Mississippi State Health Officer Dr. Dan Edney recalls somehow making it through childhood without contracting chickenpox while the varicella vaccine was unavailable during the 1960s and 1970s, he told the Mississippi Free Press.
When he was an intern at the University of Virginia around 1988 and 1989, he said doctors tested his antibody level and found he had no immunity to chickenpox or shingles. They then enrolled him in beta testing for the varicella vaccine.
“I was an adult with no chickenpox immunity and now I do. I’ve never had chicken pox and because of that, I’ll never have shingles,” Edney told the Mississippi Free Press on Aug. 12.
Edney is now pushing Mississippi families to vaccinate their children to prevent outbreaks of preventable diseases like whooping cough, measles and polio as rates of childhood vaccines are decreasing in 14 counties. Counties and the state overall must maintain vaccination rates of at least 95% to prevent diseases like measles from spreading, he added.
The eight counties that have kindergarten vaccination rates below 95% are Webster at 94.9%, Franklin at 94.7%, Jackson at 94.6%, Tishomingo at 94.2%, Tate at 93.6%, Pontotoc at 93.0%, Lincoln at 93.0% and George at 91.8%, Mississippi State Department of Health data show.
The six counties that have kindergarten vaccination rates approaching the 95% threshold are Greene at 95.2%, Copiah at 95.6%, Madison at 95.6%, Hinds at 95.7%, Pearl River at 95.9%, Jefferson Davis at 95.9% and Noxubee at 95.9%, MSDH reports.
“These diseases are still out there. Just because we’ve not had any polio or tetanus or diphtheria or measles, mumps, rubella—it’s all still out there,” Edney said. “We have diseases like polio and tetanus that the very best way to treat those diseases is to never get them because we don’t have good treatment.”
Mississippi once had the highest level of vaccinated children in the nation but is now ranked number three after a federal judge ruled in 2023 that the state must allow religious exemptions for childhood vaccinations.
Despite the 14 counties in which vaccination rates are dropping, many areas of the state continue to have high rates, like the Delta, Edney said. He said anti-vaccine rhetoric that started during the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting this year’s kindergarten class. Statewide vaccination rates are still high at 98%, even in the counties where the vaccination rates of kindergarteners has dropped because the older students are still fully vaccinated. It will take about three to five years before some counties start seeing “pockets” of unvaccinated elementary-aged children, he added.
There are about 10,000 children statewide whose families received religious exemptions so their unvaccinated child can attend public, private or charter schools, Edney said. But as of Aug. 12, about a third of those families later decided to get their children vaccinated.
Edney said those who are inquisitive about vaccines and want to get the best information possible for their families are not the same as people who decide to be against vaccines no matter what research anyone presents to them.
“But understand if you’re opting out of vaccinating your children, there is risk there,” Edney said. “The risk is going to grow over the next 10 years and then you just have to be prepared for the ‘what if’ your child gets measles.”
Some people have incorrectly linked autism diagnoses with vaccinated children, but Edney said that claim was false for many reasons, one being that Mississippi has had a declining vaccination rate since 2007 but rates of autism continue to increase.
“Vaccine injury is a rare phenomenon. It’s not zero, but it’s very very rare. It is much lower than the mortality rate of measles,” Edney told the Mississippi Free Press.
He said people should listen to their doctors regarding vaccination information, and physicians should uphold their ethical duty to provide the best medical practices based on evidence.
“Physicians who take care of children have an ethical obligation to share the best evidence in terms of keeping children safe from vaccine preventable illnesses and it’s unethical to share misinformation,” Edney told the Mississippi Free Press.
Edney encouraged unvaccinated adults who want to start getting shots to get the Tdap vaccine for protection against tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis; the MMR vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella; the polio vaccine; and the varicella vaccine if they didn’t get chickenpox as child and don’t have immunity against chickenpox and shingles. People who had chickenpox as a child are immune from contracting it and shingles as an adult even without the varicella vaccine.
President Donald Trump issued an executive order on Aug. 10 recommending decreasing the number of recommended childhood vaccinations from 18 to 11 as well as split the MMR vaccine into three shots. Experts have said unbundling the MMR vaccine would mean more doctor visits and require a manufacturing overhaul to provide the capacity necessary to produce three different shots, an effort that is estimated to cost tens of millions of dollars. The U.S. does not currently offer separate shots for measles, mumps and rubella, though select countries do due to unique circumstances.
Edney said MMR and Tdap vaccines provide immunity for multiple diseases in one shot because “the antigen load is low especially compared to 15, 20 years ago, and we don’t want to give more patients more shots in terms of the discomfort of getting an injection more than necessary, and we certainly don’t want folks to have to go back to the doctor more than necessary,” he said. “All of these combination vaccines are very well-studied and the FDA has approved them from both safety and efficacy standpoint to being combined into one shot. Because I don’t know about you, but I’d rather get one shot instead of three.”
While the MMR and varicella vaccines provide lifelong immunity, Edney reminded adults to get booster shots of the Tdap shot every five to ten years, especially people who have a newborn or will be welcoming a newborn into their household to protect babies from contracting whooping cough.
“The thing I would beg everybody is please, please, please vaccinate your children against whooping cough and diphtheria, tetanus and polio,” Edney said. “Vaccinate against hepatitis because it can also cause liver cancer.”
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