Local opinion: Governor Hobbs, let Arizonans get the vaccines they need

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has recently put unnecessary restrictions on COVID19 vaccines, creating confusion among the many people who wish to get them. Many of Arizona’s neighboring states are going their own way with vaccine policy, bypassing the federal government’s increasingly restrictive anti-vaccine policies. For example, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii and California have formed the West Coast Health Alliance to coordinate vaccine recommendations. States in the Northeast are considering a public health collaboration. These initiatives will ensure that vaccines are available to all who want and need them, that they can be given at pharmacies without prescriptions, and that vaccine schedules and recommendations are not those of Kennedy, but of professional organizations like the American Association for Pediatrics, the American Medical Association and the American Public Health Association. We ask Governor Hobbs to have Arizona join this movement to protect the health of all Arizonans, particularly children, by making vaccines available and easy to get.

Some Arizonans will look at such a move with suspicion and doubt due to the overwhelming amount of misinformation about vaccines that has been propagated on social media and the press by Kennedy and his anti-vaccine followers. We must remember that he is not a doctor, nor does he have any scientific training. He is an avowed anti-vaccine advocate whose goal is to suppress vaccine use in the US. His misinformation is designed to cause fear and doubt about vaccines. In a short OpEd we cannot refute all of this misinformation about vaccines and autism; however, several studies have already done so. In addition, the organization Defend Public Health has provided a science-based document that explains all factors that may contribute to autism, from genetics to environmental factors, and why vaccines are not one of them. Vaccines are safe and effective, and they do not cause autism.

Some Arizonans may believe that vaccines are unnecessary if you are healthy and have a healthy immune system. This concept is another fallacy propagated by Kennedy. The immune system is not an omnipresent protective shield. If you have never been infected by a specific germ (bacteria or virus), your immune system doesn’t know it exists, so it can’t protect you, no matter how healthy you are. However, when you get infected, the immune system sets about “learning” about the germ so that it can begin to fight it off. This doesn’t happen instantaneously; it takes awhile for the immune system to “learn” and become effective. During this time the ongoing infection can make you extremely sick, cause all sorts of lasting damage, and may kill you before the immune system catches up. If you survive, your immune system now can protect you from becoming very ill the next time that germ infects you. Here is where vaccines are so important: they “teach” your immune system to protect you from the germ without you getting very sick, damaged or killed.

For the health of all Arizonans, young and old, it is essential to reject the misinformation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which is based on pseudoscience and conspiracy theories. Vaccines are necessary to preserve health and lives. All Arizonans should have the right and the freedom to get vaccinations. This will only happen if the Arizona state government takes control of vaccine policy away from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the federal government.