It is understandable that the national and even global news headlines are currently occupied by the 2019 coronavirus pandemic, and the AAFP has been leading the healthy development of family doctors. So far, it has the latest COVID-19 development.

[Vaccinations for children]
However, it is important to remember that outbreaks of infectious diseases such as flu and measles are continuing-although vaccines for coronavirus are still a year or more away, vaccines for other known preventable diseases already exist And is always available.

Unfortunately, as the results of a recent Gallup survey (news.gallup.com) indicate, public support for vaccines continues to go in the wrong direction. The survey found that today's people say that compared to 2001, it's important for parents to get their children vaccinated, and now more and more people think that vaccines can cause autism in children, Prevented diseases are more dangerous.

Focus of the survey The survey involved 1,025 U.S. adults who answered a series of questions about children's vaccination (news.gallup.com). The responses were compared with responses from similar surveys conducted in 2001 and 2015. Specifically, participants were asked about the following vaccine-related topics:

The importance of vaccines. In the 2019 survey, 84% of adults said that getting parents to vaccinate their children is very important or very important, compared to 94% in 2001. At the same time, 4% of adults said it was not important to get their parents vaccinated. Their children were vaccinated, up from 1% in 2001.

Advantages and disadvantages of vaccination. Of the respondents surveyed in 2019, 89% said they had heard a lot about the benefits of vaccinating children, compared with 73% in 2001. On the other hand, 79% of respondents also said that they had heard of many or quite a few transactions about the possible adverse effects of these vaccines-more than two percent of the vaccines surveyed in 2001 (39%). Times more.

Potential hazard. In 2019, 11% of those surveyed said they thought the vaccine was more dangerous than the disease they were trying to prevent, compared to only 6% of those surveyed in 2001.

Vaccines and autism. Of the adults surveyed in 2019, 10% said they thought certain vaccines could cause autism in children, compared with 6% in 2015. (This question was not asked in the 2001 survey.) It is worth noting that the proportion of adults surveyed was slightly higher. In 2019, they did not consider the vaccine to be the cause of autism (45% vs. 41%).

News References: https://www.aafp.org/news/health-of-the-public/20200318gallupvax.html