I'll be interested in how the pandemic affects general vaccine hesitancy and vaccine mandate policies. In recent years with the rise in Measles outbreaks, a number of states have curtailed their non-medical exemptions. I think the coronavirus pandemic will put renewed focused on those exemptions and in general vaccine uptake. We are mostly fortunate that a good amount of serious vaccine-targeted diseases are no longer endemic in the US or otherwise controlled.
What state do you think is the only state that didn't have any non-medical exemptions for vaccination since the very beginning of state-based vaccination programs at the turn of the 20th century?
California? New York? Massachusetts?
It was actually West Virginia. And up until 1979 it was the only state to do so, till Mississippi struck down their religious exemption as violating equal protection as exempted children would be a hazard to others. California on the other hand was the first state to have non-medical exemptions, till 2015 when a Measles outbreak caused the state to remove all non-medical exemptions.
The sky didn't fall in either Mississippi or West Virginia, on the contrary they have two of the highest childhood vaccination rates in the country, some of the lowest rates of vaccine preventable disease, and significant public support for the policies, while vaccination rates for the rest of the US have declined.