Anti-vaccine nonsense will likely kill thousands this season, FDA officials say

Enlarge / A child with measles. (credit: Greene, Charles Lyman)

The US may be heading to a “dangerous vaccination tipping point,” with immunization rates falling so low that population-level immunity is now at risk, and we will likely see thousands of needless deaths this respiratory virus season, two top officials for the Food and Drug Administration warned in a recent JAMA commentary.

FDA Commissioner Robert Califf and top FDA vaccine regulator Peter Marks noted the profound benefits of lifesaving vaccines—which save millions of lives in the US each year—and their established safety, which is monitored both passively and actively through multiple, overlapping federal safety monitoring systems. And yet, “an increasing number of people in the US are now declining vaccination for a variety of reasons, ranging from safety concerns to religious beliefs,” thanks to the rise of anti-vaccine misinformation spread on social media and elsewhere on the Internet.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year found that, for the third consecutive year, vaccination rates among kindergartners had continued to slip, with rates of non-medical vaccination exemptions rising to an all-time high. There are now 10 states with vaccination exemption rates over 5 percent, meaning that even if clinicians and health officials manage to vaccinate all non-exempt children, the state will not be able to reach the target of 95 percent coverage needed to curb the spread of disease on a population level.