Public Confidence in Vaccines Sags, New Report Finds

TRUST IN VACCINATIONS is on the decline in the United States, even as fears of a major outbreak that the government isn’t prepared to address remain high – trends public health officials say have worrying implications for the prevention of deadly diseases.

Leading experts in infectious diseases on Monday said that the adoption of vaccines remains strong in the United States and that people trust the federal government on disease prevention and response more than they do on many other issues. But the heightened mistrust – especially in small pockets of people either in insular communities or those who are able to connect with like-minded individuals online – could be to blame for rising incidence of some vaccine-treatable diseases in the U.S.

“Nationally, less than 1 percent of toddlers have not received any vaccines,” said Nancy Messonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “It really is one of the public health success stories of the last century.

“It is also still true that parents have a lot of questions about vaccines,” Messonnier said, speaking Monday at the Newseum in Washington. “There definitely are pockets of children that are under-vaccinated, putting them at risk for these vaccine-preventable diseases.”

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