A new poll from the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) showed that “support among U.S. adults for the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine has dropped from 90% to 82% in just a few months.” CIDRAP has the news.
The poll encompassed a number of questions on vaccinations, including HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s opinions on the measles vaccine, whether or not the MMR vaccine causes autism, and whether thimerosal increases the risk of autism.
About two-thirds of the 1,699 adults polled “knew that the MMR vaccine is designed to prevent” measles, mumps, and rubella. That leaves about a quarter of respondents who did not know what the MMR vaccine is supposed to prevent. 21% of respondents were unsure if the MMR vaccine “usually protects against measles for a lifetime,” and 13% “think it does not.”
There was also widespread confusion across poll respondents as to whether or not Kennedy recommends that children be vaccinated against measles. Kennedy himself has gone back and forth on this issue, refusing to say that vaccines “do not cause autism and even spotlighting a flawed study suggesting they do” at his Senate confirmation hearings. Later, he would say in a CBS interview that HHS “encourages” people to get the vaccine.
70% of poll respondents also said that “vaccines approved for use in the country are safe, although that also represents a decline from April 2021 to January 2022.” Additionally, there seems to be “low knowledge among U.S. adults of the consequence of measles,” with “only 22%” correctly identifying that “some people experience encephalitis (brain swelling) when infected with measles.”
