A three-year-old child received the COVID-19-19 vaccination on June 21, 2022. Joseph Prezios/AFP via Getty Images Closed subtitles
Just like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has a history of anti-vaccine activities.
Ratner spoke on behalf of himself, rather than the organization he affiliated with, said: “It is very disturbing that he spent so much of his career trying to undermine confidence in the vaccine, trying to remove the approved infrastructure. And suggesting that the infrastructure for vaccines is very disturbing and that it is possible to have power over infrastructure with these goals.”
Although Kennedy declared that he was not a "anti-vaccine", he also repeatedly questioned the efficacy and safety of the vaccine against Covid-19, measles and other infected diseases. Ratner said he was concerned about future vaccine availability and the general public confidence in the vaccine.
“As my mentor said over the years, 'It’s much easier to scare people than to unprotect them,'” Ratner said. "And I think that just elevating the anti-vaccine perspective just under the guise of RFK, I think we might be Will risk the crisis of vaccine confidence in the United States”
Ratner noted that measles was once considered a “problem-solving” due to extensive vaccination efforts and has been making a comeback in recent years: “This is one we have used very little vaccine since the mid-1960s. See…and then in 2018 and 2019 we had a lot of measles outbreaks in New York City, with about 650 cases and some kids were very sick.”
In his new book Booster, Ratner believes our ability to control measles is a powerful test of our public health agencies, which makes the resurgence of the disease particularly disturbing.
“When we start to see measles, it’s a testament to our public health system’s staggering steps and distrust of vaccines,” he said. “I’m worried that actions taken next year or two may be for children’s health not only Health in the United States has lasting effects and I think it’s global.”
About Why Measles is So Hard to Control
Measles is the most contagious disease we know. It is more contagious than the flu. It is more contagious than polio. It is more contagious than Ebola virus. It is more contagious than common. Among susceptible people, measles can easily infect 90% of the population. If someone with measles walks into a room of someone who hasn’t been vaccinated and has never had measles before, 90% of those people will get that person’s measles. This is more infectious than most things we usually deal with. Measles is whether it is being vaccinated and whether it is protected because it is so infectious.
The lasting impact of anti-vaccine news
We live in most cases, and in most cases, happy and happy health, while the infectious diseases that once killed a large number of children have been controlled through vaccines - it is through a lot of work. Some of them are scientific work. However, some of them are also policy work in building infrastructure that can withstand capital fluctuations. There is no guarantee of the success we have achieved and the success we have achieved in children’s public health.
Surprised at the public's response to the common vaccine
We all experienced the pandemic together, but each of us experienced it in a different way. …I remember the moment when I first got my mRNA vaccine. I remember the day my wife got her. I cried. When my daughter got her, I cried because I felt we won. Just like I think science saves us, vaccine science saves us. In my mind. I think this is the end of the anti-vaccine campaign. Like, how do they recover from everyone in the world and see what we can do? Of course, now looking back at five years after the pandemic, I was naive, and then I was wrong, and I was on how the anti-vaccine campaign would respond to COVID-19-19-19 years later. ...
The Covid vaccine saved millions of lives and it was an incredible success story. Surprisingly, this is not the usual story. This is not a story that most people believe.
About the possible impact of the Trump administration's cuts in NIH funding
The biomedical research firms in the United States are incredible. And there is progress that helps all Americans. Without NIH research, we would never use the Covid-19 vaccine. We will never have the chemotherapy we have or the gene therapy that is curing the disease. All these advancements are built on the back of basic research funded by NIH. This is crucial to people's health in the short and long term. I think that the Executive Order limits the NIH indirect costs to 15% and immediately works and applies to existing grants will be a huge budgetary pressure on universities and other research institutions. And it has the potential to lose people, drive scientists out, and let universities close labs that they can’t afford because they don’t budget for such sudden changes. I think this may last.
Fighting against two wars - one against pathogens and another against disinformation
This is different from the stories I tell about measles vaccine development and childhood vaccines and vaccines for things like that, with limited sources of news and frequent collaboration between public health entities and news media. Now, we are in a very different situation where there is unlimited information, most of which are bad and some are malicious. …
I think it is certainly necessary to directly oppose the misinformation and false information raised by the anti-vaccine population. That's what the CDC and the public health department should do. But it is also direct publicity to individual families and communities, and bring good information, and willing to sit down and listen to what people hear, and try to help them disband the bad information they may get, and explain science-based information Hope your pediatrician and your trusted community members bring it.
Sam Briger and Anna Bauman conducted and edited the interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Carmel Wroth adapted it into the network.