Parents who homeschool their children are the largest demographic to delay or reject childhood vaccinations, followed by parents who are white and very religious, according to a new Washington Post-KFF poll. One in six parents now reject the vaccination schedule recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“The poll — the most detailed recent look at the childhood vaccination practices and opinions of American parents — shows that 1 in 6 parents have delayed or skipped some vaccines for their children, excluding for coronavirus or flu,” according to The Washington Post. For those two diseases , the compliance rate is far less.
Only about two out of five (41%) of parents vaccinated their children for flu last year. 52 percent did not. And just about 13 percent of children who were eligible received the coronavirus vaccine last year.
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Ninety-five percent of a community needs to be vaccinated for herd immunity to take over, but less than that — just 92.5% — of children have received the vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR).
Nearly half (46%) of homeschooling parents skipped or delayed any number of vaccines, the study shows, placing them at the top of the list of those most likely to delay or not vaccinate. That same group of parents was most likely (33%) to delay or skip the MMR or polio vaccine.
White, very religious parents closely followed in both categories. 36% delayed or skipped any number of vaccines, and 23% of them delayed or skipped the MMR vaccine.
Republican parents were the next most likely group: 22% for any vaccine, and 12% for MMR. (12% of white parents also delayed or skipped the MMR vaccine for their children.)
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“Democrats and Asian parents are some of the least likely to skip or delay any vaccine for their children besides coronavirus or flu, with 8 percent and 5 percent doing so, respectively,” the Post noted.
Among parents who delay or skip vaccines, the overriding reasons include concerns about side effects (67%), lack of trust in vaccine safety (53%), disagreement with necessity of recommended vaccinations (51%), not wanting multiple shots at once (42%), and a belief they can keep their children healthy in other ways (34%).
With anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. now at the helm of the CDC, “at least 4 in 10 parents say they don’t know enough to say whether” his claims about vaccines causing autism or chronic disease are true or false.
“More than half of Republican parents (54 percent) and 36 percent of parents overall say they trust Kennedy to provide reliable information about vaccines, and of those, 22 percent skipped or delayed a vaccine for their child. Several interviewed by The Post said they felt he was giving them a voice.”
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