Burying the lede

This morning’s NYT email had this tidbit:

More than 700 children have died in a measles outbreak in Zimbabwe, driven by a decline in child immunization.

The implication is obvious, evil anti-vaxxers are killing children in Africa.

But once you read deeper into the article you get the full story:

Routine immunization dropped significantly in Zimbabwe during the Covid-19 pandemic. Anxious parents stayed away from health centers; health care workers were reassigned from routine vaccination programs to the Covid-19 pandemic response; and school closures and lengthy lockdowns scuppered the usual outreach campaigns.

In July, the World Health Organization and UNICEF warned that millions of children, most of them in the poorest countries, had missed some or all of their childhood vaccinations because of Covid lockdowns, armed conflicts and other obstacles. The U.N. agencies called the situation the largest backslide in routine immunization in 30 years and warned that, combined with rapidly rising rates of malnutrition, it created conditions that could threaten the lives of millions of children.

A more accurate headline would have been: Western anxiety over covid causes a massive drop in vaccination in Africa.

What’s so frustrating is this backlash was predicted and one of the main reasons why public health officials up to 2020 warned against strict lockdowns, even during far more dangerous ebola outbreaks.