are increasing.As adults , they are generally medicated with pysocrobic medication to make life easier for their caregivers. But most do not enjoy a normal life. Early intervention can help. But most children will live through measles, mumps, whatever, but never get over autism. We should not listen to the CDC until they quit receiving money, direct or indirectly, from the pharmaceutical industry. And congress as well. It is so close to be finally exposed that now they simply write off medical professionals as disinformation propagandists. As a father of a 30 year old autistic child, I seek answers. But most of all, I want protection for every American citizen from the pharmaceutical industry and liability for their mistakes. Without political bias. The main difference between present and the past is the witch doctors are now paying political dues . Thanks for reading this, Trig
We are destined to playout the storyline of the movie Idiocracy.
Steve, you must be a ‘professional’ in the medical establishment, as your opinions touching on medical matters have been consistently on the side of authoritarianism and the official narratives, even if you are not so in other matters. Do you care to confess here?
There are far too many vaccines included in the childhood schedule these days. I’ve had multiple family doctors agree with me on that. I’m sure some are more important than others, but it has turned into a for profit industry. The goal is no longer to protect the child. Vaccine manufacturers are not liable for any adverse effects. The VAERS logs are not taken seriously. It’s just not worth the risk to the child.
When a parent wants to decline, we’re told our child could die of a “preventable disease”. Unvaccinated children are written off as being contaminated with disease. As if they’ll infect everyone around them, even though they don’t have the illness.
We aren’t given any information on how to prevent or treat diseases naturally. All of the current medical recommendations are designed to keep us dependent on big pharma to save us. There’s a time and place for modern medicine – emergency situations, necessary surgeries, etc. As a society, we shouldn’t be this dependent on it. We need to learn how to keep our families healthy.
And some conspiracy questions that come up when I see the childhood vaccine schedule…
Where do childhood cancers come from? Why is autism so prevalent these days? Why does our country have so many citizens with autoimmune disorders? Why is SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome) so prevalent in our country?
I’m not blaming vaccines for everything, but it does make me wonder…
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