Competing with the infinite amount of vaccine misinformation available on the internet today is a uphill battle.
Physicians typically conduct a 30-minute wellness visit to assess a child’s growth, answer any number of questions from their parents, and attempt to educate them on the benefits of immunizations.
“It’s an impossible task,” said Dr. Erica Michiels, medical director of the Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital emergency department in Grand Rapids.
More parents are taking a chance, choosing the risks associated with vaccine-preventable diseases over the risks of a rare adverse reaction to a vaccine.
This year, flu shot uptake among Michigan children aged 5 to 17 is down nearly 41% from the same period during the 2019-20 flu season. Almost 43% fewer children aged 6 months to 4 years have been vaccinated as well.
Unfortunately, Michiels witnesses the consequences of those decisions firsthand in her pediatric emergency room.
Her sickest flu patients, who struggle to breathe while fighting one or more infections, are rarely immunized. She is seeing more pertussis (whooping cough) cases than she has in her 13-year medical career. She predicted that Michigan would soon experience a measles outbreak.
“Vaccine hesitancy is probably at an all-time high,” Michiels said. “People are refusing standard childhood vaccinations. It’s a really disappointing trend because it keeps children and society safe.
Michigan is experiencing one of its worst flu seasons in over a decade. Children are coming to the hospital sicker; more of them have co-infections, and more of them require assistance breathing.
When children become infected with the flu, physicians have little control over the disease while it progresses. In serious cases, patients are admitted for breathing treatment or to stay hydrated while being observed.
Doctors believe that fewer people are getting vaccinated, which is contributing to the bad flu season. This year marks the fourth consecutive year of decline in flu shot uptake across all ages, with 586,736 fewer shots administered than during the 2019-2020 flu season.
While the vaccine does not prevent flu infection, health experts believe it lowers the risk of severe illness. This is why health officials continue to recommend the flu shot, even as late as mid-March.
“The number of kids I have seen vaccinated for influenza (in the emergency department) this winter has been minimal, very few,” Michiels told me.
Other childhood vaccines have seen a decrease in uptake.
As of last summer, approximately 70% of children aged 19 months to 3 years were up to date on recommended vaccines for diseases such as measles, mumps, whooping cough, and chicken pox. It was an improvement over previous years, but health officials say the rates remain too low for herd immunity.
Measles, which had been eradicated in the United States for more than 20 years thanks to vaccination, has returned. According to Texas health officials, an outbreak in late January resulted in over 200 infected children in Texas and New Mexico, including one unvaccinated school-age child who died.
The virus is highly infectious. According to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS), it can survive in the air for up to two hours after an infected person leaves the area.
Symptoms include a high fever, cough, runny nose, red and watery eyes, tiny white spots in the mouth, and rash. Severe cases can cause pneumonia and brain swelling.
Last spring, Michigan reported three cases of measles in Oakland, Wayne, and Washtenaw counties. At least two of the infected individuals had recently traveled internationally, and their cases were unrelated.
“Most people just think it’s a rash, why would I vaccinate my child for a rash?” Michiels spoke. “I believe we have deeply ingrained misinformation that will be difficult to overcome.
“We have to do a better job helping people have confidence that it’s safe to give those vaccines to their kids.”
Michiels stated that there is a fine line between frightening parents and educating them about vaccinations.
In addition to increased access to information, including misinformation, physicians face the challenge of warning parents about diseases they have not seen before. Michiels told stories about her father being bedridden for months with polio when he was four, and about a neighbor child dying from measles.
“Humans have a very short memory,” she explained. “We are the vaccine generation; all of our parents immunized us. We didn’t see any of that, so we don’t know how severe these childhood illnesses can be.
“What’s going to happen is those chances (of getting a vaccine-preventable disease) are going to rapidly flip in our society and we’re going to start seeing negative outcomes from preventable diseases.”
For more information, go to Michigan’s immunization information page or ivaccinate.org, which was founded by Veronica Valentine McNally, who advocates for vaccination after her daughter died of pertussis in 2012.
