How vaccine hesitancy is contributing to rising rates of measles and COVID – PBS NewsHour

Laura Santhanam:

You know, we've been dealing with misinformation for quite some time when it comes to vaccines. You know, it starting in in the late 1990s, with thinking about the measles, mumps rubella vaccine, and to this day, there are still people who, you know, withhold that vaccine from their children, because they think it might cause problems that just evidence studies conducted over so many years in so many countries. Just it they continue to debunk that since retracted study.

But that sort of laid the groundwork for some of the misinformation campaigns we're seeing about COVID vaccine now, whether it's talking about how quickly it was deployed, and then, you know, when politics are getting involved in some of those campaigns, it makes it a message disentangle.

Time and again, when I've been talking to clinicians about this, they recommend that people ask their doctors, if you have questions about the COVID vaccine, measles vaccine, any of these vaccines that are recommended that are approved and vetted by the CDC, by the FDA, you know, have those conversations with your doctors.

But also, you know, perhaps equally importantly, doctors should be ready to have those conversations with their patients. I had a conversation with a doctor in South Alabama who was saying, you know, physicians should be welcoming these conversations. They should be ready to answer questions, and shouldn't discourage patients from having them in the first place.

Vaccine misinformation expert also told me that people are going to misinformation for a number of reasons. But some of those reasons is because they weren't able to get answers when they needed them from their health care providers in the first place. So it just be ready to have these conversations and welcome them.

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How vaccine hesitancy is contributing to rising rates of measles and COVID - PBS NewsHour