Misinformation about vaccine safety drives reluctance to vaccinate children

As of late September 2022, nearly 78% of U.S. adults but only 31% of children ages 5 to 11 had completed their primary series of vaccinations against COVID-19, according to health authorities. In an open-access article published in the journal Vaccine, researchers from the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) attribute that dramatic discrepancy in part to the acceptance of misinformation about the safety of vaccines in general and the COVID-19 vaccines in particular. The researchers found that U.S. adult hesitancy to be vaccinated against COVID-19 is associated with misbeliefs about vaccines in general, such as that vaccines contain toxins like antifreeze, and about specific vaccines, such as the fears that the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccines causes autism (false) and the flu vaccine increases your chances of contracting COVID-19 (there is no evidence of this). However, those same concerns also predicted hesitancy to vaccinate children ages 5 to 11, even among those...