Warning to Australia to avoid US-style anti-vax push

Detailed summary

Vaccine-preventable diseases are making a comeback, with experts saying lessons can be learned from a major measles outbreak in the US.

A United States vaccine expert has warned Australia to avoid contamination by his nation's politicised anti-vaccination campaigns that have cost the lives of more than 200,000 Americans.

The warning comes as vaccine-preventable diseases are making a comeback in Australia as more adults and children miss getting their jabs.

Professor Peter Hotez, co-director of the Texas Children's Centre for Vaccine Development, said the world had enough disease problems from Ebola to COVID to bird flu, without the need for anti-vaccine activism.

The US had become the epicentre for such activism including false claims that vaccines caused autism, he said in a media briefing with Australian reporters on Thursday.

It took a political turn about 12 years ago, under US President Donald Trump's MAGA movement, with candidates getting political funding to run anti-vaccine platforms at local elections and to file anti-vax legislation.

Then Fox News started promoting anti-vaccine views during the COVID pandemic and suddenly anti-vaccine activism was a full-on platform of the Republican Party, Prof Hotez said.

The wellness and influencer industry also promoted alternatives to vaccinations that had no medical benefits but made hundreds of millions of dollars for the sector.

Around 200,000 Americans needlessly perished because they refused COVID vaccines after being targeted with disinformation, Prof Hotez said.

"So anti-vaccine activism has become a lethal force, and now over the last five years we've seen this aggressively spill over into childhood immunisations," he said.

Opening of the article, excerpted from PerthNow. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.