Re: https://www.hifa.org/dgroups-rss/bmj-chris-whitty-why-health-misinformat...
Dear Bernard,
You say 'Do not overestimate opposition to vaccines', pointing out that the vast majority of people support vaccination. You note also that 'the necessary vaccine coverage to achieve herd immunity against measles is estimated at 95%, as it is a highly contagious disease. Therefore, even a slight decrease in vaccine coverage is sufficient to allow outbreaks' and 'The increase in measles cases in the last ten years in the U.S. is associated with a decline in average vaccine coverage from 95.2% to 92.5%. In Texas, the epicenter of the outbreak, only 6.2% of children are unvaccinated against measles. This represents a very small fraction of the population.'
My reading of this is that even a relatively small amount of vaccine hesitancy can have a major public health impact?
It's interesting to see the measles vaccination rates by country. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-highest-measles-v...
They range from 30% (eg Equatorial Guinea, Samoa, Chad) to 99% (eg China, Cuba, Iran). Failure to vaccinate includes health system factors as well as vaccine hesitancy.
Best wishes, Neil
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org