Four years after government officials aggressively pushed the COVID vaccine on Americans through mandates, taxpayer-funded incentives, and other means, Michigan health officials are reporting some of the lowest vaccination rates among young children in a decade.

Michigan Chief Medical Executive Natasha Bagdasarian recently discussed the situation with WILX as she urged families to ensure their children receive the six vaccinations required for the upcoming school year.

She explained that keeping diseases like the measles and whooping cough in check requires high vaccination rates to counter students who are exempted due to compromised immune systems.

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In March 2019, about 74% of Michigan children from ages 19 months to 35 months were fully immunized with recommended vaccines, a figure that has declined to 66.9% in March, according to data from the Michigan Care Improvement Registry.

“These are really potentially lifesaving tools, these are tools that keep your child healthy,” Bagdasarian said.

Wayne State University School of Medicine reports childhood immunizations are now at “levels not seen in Michigan in more than a decade,” pointing to a need to “promote vaccinations as important and safe public health measures” and address “misinformation and misunderstanding about vaccinations.”

“Unfortunately, a great deal of misinformation, wild rumors and myths are circulating about vaccinations, creating confusion, mistrust and concern,” said Matt Seeger, co-director of the WSU Center for Emerging and Infectious Diseases. “While we should ask questions and seek information about our health, it’s important to make sure we know the source of the information. Social media is more likely to include sensational information and rumors than established medical facts.”

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The confusion online is largely driven by shifting government mandates and conflicting information about the COVID vaccine during and since the pandemic that has eroded trust in public health officials.

Many of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s crushing COVID edicts were predicated on advice from disgraced national medical advisor Anthony Fauci, who has since admitted to the limited effectiveness of vaccines for respiratory diseases, and acknowledged that extended lockdowns were unnecessary, despite advocating for both during the pandemic.

Fauci wrote in research published by Cell Host and Microbe in February 2023 that it’s “not surprising” none of the COVID viruses “have ever been effectively controlled by vaccines,” an observation that directly conflicts with his comments in May 2021, when as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases he said “when you get vaccinated” you “become a dead end to the virus,” The Center Square reported.

More recently, while promoting his new book on CBS News, Fauci admitted that extended school closures he advocated for were a mistake.

“How long you kept it was the problem, because there was a disparity throughout the country,” he said. “If you go back and look at YouTube, I kept saying, ‘Close the bars, open the schools. Open the schools as quickly and as safely as you possibly can.’ But initially to close it down was correct. Keeping it for a year was not a good idea.”

Ironically, Fauci criticized Whitmer in March 2021, nearly a year after the governor locked down the state, as she attempted to lift the pandemic restrictions on in-person instruction in schools.

“Just hold on a little longer, until you get the overwhelming proportion of the population vaccinated,” Fauci told CNN.

Unsurprisingly, polling from the Kaiser Family Foundation released last year shows trust in public health officials has drastically declined since the pandemic, with those who trust Fauci dropping from 68% in December 2020 to 53% by April 2022.

Trust in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also dropped from 73% to 64%, while confidence in the FDA went from 70% to 62%, according to the nonprofit.

“During the Covid-19 pandemic, inconsistent and ineffective messaging increased politicization of public health and mistrust of government agencies,” former CDC director Tom Frieden wrote in a column for STAT, a healthcare news site. “Public health messengers must be upfront with what they know when they know it, and with what is fact and what is opinion. Overstating claims undermines trust.

“The Biden administration exacerbated the problem by tying the CDC to White House messaging. This virtually ensured that a large proportion of the public would distrust CDC’s health warnings.”

The trickle down of those decisions is now impacting vaccine rates in many states including Michigan, where folks like Seeger continue to blame parents and partisans instead of taking ownership of the mistakes made over the last four years.