Vaccine hesitancy

Parents are increasingly finding ways to keep their children unvaccinated as they enter kindergarten, new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows. The percentage of parents claiming vaccine exemptions for their children has increased nationwide this year, with many states rising over 5%. Overall childhood vaccination coverage remains high but has not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels.What Inspired Dominic Monaghan's Performance in Moriarty?Children who attend school are required to receive…

Over the weekend, Twitter co-founder and CEO of Block Jack Dorsey officially put his outsized weight behind a leading anti-vaxxer for president. Dorsey can now join other tech execs like his strained friend Elon Musk endorsing extremist political candidates, helping to spread even more misinformation online like water from a sprinkler.NPR Is Going Dark on Twitter | Future TechOn Sunday, Dorsey retweeted a Fox News report about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who argued that he could beat former President Donald Trump and Florida…

A subset of Missouri legislators care deeply about freedom. For instance: The God-given right to NOT accept a life-saving vaccination and still attend public school or go to work in a hospital. Also, the freedom to not be forcibly injected with a (non-existent) microchip device or a DNA-altering substance.Lawmakers in the state’s House have advanced a bill (HB700) that would seriously weaken covid-19 vaccine mandates and restrict Missouri’s ability to respond to future pandemics. As a bonus, the would-be law also feeds…

A child with a measles rash.Photo: Shutterstock (Shutterstock)A measles outbreak in Columbus, Ohio has sickened over 80 children and hospitalized dozens. The majority of these cases have involved unvaccinated children who were nonetheless eligible for vaccination. It is not yet clear how long the outbreak will continue, with the most recent case having been detected just last week.Columbus Public Health officials first reported the outbreak in early November, though the first known cases are now believed to have begun in…

Though highly contagious and dangerous to young children, measles is nearly 100% preventable with two doses of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. Photo: Justin Sullivan (Getty Images)An outbreak of measles in Ohio has spread through at least 7 daycares and a school in the area. Officials are now investigating 18 suspected cases of the fast-spreading but vaccine-preventable viral illness, all among unvaccinated children. Several of the children have been hospitalized.Columbus Public Health (CPH) and Franklin…

This piece is part of Gizmodo’s ongoing effort to make the Facebook Papers available to the public. See the full directory of documents here.Meta didn’t choose to become a global distributor of medicinal snake oil and dangerous health advice. But it did decide it could tolerate it.From the onset of the covid-19 pandemic, Facebook understood the outsized role its platform would plays in shaping public opinion about the virus and the safeguards that governments would inevitably institute in hopes of containing it. Ten…

Wake up sheeple.Image: GizmodoListen, I hate needles as much as the next person, but antivaxxers are taking their hatred of basic scientific advancement a step further by coding their communication in Facebook groups with carrot emojis to avoid the social media platform’s content filters.What a hectic past two and a half years it’s been, huh? A deadly respiratory virus is unleashed on the world, and we were forced to stay home and avoid contact with friends and loved ones. It was a dark time for most, but the glimmer of…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is one of the world’s leading vaccine conspiracists, though he’s finding he has less and less platforms to spread his organization’s disinformation.Photo: STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP (Getty Images)One of the most prolific and notorious anti-vaxxer online communities no longer has a home on either Facebook or Instagram as Meta reportedly took down both of their accounts for spreading misinformation, the company confirmed.The group called Children’s Health Defense, a community of vaccine conspiracists, told…

Poliovirus, which can cause permanent paralysis and sometimes even death, has been detected in New York City sewage, according to both the state and city health departments—who made the announcement in a joint press release on Friday.The presence of the virus in waste water likely indicates that polio is circulating locally, among the general public, wrote officials. “For every one case of paralytic polio identified, hundreds more may be undetected,” said New York’s heath commissioner, Mary Bassett. And, although…

Photo: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds (Getty Images)Meta, the company routinely railed against by experts and lawmakers for turbocharging covid-19 lies, wants its hand-picked Oversight Board to weigh in on whether the whole misinformation thing is still that big of a deal.In a blog post published Tuesday, Meta President of Global Affairs, Nick Clegg, said the company is asking its Oversight Board whether measures put in place to address covid-19 misinformation were still necessary and “appropriate.” Clegg says it broadened its…