Public Health Officials’ Covid Pandemic Behaviors Have Adverse Effects

The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) reported recently that 28 percent of adults express hesitancy about the vaccine for Measles, Mumps, and Rubella. That number represents a significant surge. Among parents of school-aged children, suddenly, the number believing that the MMR vaccine should be a requirement for enrollment in school dropped twelve percentage points. Forty-four percent of Republican-leaning independents, up from 22 percent a few years ago, said that the decision for a child to receive an MMR vaccine should be left to their parents, not to schools or the state.

This is the adverse effect of public-health officials’ behavior during the pandemic, when our institutions fed us a toxic cocktail of confusion, deliberate manipulation, and outright lying, and also endorsed censorship of contrary opinion.

About the Author

Michael Brendan Dougherty

Michael Brendan Dougherty is a senior writer at National Review Online.

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The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) reported recently that 28 percent of adults express hesitancy about the vaccine for Measles, Mumps, and Rubella. That number represents a significant surge. Among parents of school-aged children, suddenly, the number believing that the MMR vaccine should be a requirement for enrollment in school dropped twelve percentage points. Forty-four percent of Republican-leaning independents, up from 22 percent a few years ago, said that the decision for a child to receive an MMR vaccine should be left to their parents, not to schools or the state.

This is the adverse effect of public-health officials’ behavior during the pandemic, when our institutions fed us a toxic cocktail of confusion, deliberate manipulation, and outright lying, and also endorsed censorship of contrary opinion.