U.S. kindergarten vaccination rates dipped last year and the proportion of children with exemptions rose to an all-time high, according to federal data posted Wednesday.

The share of kids exempted from vaccine requirements rose to 3.3%, up from 3% the year before. Meanwhile, 92.7% of kindergartners got their required shots, which is a little lower than the previous two years. Before the COVID-19 pandemic the vaccination rate was 95%, the coverage level that makes it unlikely that a single infection will spark a disease cluster or outbreak.

The changes may seem slight but are significant, translating to about 80,000 kids not getting vaccinated, health officials say.

The rates help explain a worrisome creep in cases of whooping cough, measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases, said Dr. Raynard Washington, chair of the Big Cities Health Coalition, which represents 35 large metropolitan public health departments.

  • andrewta@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    98
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    2 months ago

    Short of medical, there shouldn’t be exemptions. Sorry if that offends anyone. No I take that back, I’m not sorry.

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      48
      ·
      2 months ago

      If you want to form your own polio colony, you can do that, but you stay there and don’t come out.

    • Ogmios@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      95
      ·
      2 months ago

      Guess “my body, my choice” stops mattering to you once it’s no longer politically useful, huh?

      • Carmakazi@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        80
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        2 months ago

        Abortions aren’t contagious, but infectious diseases are, so you have a civic responsibility to protect yourself and therefore the greater whole.

        You thought you had something there, huh.

      • otp@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        55
        ·
        2 months ago

        It stops mattering once it starts…

        • Putting at risk populations beyond the individual at question
        • Bringing back deadly infectious diseases that were nearing extinction (at least in the developed world)

        Weird of you to have gone through their comment history and see what phrases they’ve used though.

      • catloaf@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        45
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        2 months ago

        You can choose to be diseased, but inflicting it on others denies them the choice.

      • Steve@communick.news
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        35
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        2 months ago

        Not at all. You can absolutely choose not to vaccinate. It just limits the places you’re able to work, or send your kids to school.

        The freedom to swing your arms, ends at someone else’s nose. If you choose to set yourself up to spread a deadly infection, it makes sense for society to limit your chance of doing so.

      • Billiam@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        21
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        2 months ago

        You know why so many conservatives are rapists and plague rats?

        Because in either case, they don’t care about the consent of the other people involved.

        You want to give yourself smallpox or polio? Fucking go for it, bud. Nobody here is gonna stop you. But what you don’t have the right to is participate in activities where you could endanger other people.

        So by all means, give yourself tuberculosis. Just stay the fuck away from civilized society when you do.

      • gsfraley@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        17
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        2 months ago

        Yes, because kids catching polio from some asshole who won’t vaccinate or otherwise care for their own kids is their choice and what they want. Yup, totally apt comparison. /s

  • T00l_shed@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    56
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    2 months ago

    Why should our families be put at risk because you don’t understand science?

    I get it, there are some people who genuinely can’t get vaccinated, so it’s all the more important to have everyone else vaccinated for herd immunity. Fucking idiots polio is gonna come back.

    • Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      2 months ago

      Fucking idiots polio is gonna come back.

      “Polio killed my children… and evil FEMINISTS did it.”

      I wish I was joking because I knew this would never happen.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    25
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    2 months ago

    So… what’s going to kill us all first: climate change, pandemic or global thermonuclear war?

  • NineMileTower@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    23
    ·
    2 months ago

    Republicans: Let’s defund public schools so that everyone is stupid enough to believe what we say. Then we will tell them vaccines are harmful so they die and we lose voters. Oh, shit…

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      2 months ago

      My personal conspiracy theory is big businesses want to kill off workers because automation is coming and they don’t want to pay taxes to support the people they’ve laid off. As a plus, it can prevent competitors from forming if there’s a straight up lack of knowledge in the sector.

  • 🐋 Color 🍁 ♀@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    2 months ago

    I’ve had every vaccine available including the one for meningococcal serogroup B, and I happen to know someone whose parents refused to vaccinate them for anything. We both lived in the same area and had the same level of social interaction.

    My friend now suffers from chronic severe asthma due to a pertussis infection, in addition to cognitive impairment and deafness brought on by a meningococcal infection a couple of years after the pertussis infection. They’ve also had a bad case of influenza several times and they have had COVID-19 in recent years.

    As others have stated, families shouldn’t be put at risk just because some people refuse to understand science.