A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Mississippi has historically had some of the highest vaccination rates in the country. Before the pandemic, 99% of incoming kindergarteners were vaccinated, but that number is now slipping. Here's NPR's Katia Riddle.
KATIA RIDDLE, BYLINE: On a recent Thursday evening, a few dozen people gathered at Riverside Church. It's in a suburb outside Jackson, Mississippi. They came to hear from a couple of the candidates running for local office. One of them - Dr. Coleman Boyd, running for state Senate. One of the topics of his stump speech - medical freedom.
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COLEMAN BOYD: The idea that our tyrant government should be able to tell me anything about me or my children in my medical care - they have no right.
RIDDLE: Parents, he said, should be the deciders on vaccines for their kids.
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BOYD: And I'm not trying to tear down somebody who thinks they should give their child a vaccine or not. That's not the point. The government has no place in that.
RIDDLE: This event was organized by MaryJo Perry. She's a stay-at-home mom and activist, and she is a force among conservatives here. She believes her son was injured by a vaccine when he was 5. After that, she started organizing. Her group is called Mississippi Parents for Vaccine Rights.
MARYJO PERRY: We are a Christian praying bunch of mamas and daddies. And we have a prayer group, and we've had prayer marches around the Capitol.
RIDDLE: One of the reasons Mississippi has historically had such high vaccination rates - it did not allow students and families to opt out of mandatory school requirements for religious reasons. Perry thought this was a problem. It took her more than a decade of organizing and growing her coalition. But in 2023, the movement secured a legal religious exemption for families.
PERRY: I think the days of mandating this overbloated, ever-growing vaccine schedule are over.
RIDDLE: Do you feel like we're at a sea change in the country?
PERRY: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think it's a miracle, to be honest. I really do. Like, I never thought that we would see Bobby Kennedy as secretary of HHS. He has fought by our side for years.
RIDDLE: Perry shrugs off concerns from public health officials about losing herd immunity or impacting vulnerable populations. The student vaccination rate in Mississippi is still relatively high at 97.6%, but the number of religious exemptions is growing. Since the law changed, more than 5,000 families have requested an exemption, according to a news report from Mississippi Today. Anita Henderson is a pediatrician in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
ANITA HENDERSON: There are a lot of doctors who are just getting tired of every day having to debunk misinformation.
RIDDLE: Mississippi has just declared a public health emergency around infant mortality. Too many babies are dying here. Henderson worries that if fewer people get vaccines for things like RSV or flu, these babies will be even more vulnerable. She says even if these specific vaccines aren't eliminated from the recommendations, any kind of doubt fosters skepticism.
HENDERSON: The distrust over vaccines, the distrust over COVID vaccine has definitely negatively impacted all vaccines.
RIDDLE: Henderson says this generation of parents doesn't have much firsthand experience with these diseases.
HENDERSON: We have done such a great job of getting rid of polio and getting rid of measles, getting rid of meningitis that the fear of the disease is not there.
RIDDLE: She says now a new fear is driving people's choices.
HENDERSON: Unfortunately, the misinformation of the fear of the shot has been co-opted by this - the anti-vaccine group.
RIDDLE: Henderson has her own fear that vaccine rates will have to get worse before they get better.
Katia Riddle, NPR News, Jackson, Mississippi.
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