{"id":11283,"date":"2026-01-21T19:07:32","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T01:07:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=11283"},"modified":"2026-01-21T19:07:34","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T01:07:34","slug":"vaccine-myths-that-wont-die-and-how-to-counter-them-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2026\/01\/21\/vaccine-myths-that-wont-die-and-how-to-counter-them-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Vaccine myths that won&#8217;t die and how to counter them\u2014part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cidrap.umn.edu\/childhood-vaccines\/cidrap-op-ed-vaccine-myths-wont-die-and-how-counter-them-part-1\">CIDRAP<\/a> In consulting rooms across America, physicians face a challenge that no medical school prepared them for. A parent arrives with a list of concerns gathered from social media, podcasts, and well-meaning friends. The questions sound scientific. The language borrows from immunology. The citations reference real studies. And yet the conclusions are wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These parents are not ignorant. Many are educated, thoughtful, and deeply invested in their children\u2019s health. They have encountered a sophisticated ecosystem of misinformation that exploits legitimate parental instincts: protect your child, question authority, demand evidence. The problem is not that these parents are asking questions. The problem is that they are receiving false answers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The current moment has made this worse. The head of the Department of Health and Human Services has spent decades promoting vaccine skepticism and has now&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cidrap.umn.edu\/childhood-vaccines\/cidrap-op-ed-quiet-dismantling-how-shared-decision-making-weakens-vaccine-policy\">revamped<\/a>&nbsp;the US childhood immunization schedule to have one-third fewer recommended vaccines. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which guides the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has reversed long-standing recommendations without presenting new safety data. Measles, a disease eliminated from the United States in 2000, has returned at levels not seen in decades.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The information environment has never been more polluted, and the stakes have never been higher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The most persistent myths about childhood vaccines dissected below and in&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cidrap.umn.edu\/childhood-vaccines\/cidrap-op-ed-vaccine-myths-won-t-die-and-how-counter-them-part-2\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"part 2, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">part 2<\/a>&nbsp;are not fringe theories. They are the claims that appear most frequently in my clinical practice and in the broader public discourse.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Each has been studied extensively. Each has been refuted. And yet each persists, because misinformation travels faster than correction and because these myths tap into fears that are genuinely human.<\/p>\n<div style=\"display: none;\"><a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"\/secure-location.php\" title=\"u  NEg m fXJR JejpNidC \">u  NEg m fXJR JejpNidC <\/a><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CIDRAP In consulting rooms across America, physicians face a challenge that no medical school prepared them for. A parent arrives with a list of concerns gathered from social media, podcasts, and well-meaning friends. The questions sound scientific. The language borrows from immunology. The citations reference real studies. And yet the conclusions are wrong. These parents [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misinformation-disinformation-and-conspiracy-theories"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11283"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11284,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11283\/revisions\/11284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}