Lifespans On The Chopping Block

Guess who has bought into the anti-vaccine movement? Gov. Stitt invited HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to Oklahoma to help launch the governor’s “Make Oklahoma Healthy Again” initiative.

Oklahoma ranks 47^th in health and 49^th in healthcare systems. We need an initiative to improve access to healthcare in Oklahoma, but casting doubts on vaccines won’t make Oklahoma healthier.

According to NIH data, before 1963, the year the measles vaccine was introduced, there were “more than 100 million measles cases resulting in six million deaths worldwide, with four million cases and 450 deaths in the U.S. annually.” Because of a successful vaccination campaign, measles was “officially declared eliminated” in the US in 2000. Due to vaccine misinformation, this year children are again dying of a preventable disease.

Preventable deaths are tragic, but so are the long-term issues that survivors deal with. Polio survivors like me know that a healthy lifestyle and sufficient insurance are not enough to overcome the results of a preventable disease. It’s even worse when so many people lack good insurance. I was lucky. I survived whooping cough at two and polio at four, but I’m still living with the consequences.

Talk to polio survivors who spent their lives in braces and wheelchairs. Talk to those with diminished lung capacity. Talk to men who are infertile because of mumps. Talk to anyone who has had shingles because of chickenpox. At least now there is a shingles vaccine.

As I deal with muscle issues on my right side, I’m struck by the fact that there are no doctors who have seen cases of polio. That’s a good thing. Vaccines work!

New vaccine recommendations, or rather anti-recommendations, will have consequences. Without federal recommendations, insurance companies won’t have to cover childhood vaccines. What happens when people can’t afford to get their children vaccinated? What happens when the reduced vaccination rates cause outbreaks of diseases that we once had a handle on?

Over the past decades, the lifespan of humans has increased. In the 1920s, the average lifespan was in the mid-50s. Now, the average lifespan worldwide is 72 years, and in the United States, 78.6 years. If we join the push to make vaccines more expensive and harder to get, you can expect that number to go down.

Governor, going backwards is not how you Make Oklahoma Healthy Again.