Moriarty: Boost public health — end religious vax exemptions
Read entire opinion in the Boston Herald
We are facing immediate threats to our public health: a vaccine skeptic heading the Department of Health and Human Services amid outbreaks of vaccine-preventable disease sweeping across our nation. More than 8,500 pertussis (whooping cough) cases with three pediatric deaths have occurred so far in 2025. Measles, a disease declared eliminated two decades ago has sickened more than 1,080 patients and caused three deaths so far this year. The vast majority of the measles cases this year have happened to unimmunized people.
Massachusetts has had one of the highest vaccine rates in the country. However, there is a growing threat to the public’s community immunity — the misuse of “religious exemptions” in schools across the Commonwealth. Some people are allegedly claiming a religious exemption because personal belief exemptions are not allowed in Mass.; others are allegedly claiming a religious exemption because they were unable to get a valid medical exemption. These are leading to pockets of under-immunization around our state.