Prioritize Vaccines

In the U.S., 6.2% of adults under the age of 65 and 2.6% of children have compromised immune systems. This means that 14 million people under 65, including two million children, have immune systems that don’t function properly. Immunocompromised individuals are particularly vulnerable to infections like measles, pertussis (whooping cough), COVID-19, RSV, and the flu, often experiencing more severe outcomes compared to the general population. Unfortunately, people with immunocompromising conditions are often unable to mount adequate protective responses to vaccines directly, so they rely on community immunity to shield them from contagious diseases. Community immunity, the threshold when enough individual people in a community are immune to a disease that the disease cannot spread, is essential in safeguarding the most vulnerable members of society.

Years of assuming diseases like polio, measles, and whooping cough are eradicated have led to complacency and a significant drop in community immunity. Additionally, the rise in false claims surrounding vaccines has led many people to distance themselves from what was once a widely accepted and non-controversial practice. The decline in vaccine rates has resulted in a rise in vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks, including measles and pertussis, across all age groups. These increasingly common outbreaks pose a deadly risk to immunocompromised individuals, particularly because there are no treatments for many of these diseases.

I urge you to ensure the incoming Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services supports and upholds the evidence-based science around the value of vaccines in safeguarding our communities, especially those who are immunocompromised and need community immunity to remain healthy. The risks associated with declining vaccination rates are too great and compromise the health and safety of millions of Americans.