Tag: vaccine
Cuts In Federal Funding Shut Down Vaccine Clinics Amid Measles Surge

Cuts In Federal Funding Shut Down Vaccine Clinics Amid Measles Surge

By Bram Sable-Smith and Arielle Zionts and Jackie Fortiér, KFF Health News

More than a dozen vaccination clinics were canceled in Pima County, Arizona.

So was a media blitz to bring low-income children in Washoe County, Nevada, up to date on their shots.

Planned clinics were also scuttled in Texas, Minnesota, and Washington, among other places.

Immunization efforts across the country were upended after the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention abruptly canceled $11.4 billion in covid-related funds for state and local health departments in late March.

A federal judge temporarily blocked the cuts last week, but many of the organizations that receive the funds said they must proceed as though they’re gone, raising concerns amid a resurgence of measles, a rise in vaccine hesitancy, and growing distrust of public health agencies.

“I’m particularly concerned about the accessibility of vaccines for vulnerable populations,” former U.S. surgeon general Jerome Adams told KFF Health News. Adams served in President Donald Trump’s first administration. “Without high vaccination rates, we are setting those populations and communities up for preventable harm.”

The Department of Health and Human Services, which houses the CDC, does not comment on ongoing litigation, spokesperson Vianca Rodriguez Feliciano said. But she sent a statement on the original action, saying that HHS made the cuts because the covid-19 pandemic is over: “HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago.”

Still, clinics have also used the money to address other preventable diseases such as flu, mpox, and measles. More than 500 cases of measles so far in a Texas outbreak have led to 57 hospitalizations and the deaths of two school-age children.

In Pima County, Arizona, officials learned that one of its vaccination programs would have to end early because the federal government took away its remaining $1 million in grant money. The county had to cancel about 20 vaccine events offering covid and flu shots that it had already scheduled, said Theresa Cullen, director of the county health department. And it isn’t able to plan any more, she said.

The county is home to Tucson, the second-largest city in Arizona. But it also has sprawling rural areas, including part of the Tohono O’odham Nation, that are far from many health clinics and pharmacies, she said.

The county used the federal grant to offer free vaccines in mostly rural areas, usually on the weekends or after usual work hours on weekdays, Cullen said. The programs are held at community organizations, during fairs and other events, or inside buses turned into mobile health clinics.

Canceling vaccine-related grants has an impact beyond immunization rates, Cullen said. Vaccination events are also a chance to offer health education, connect people with other resources they may need, and build trust between communities and public health systems, she said.

County leaders knew the funding would run out at the end of June, but Cullen said the health department had been in talks with local communities to find a way to continue the events. Now “we’ve said, ‘Sorry, we had a commitment to you and we’re not able to honor it,’” she said.

Cullen said the health department won’t restart the events even though a judge temporarily blocked the funding cuts.

“The vaccine equity grant is a grant that goes from the CDC to the state to us,” she said. “The state is who gave us a stop work order.”

The full effect of the CDC cuts is not yet clear in many places. California Department of Public Health officials estimated that grant terminations would result in at least $840 million in federal funding losses for its state, including $330 million used for virus monitoring, testing, childhood vaccines, and addressing health disparities.

“We are working to evaluate the impact of these actions,” said California Department of Public Health Director Erica Pan.

In Washoe County, Nevada, the surprise cuts in federal funding mean the loss of two contract staffers who set up and advertise vaccination events, including state-mandated back-to-school immunizations for illnesses such as measles.

“Our core team can’t be in two places at once,” said Lisa Lottritz, division director for community and clinical health services at Northern Nevada Public Health.

She expected to retain the contractors through June, when the grants were scheduled to sunset. The health district scrambled to find money to keep the two workers for a few more weeks. They found enough to pay them only through May.

Lottritz immediately canceled a publicity blitz focused on getting children on government insurance up to date on their shots. Vaccine events at the public health clinic will go on, but are “very scaled back” with fewer staff members, she said. Nurses offering shots out and about at churches, senior centers, and food banks will stop in May, when the money to pay the workers runs out.

“The staff have other responsibilities. They do compliance visits, they’re running our clinic, so I won’t have the resources to put on events like that,” Lottritz said.

The effect of the cancellations will reverberate for a long time, said Chad Kingsley, district health officer for Northern Nevada Public Health, and it might take years for the full scope of decreasing vaccinations to be felt.

“Our society doesn’t have a collective knowledge of those diseases and what they did,” he said.

Measles is top of mind in Missouri, where a conference on strengthening immunization efforts statewide was abruptly canceled due to the cuts.

The Missouri Immunization Coalition, which organized the event for April 24-25, also had to lay off half its staff, according to board president Lynelle Phillips. The coalition, which coordinates immunization advocacy and education across the state, must now find alternative funding to stay open.

“It’s just cruel and unthinkably wrong to do this in the midst of a measles resurgence in the country,” Phillips said.

Dana Eby, of the health department in New Madrid County, Missouri, had planned to share tips about building trust for vaccines in rural communities at the conference, including using school nurses and the Vaccines for Children program, funded by the CDC.

New Madrid has one of the highest childhood vaccination rates in the state, despite being part of the largely rural “Bootheel” region that is often noted for its poor health outcomes. Over 98 percent of kindergartners in the county received the vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella in 2023-24 compared with the state average of about 91 percent, and rates in some other counties as low as 61 percent.

“I will say I think measles will be a problem before I retire,” Eby, 42, said.

Also slated to speak at the Missouri event was former surgeon general Adams, who said he had planned to emphasize the need for community collaboration and the importance of vaccinations in protecting public health and reducing preventable diseases. He said the timing was especially pertinent given the explosion in measles cases in Texas and the rise in whooping cough cases and deaths in Louisiana.

“We can’t make America healthy again by going backwards on our historically high U.S. vaccination rates,” Adams said. “You can’t die from chronic diseases when you’re 50 if you’ve already died from measles or polio or whooping cough when you’re 5.”

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

RFK Jr Waffles As Second Unvaccinated Child Dies In Measles Outbreak

RFK Jr Waffles As Second Unvaccinated Child Dies In Measles Outbreak

An eight-year-old Texas child died of pulmonary failure as a result of measles, marking the third confirmed measles death and the second death of a child from measles to occur in the United States in decades. Both children were unvaccinated.

“[T]here are 642 confirmed cases of measles across 22 states, 499 of those in Texas,” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote on X.

Kennedy also announced that he was traveling to Texas to offer condolences to the family of the recently deceased child.

While the infamous anti-vaxxer failed to mention that the majority of cases are in unvaccinated children, he did admit that the MMR vaccine is the “most effective way to prevent the spread of measles.”

As the measles outbreak rages on, Kennedy has admitted that the MMR vaccine is the most effective way to fight against the disease, while also undermining the necessity of vaccinations. In public appearances, such as on Fox News with Sean Hannity, Kennedy said it was better to get infected with measles than to be vaccinated.

Texas HHS has confirmed that, while most confirmed cases remain primarily in the western part of the state, new cases have emerged in central Texas and a concerning rise in the northeast region. Meanwhile, New Mexico has reported more than 50 cases, and Kansas has reported 24.

At the same time, Kennedy’s nonprofit Children’s Health Defense Fund continues to promote dangerously uninformed science about vaccines and measles, falsely claiming that poor medical treatments are to blame for the recent deaths. The organization is also pushing vitamin A supplements, which not only can’t cure nor stop the spread of measles, but can actually be toxic for children.

Outside of offering “comfort” to grieving families, Kennedy’s actions belie any meaningful scientific or medically proven solutions to stopping this public health nightmare.

As HHS secretary, Kennedy has slashed public health research budgets, fired tens of thousands of federal health care workers, and promoted anti-vaccine goons like David Geier.

So while Kennedy may occasionally acknowledge the importance of vaccines, his actions and continued encouragement of anti-vaccine rhetoric consistently undermines any public health efforts.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Trump Threatens To Stop Childhood Vaccinations After 'Big Discussion' With RFK Jr.

Saying he will be the one to decide—in consultation with anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—which vaccines the federal government should cut, Donald Trump on Thursday again invoked the false and widely debunked conspiracy theory that links autism to the life-saving drugs. The President-elect’s remarks were met with concern and condemnation.

“When asked in an interview for TIME’s 2024 Person of the Year whether he would approve of an end to childhood vaccination programs, Trump said he would have a ‘big discussion’ with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” TIME magazine reported Thursday, noting Trump has nominated RFK Jr., an attorney who has no medical training or experience leading a massive organization, to run the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

“The autism rate is at a level that nobody ever believed possible,” Trump told TIME, which debunked his remarks in its reporting. “If you look at things that are happening, there’s something causing it.”

Reuters also reported, “Trump says [he] could get rid of some vaccinations ‘if I think it’s dangerous.'”

“When asked if the discussion could result in his administration getting rid of some vaccinations, Trump said: ‘It could if I think it’s dangerous, if I think they are not beneficial, but I don’t think it’s going to be very controversial in the end.'”

Like RFK Jr., Trump has no medical training or background.

While “Trump did not explicitly say in the interview that vaccines cause autism,” which it classified as “a false claim that traces back to a retracted study from the 1990s,” TIME reports that when “pressed on the issue, Trump said his administration will complete ‘very serious testing,’ after which ‘we will know for sure what’s good and what’s not good.'”

Dr. Ashish Kumar Jha is a physician, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, and served as the Biden White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator. He characterized Trump’s remarks that he will speak with RFK Jr. and possibly cut some vaccines, as an “extraordinarily bad idea.”

“RFK jr doesn’t seem to understand the data on vaccines,” Dr. Jha wrote. “He should have no role in deciding which vaccines should be available, recommended.”

Dr. Priya Pal of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Division of Infectious Diseases, commenting on Trump’s remarks, referenced creators of some of the most important vaccines in history: “Never could Pasteur, Salk, Jenner, Sabin have imagined people celebrating the return of childhood diseases that they and others worked so hard to prevent.”

Dr. Annie Andrews, a pediatrician, clinical professor of pediatrics at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., a senior advisor to Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action, and the CEO and founder of Their Future, Our Vote. She responded to the news by snarking, “Congratulations preventable infectious diseases!”

Infectious disease physician Apu Akkad, an Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine wrote: “Wow. This sounds hugely problematic. RFK has no business deciding which vaccines should and shouldn’t be used — most especially without first gathering further data.”

TIME also dove in to Trump’s allegation about the perceived rise in autism.

“It’s true that autism is diagnosed much more frequently now than in the past—but not because vaccines are causing the condition. Researchers have explored possible reasons for the uptick, including rising parental ages and environmental triggers. But much of the increase, research suggests, stems from changes to diagnostic criteria, widespread awareness of the condition, and improvements in screening. Detection jumps have been particularly steep among children of color, girls, and young adults, all of whom have historically been diagnosed less frequently.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has stated, “There’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

RFK Jr.

Deadly Outbreak: When RFK Jr's Vaccine Lies Killed Samoan Kids (VIDEO)

Hours after anti-vax Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testified before the United States House of Representatives Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government on Thursday afternoon, one of the nation's foremost experts on vaccinations reminded PBS News Hour's audience that Kennedy was at least partially responsible for a 2018 measles outbreak in American Samoa that left two infants dead.

Host Geoff Bennet kicked off the segment by introducing his guest — Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of the Food and Drug Administration's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee — and giving a brief synopsis of Kennedy's fringe beliefs.

"So RFK Jr. is widely known as an anti-vaccine activist. He has a much larger platform now as he runs for president, he says that many of his views are misunderstood; they're taken out of context. Help us understand what he's been promoting and what the science tells us about it," Bennet began.

Offit elaborated on why Kennedy's contrarianism is so dangerous.

"Well, he's been promoting false information about vaccines," Offit replied. "He's been promoting the notion that vaccines cause autism, which is clearly not true, or cause a variety of other chronic diseases like diabetes or multiple sclerosis, or attention deficit disorder, and that's all not true. So what he does is by putting misinformation out there, he causes people to make bad decisions that put themselves and their their family at risk."

Bennet asked, "You also point to one episode where he spoke out against the measles vaccine. What was the impact of that?"

Offit recalled, "In Samoa, there were two children that died immediately following receipt of a measles vaccine. And the way it works in Samoa is they have an MMR vaccine in powdered form. It needs to be diluted in water. Two nurses made a mistake instead of diluting it in water, they diluted it in a muscle relaxant. Those children stopped breathing and died immediately. Now, very quickly, within two weeks, it was realized what that mistake was."

Offit then highlighted how Kennedy's conspiracy theories led to a precipitous plummet in the percentage of the Samoan population receiving inoculations to the highly contagious virus.

"It was a nursing error, but nonetheless, RFK Jr. seized on that. He flooded Facebook with the information that the measles vaccine is killing children in Samoa. He went to Samoa. He met with anti-vaccine activists. He met with senior officials in Samoa and kept the drumbeat alive that the measles vaccine was killing children in Samoa as a consequence," Offit continued. "Vaccination rates fell from 70 percent to 30 percent, and between September and December of 2019, there was a massive measles epidemic in this island nation of 200,000 people. There were 57,000 cases of measles and 83 deaths. Most of those deaths were in children less than four years of age. And Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had everything to do with that. And that shows you how disinformation can kill."

Kennedy's connection to the Samoan measles crisis was previously chronicled in 2019 by The Washington Post:

[Kennedy] visited the country in June, appearing next to officials at Samoan independence celebrations. His visit was 'for a program that is not government-related,' an official in the prime minister’s department told Samoan news media at the time.

Kennedy has asserted that vaccines cause autism, a claim disproved by extensive research. Members of the Kennedy family have publicly criticized him for helping 'spread dangerous misinformation.'

The World Health Organization estimated that in 2018, only 31 percent of infants in Samoa received the measles vaccine, a drop from 60 to 70 percent in previous years. The WHO attributed the extremely low rate in part to a public health scandal: Last year, two infants in Samoa died within hours of receiving the MMR vaccine. The country temporarily halted its vaccine program, but the vaccine did not cause the deaths. Two nurses improperly mixed the vaccines with a liquid muscle relaxant instead of water. The pair were sentenced to five years in prison for manslaughter.

What happened in Samoa was not a unique occurrence, either. A measles outbreak there in April 2023 forced Governor Lemanu PS Maug to issue an emergency declaration that lasted through the end of May of that year.

ABC News reported at the time that more than 32 people had been infected. The outlet referenced the events of 2019, when "in American Samoa, there were 12 measles cases and no deaths reported. However, in the nation of Samoa, there were more than 5,700 cases and 83 deaths reported, most occurring in children under five years old."

MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan also dedicated a segment of one of his shows in June to this very topic.

Watch Offit's remarks below via Decoding Fox News or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

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