In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread. And among those diseases could be COVID-19.
Ana Goñi-Lessan at the Tallahassee Democrat:
The vaccination rate of Florida kindergarteners has fallen to 90.6%, the lowest in over a decade, and concerned pediatricians say they are exhausted trying to combat anti-vax information – including from the state government.
“It's gotten difficult to manage,” said Dr. Lisa Gwynn, a Miami pediatrician and medical director for a mobile clinic that serves uninsured children.
Nearly 91% may seem high, but for highly contagious diseases like measles, for example, public health experts recommend a vaccination rate of at least 95%. Lower than that increases the risk of outbreaks of diseases that are otherwise preventable. That's especially a problem in schools, where children are in close contact with each other.
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Since the pandemic, vaccine hesitancy over the mRNA “jab” spread to other vaccines, pediatricians say, who add that it’s becoming difficult to practice in the state. Some refuse to take unvaccinated patients, and the ones that do accept them don’t have the capacity.
Gwynn, the past president of Florida's chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, has seen an increase in unvaccinated patients in the past 20 years — first with the wave of misinformation from fraudulent research about how MMR vaccines cause autism, and now with COVID-19 vaccines.
