Don’t let fear and politics get in the way of public health

Wisconsin is barreling toward a public health crisis when it comes to routine childhood vaccinations.

The health and wellbeing of children is being sacrificed to the altar of misinformation, ignorance and political chicanery undermining public trust in vaccinations in general.

According to state statistics, the 2022-2023 school year 10.1% of Wisconsin student did not meet the immunization requirements for age-appropriate schedule of vaccines. These routine vaccinations include protecting from diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, hepatitis B, measles, mumps, rubella, polio and chickenpox (varicella).

While it is down slightly from 2020-2021 when getting in for routine doctors’ visits was a challenge during the COVID pandemic, it is higher than every year in the past decade. According to the nonpartisian Wisconsin Policy Forum, the average of 2013 to 2018 was below 8% not having their vaccines up to date.

The breakdown also has socio-economic factors as well, with school districts with higher populations of people living in poverty having higher rates of students who are behind on their vaccinations. This is especially troubling since there is a direct correlation between overall health outcomes and socio- economic levels. Poor people have less access to healthcare than more affluent people and face a much higher burden when having to take off work to care for a child afflicted with a contagious illness preventing them from going to school.

Parents in Wisconsin are able to waive school immunization requirements for health reasons or for personal or religious convictions. According to Wisconsin Policy Forum, personal conviction waivers are on the rise, and have increased from 2.6% of students in 2003 to 4.6% in 2023, while at the same time the health and religious waivers have remained relatively flat.

There are many legitimate reasons why parents may choose not to have their child receive a specific vaccination. However, there is also a significant amount of questionable medical advice available on-line that doesn’t come from anyone who has seen the inside of a medical school classroom.

Parents should ask questions of their medical providers. They should challenge their medical providers about why they are recommending a course of treatment. These are things responsible parents do. Responsible parents also need to respect the many years of education and training that doctors, nurses and other health care professionals have to undergo and the mountain of evidence that proves the safety and efficacy of routine vaccinations to prevent serious illnesses.

There also needs to be a realization that these illnesses have the potential to be severe with life-threatening symptoms and long-term consequences. In our modern health bubble, relatively few of us have direct experience with the consequences of these illnesses if allowed to run rampant. One need only to look back at death records or walk through local graveyards and do the math on the number of children who died during outbreaks of these illnesses in prior decades .

Parents must be responsible and get vaccination information, not from some social media threads, instead they should talk to trusted doctors, nurses and other trained health providers to get scientifically backed information about the merits and risks of any vaccine.

As the saying goes, an ounce of prevention, is worth a pound of cure.

Central Wisconsin Publications Editorial Board consists of publisher Kris O’Leary and Star-News editor Brian Wilson