Pittsburgh's Dangerous Drop in Vaccination Rates

You know, you're talking about hundreds of people who are ending up hospitalized. School community is going into quarantine. We had three deaths last year. Really tragic stuff because these diseases, this disease in particular, is preventable. And it's, again, it's not just a rash. This sends your temperature through the roof. This will end up weakening your lungs and possibly causing them to fail, which is the leading cause of death from measles. It can cause encephalitis, which is a swelling in your brain that can lead to... disorders and to consequences, you're going to deal with your entire life. I mean, blindness, really severe, severe developmental disorders. And then at the very far end of it, you have something called subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, which is a very rare complication from measles, but is one of the most awful things I've come across in all the years I've been reporting. Essentially, what happens is a child gets measles, and they go through the fever and everything else, and then they seem to get better. They heal, they get well. They go on with their lives. You know, and this is maybe an infant who's gotten the infection. Years go by, and unbeknownst to everybody, this virus is still living in their brain and it's replicating. And eight, ten years later, all of a sudden, you know, their handwriting gets a little less precise. They have a little more trouble with their coordination. Their personality starts to change. And for just about every parent that encounters this, they have no idea what's going on. And it takes a little while, you know, for the symptoms to really get to a point where you, the parent has to take the child into the hospital and they'll find that the brain is swelling up. And eventually a doctor will come to this parent and will have to tell them that your child is going to go into a vegetative state from which there is no recovery. and there is nothing anybody can do about it. Now, that's mercifully a rare, very rare complication, but it still exists. And it's one of the dangers of this disease, and it's one of the reasons why they have a vaccine for it. As one of the doctors we talked to said, we don't have a vaccine for the common cold because the common cold is not that dangerous. So if there is a vaccine for a disease, it's because the disease can do some pretty nasty stuff to you. Yeah, and let's get into some of your marquee findings here because, you know, we're talking about what the disease can do. But I think it's what it's already doing in Pennsylvania that, I don't know, it fills me with like some fear as a parent, but also just as a person. What is the state of things right now in the Commonwealth? Well, in Pennsylvania, currently one out of every four elementary schools has lost herd immunity. Herd immunity is the level at which a disease can't take hold. If somebody gets it, it's not going to turn into an outbreak. Because measles is so incredibly infectious, that herd immunity rate is 95%. So you have to have 95% of people vaccinated against this to stop the disease from breaking out. Currently, a quarter of all elementary schools are below that level.

At first, when we looked at the rates, you know, they're 90%. They're in the high 80s or some of them dip into the 70s. And we thought, well, is that really that bad? And then as we would bring these findings to epidemiologists and pediatricians, the first few times that we had people say, are you sure that's right? Because that's incredibly dangerous. Even if you drop down to 90%, to high 80s, You have opened yourself up to a disease that knows very well how to attack people. And in that situation, in that scenario, you know, most people who get measles, they'll go through an illness and it'll be bad, but they'll recover. But you have... certain people who can't get the vaccine, people with immune compromised conditions. There are about 3% of people who do get the vaccine who it won't work for. And so it still won't stop this thing from infecting them, which is why you need to get that rate up so high because there are these subsets of the population that are just totally unprotected. There's nothing they can do about it. And public health experts will tell you that's why the rest of us have to do. something is to protect them. We're protecting ourselves for sure. But we're also, this is a matter of public health, of public safety. And that's a big part of why vaccine policies are the way they are. But it turns out that that's slipping. This thing we've built up over. generations really is starting to come down right in front of us. I know you focus statewide. Are there schools here in the Pittsburgh area that are especially low? There are. There are a few places. I mean, one of the ones that we focused on early in the story was Arsenal Elementary for a couple of reasons. One, because it's fallen into the 80s. And two, because back in the 1950s, Arsenal Elementary was the site of the very first. public trial for the polio vaccine. The polio vaccine is this, you know, was hailed as this modern miracle, this towering medical achievement. And in a lot of ways, you know, it brought people around to vaccines. It made them see what it could do, see what vaccines could do and say, yes, this, okay, we need this. We need more of this, you know, for other diseases. And now that school is below herd immunity for measles. You have... Phazon Elementary in Homewood, you have Concord in the sort of near the southern tip of the city. Both of those are in the mid-70s. And then, you know, as you go across the state, you'll see this in cities. You'll see it in rural areas. You'll see it in public schools. And especially in some of these private religious schools in certain areas, the rates are incredibly low. I mean, we found... a Mennonite school in Lancaster County where the vaccination rate for measles is 25%. I mean, that, as people have told us, that that's a pile of dry kindling.

I guess I would expect more of that among private or religious schools, you know, where exemptions are more common or more talked about. To hear you call out, you know, Phazon and Arsenal and Concord and Banksville is in your story. Like, those are public schools. You tend to think that public schools are going to have a higher immunity rate. So why is that not happening? Yeah, I mean, Arsenal is down the hill from Children's Hospital. You know, UPMC Children's is you can almost see it. from the school. There's a lot of different reasons. It's why people are having such a hard time solving this issue. There is this growth in vaccine hesitancy, which is kind of counterintuitive because a pandemic that we all just went through that was brought to an end by vaccines has driven vaccine hesitancy to new levels that we just hadn't seen before. So that's kind of counterintuitive, but that's where we are. But I mean, I think for any of us who live through it, like we saw that in action, like so many people. I mean, I grew up in a really rural area and a ton of folks that I grew up with, like expressed constantly on Facebook and things like that. Like I would never trust this vaccine, like that it was too fast. And it didn't matter that that was counter to scientific evidence. Well, yeah. I mean, this is a lot of this does go back to this. this decline in trust in institutions, right? And in some ways, vaccines are, you know, maybe the ultimate expression of trust in an institution, right? If you think about it, you were asking a parent to inject something into their child that they don't understand to prevent a disease they don't have. And so that is an awful lot of faith when you kind of step back and think about it, to be putting into... these systems that we've built up over the years, that we've come increasingly to distrust. Even though in the case of vaccines, we have decades and decades of studies and data across hundreds and hundreds of thousands of children and not just in the United States, but across the world, and all of them say the same thing, that these things are safe and that they are effective. But there is this broader thing happening in society that is kind of breaking our bonds with the institutions that we've relied on. for a very long time and in some ways justifiably we talked to plenty of doctors plenty of people who are very worried about this who are also saying yeah i get it though right i mean i get why our behavior you know our our mandates during covid and the way the government approach certain things has driven this disconnect. And it really piss people off in a lot of cases. But the upshot of that of this growing distrust, of this moment we find ourselves in is that kids are less safe than they were a few years ago. And it's because of these decisions that people are making about vaccinations. And, you know, it's playing out right now in schools across the state.

I think the thing that blew me away about your story is that there are aspects of it that feel a little bit like that Spider-Man meme where everyone's pointing at someone else you know because what's happening is that it's not just that parents are choosing not to vaccinate their children and that that's an individual choice but there's a process by which that's supposed to happen if you're going to put your kid in public school or any school in the state of Pennsylvania you're supposed to seek an exemption for medical or for religious reasons There's a process. And that's not happening in every circumstance. That's the part that's wild to me, Mike, is that school districts are supposed to, by state law, not led an unvaccinated kid in without an exemption. And they're doing it anyway. And at the state level, the people who set the laws are just like, well, it's on the schools to enforce it. And no one's taking responsibility for any of this. And what's left is schools with tons of small children. are not protected, which means that by extension, our society is not protected. Yeah, that part kind of knocked us for a loop when we first came across it because we were not expecting that. Pennsylvania has vaccine mandates. It says the Department of Health is in power to say to get into a school, you need to have these shots or you need to claim this exemption. Now, first of all, it's so easy to claim an exemption in Pennsylvania that there are folks who advocate against vaccines who will tell you that Pennsylvania is not a mandatory vaccination state because it's that easy. Because essentially, you're just checking a box to get out of this requirement. But people aren't even doing that, and we're not doing anything about it. That's the part that we did not expect to see, is that there are people who aren't even taking that step, and schools are taking no action whatsoever to address that. They're just, these kids have, they're not fully vaccinated, and they have no paperwork showing that their parent is claiming a moral, religious, or medical reason why they can't or shouldn't get these shots. And they're being allowed in regardless. I mean, we talked about why is this happening in different areas. In some areas, it's access, right? It's tough to get to a doctor. Yeah. But access has been a problem forever. And we've found a way around that, right? Like schools have brought vaccines in. Or they've pushed parents a little bit and said, hey, you need to do this or your kid risks exclusion from school, what we've found. That was another consequence of what happened during COVID. These local school leaders who under Pennsylvania law are primarily responsible for, you know, saying, yay or nay, you can come in or you can't, based on these vaccine requirements.

They went through an incredibly tumultuous period. I mean, school board meetings that, we've both covered school board meetings. Generally, pretty boring affairs, right? But it got exponentially tougher during the pandemic. You go from these things that, like, nobody really paid attention to that you'd have a couple of parents show up to now and then where you're holding them in these tiny rooms to needing to use the school auditorium where you got hundreds of people and you got to get a line of cops to stand in between you. as a board member and the crowd that is screaming at you and so these school board members and these superintendents and principals all went through this and we talked to a lot of them they're saying essentially some of these folks have like You know, they're just this side of PTSD from what they went through. They were getting threats. They, again, had to call the police in. And now, as one former school official said, they're just kind of throwing their hands up. And like, I don't want this fight. I already went through it. I don't want to reopen this can of worms here by telling parents, your kid can't come here unless you get this shot. And so across the state, as a result of that, At least 16,000 children are attending school outside of state law, just totally outside the law. And in some schools, that number by itself is enough to push the vaccine rate below herd immunity. Just that noncompliant category. The state, I say noncompliant because the state actually created a separate category to track these kids because there's so many of them. It's called noncompliant enrolled. They have to create a new data category that says, yep. These are the students who are just being allowed in outside of any legal boundaries we've set up. And when you ask the state health department or the education department, well, what are you doing about that? As you said, their answer is basically we can't do anything. The way the law is set up, that's on the school board. And Pennsylvania has like 500 different school districts. So. There are 500 local governments in charge of enforcing a single state law. In that scenario, there is no way you're going to get uniform enforcement. Now, we didn't expect enforcement to be what it is, but that itself is a problem. The system, the way it is set up, has just opened up these gigantic holes that are allowing these rates to drop farther and faster than they might otherwise. But in your story, you talk about how it doesn't have to be that way. Like they had a commission 10 years ago that pointed all these holes out before the pandemic, before measles outbreaks were affecting places like South Carolina and Texas. Like there was a moment where the legislature was told, why didn't they do anything? And I mean, I guess to take that forward, are they going to do anything now? Yeah, why they didn't do anything. Starting there, some people tried to. You had actually people from both parties putting out legislation that would either...

try to make it harder to get some of these exemptions. Not saying that you make it impossible and not removing these, although some people did propose removing philosophical and religious exemptions, which has been done in other states, like California, New York, which have seen their rates go way up. But to say, like, as some other states have done, to say, you have to go to a doctor first. Now, you can get these exemptions, but you've got to go to a doctor who's going to tell you, this is what vaccines do. This is why we have them. And then if you decide, okay, no, it's still not for me, fine. But you've had a doctor say, this is why they're useful and why they're safe. This is how we know they're safe. So you're getting your information from somebody who's studied this as opposed to somebody who's reposting a meme on Facebook. And all of those efforts just kind of stalled out, including the recommendation that the Department of Health start posting these local rates that we had to go and request. What they were saying was, you need to tell parents what's going on in these schools. You need to let them know that the rates are falling to where they're falling to so they can show up at the school board meetings and say, hey, you know, my kid has an autoimmune disorder or something else or, you know, for whatever reason, can't get the vaccine. Or they're just worried about the community's health. and, you know, give them the information that they can use to take to these local officials and push them to do what they want them to do, which is how this whole system is supposed to work. And the health department just... Didn't do that. We did. We asked them why, and they said, well, it would divert too many resources. It would be, you know, it would be expensive. But we've got a search engine now where you can look up your school's rate. So it is certainly possible to do. Well, what about now? Take us to the present. Is there any energy to do anything about all this? Like, have you gotten any feedback, maybe, from your reporting? We have. We've gotten, and there's more reporting to come. We're still pursuing this because there's, you know, we couldn't get it out all out in one story, even a story as long as that one was. It's good, though. I encourage you all to read it. I appreciate that. So we are still in this post-COVID moment. And there is not a uniform feeling about vaccines. In fact, quite the opposite, right? So you have some state legislators and some local officials who are really concerned about this, who do see the problem. And most people in this country believe that vaccines are a good thing, that most parents want to get their kids vaccinated. It's that there is this growing number of people who don't or who are fearful or are confused or just something that's making them hesitate.

And we have people who don't believe that vaccines work, who think fewer people should be vaccinated, who think it's the vaccines and not the diseases that are the real threat here. And they have currently more power than they have ever had in the history of this movement. They used to be on the fringe of the debate. And they're now standing in front of, you know, a backdrop that says U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Literally, the health director, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.., is a famous anti-vaxxer at this point. Yeah. And we're seeing, I mean, there's the reduction in the recommended schedule of vaccines that they put out there. They went from 17 to 11. that was halted by a judge who said you can't just do that without going through a process. He also overhauled the entire committee that decides those things, like on a dime fired all the scientists that were part of it and made those decisions and replaced them with many people that had no medical background at all. Right. Which if you're a parent and you're not really sure, you're hearing people tell you, well, you know, these things are dangerous. They might be, you know, they might not. Maybe that what you've been told about them isn't entirely true. Well, now you have that same message about hesitancy coming from an official source. And that's something that's never happened before. Under the banner of the White House, right. So we've never really been in a moment like this from a public health standpoint and a policy standpoint in our history. This is new territory. What I think I'm hearing, Mike, is that you are not yet hopeful. but hope to be hopeful at some point in the future? Well, I would have liked it if fewer people had told us during the course of this reporting that it's going to get worse before it gets better. And that concerns me because these are kids we're talking about. And it's your job as a parent to protect your kid, but to a lesser degree, it's my job too. And we're in a place right now where I'm not sure where we go next, especially if we can't all agree on... the very basics of what you can do to protect a kid. If you don't have that foundational agreement, it's kind of tough to all start rowing in the same direction. So we are in a very uncertain place here. And we're seeing these cases pop up. You know, one of the reasons we decided to leave on the search engine, when you get to your school, it'll show you the vaccination rates for a range of diseases. And we left a couple of them off. Like the hepatitis B vaccine, we don't display those rates because you're not going to get hepatitis B through regular contact in a classroom. But, you know, after speaking to people about which other shots should we include, and we were originally going to exclude polio because the rates are pretty good still because polio scares the hell out of people. Somebody we talked to said, no, you want to leave that there because if you're going to keep updating this thing, you know, the rates might be good now, but we don't know where they're going to be in five years. Not for nothing. I just keep thinking about Jonas Salk, Pittsburgher, famous researcher. He created the polio vaccine. He effectively eradicated it. He did it to save a lot of lives, and he did. And now it seems like we're just undoing it all. We spoke to his kid.

His kid, his son, who is also an eminent physician. His son, who's himself whiteheaded at this point. Yeah, is the-over-it-pit as well. Yep. But he, I mean, Dr. Peter Salk is like himself incredible, but was also one of the first recipients of that polo vaccine, like as a small child. Yep, in his kitchen. And he, you could just hear it when he's talking about this, because he saw this, he saw the beginning. And he saw this promise that came from it. He talked about how his dad couldn't walk down the street when they'd travel. They'd go on vacation or wherever his dad couldn't walk down the street without people coming up to him. And you can't imagine that with a doctor these days. Right? This Dr. Jonas Salk became a rock star. And he watched, you know, Dr. Peter Salk has watched. vaccine uptake increase over the years. He's seen these diseases go from, you know, routine childhood experiences, routine and terrible childhood experiences to being essentially eliminated in this country. And now he's watching them come back. And, you know, you could hear in his voice the difficulty he has with that. Mike, I guess before we go, anything else you hope people take away from the peace. Oh, boy. I think I'll just let it speak for itself. Probably the best I can do at this point after all those edit passes. Fair enough. Mike Weirchagin, thank you so much. Thank you.

That is all for today here on CityCast Pittsburgh. Please check out Mike's reporting. His whole team poured so much energy into that. It's a great story and it's got a search feature that you can tinker with. You can see what the vaccination rates look like in your school, a friend's school, one that happens to be near you. This is good information to have and send along to anyone that you think might need to know. You can support us by becoming a CityCast Pittsburgh neighbor. All the details are at membership.citycast.fm. We'll be back tomorrow with more from around the city. We'll talk to you soon. Sorry, I didn't mean to catch you off guard. I'm trying to drink your coffee and I'm over here being like, hi.