Fewer and fewer Americans believe it is important to vaccinate children

Fewer and fewer Americans believe it is important to vaccinate children, according to a recent Gallup poll.

Questionnaire he showed that 40 percent of oldsters believe it is “extremely important” to vaccinate their children — up from 58 percent in 2019 and 64 percent in 2001.

The poll, conducted July 1-21, also found that a growing variety of U.S. adults believe vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases they’re intended to prevent. In 2024, 20 percent viewed vaccines as unsafe, nearly double the number in 2019 (11 percent). Only six percent of Americans held that belief in 2001.

The survey also found that the decline in belief within the importance of vaccines was mostly amongst Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents saw little or no change of their views since 2001.

In previous surveys, Republicans and Democrats had similar views on the risks and advantages of vaccines. The data showed that the gap between Democrats and Republicans widened significantly after the COVID-19 pandemic. Pew Research poll reported that 78 percent of Democrats believe the virus poses a serious health threat, compared with 52 percent of Republicans.

“This political divide reflected a tendency for Democratic officials and party members to follow COVID-19 guidance provided by medical authorities, while Republican officials and people identifying as Republicans were often skeptical about the reliability of that information,” the report said. “Now, those concerns appear to extend to childhood vaccines, which have long been used to prevent the spread of infectious diseases, as well as to the field of science in general.”

In addition, Americans are actually less likely to say the federal government should require children to be vaccinated against infectious diseases. In 1991, greater than 80 percent of Americans supported requiring vaccinations, but today only 51 percent support that view.