An op-ed from the New York Post this week reveals yet more information from the public health sphere that has some school districts and state government agencies setting off alarms. With the school year already well underway, the New York City Health Department has revealed its latest set of statistics, and vaccination rates for the city’s public school students have decreased significantly. I’m not sure if “plummeted” (the word chosen by the Post) is accurate, but they’re down by five points to less than 60% participation. And we’re not just talking about COVID vaccines here. That’s the participation rate for all of the standard childhood disease vaccinations. So who is to blame for this? The Post suggests that the city, state, and federal governments should all look in the mirror.

Chalk up yet another deadly disaster to the authoritarian bungling of public health “experts”: City Health Department data show that rates for standard childhood vaccinations have plummeted.

The first three months of fiscal 2023 saw a drop in routine pediatric vaccination levels from 64.5% a year ago to 59.2%, a five-point drop. The rates were “negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic among other factors,” as the report blandly puts it.

In fact, they were crushed, in good part because city, state and federal officials lied again and again to the public about the efficacy of numerous COVID interventions including masking, social distancing, school closures and vaccines.

There was always a certain amount of vaccine hesitancy around the country even before the novel coronavirus darkened our doorway. Some of that comes from a fear that something used in the creation of standard childhood vaccines for diseases such as measles could cause autism in children. (That’s never been definitively proven to my knowledge, but who knows?) Others, particularly conservative, pro-life parents, object to the process used to create certain vaccines because fetal tissue cells are used to grow the weakened virus.

But what we’re seeing now, particularly in New York City, seems to be something different. As the linked editorial points out, despite continued protestations by health officials, the government got a great number of things wrong at the outset of the pandemic. And even after further research proved them wrong, they lied about many things repeatedly. This issue goes far beyond just vaccines to include policies regarding masking, social distancing, and the safety or efficacy of lockdowns.

In short, as the Post puts it, public health officials have “completely wrecked” their credibility on medical issues in general and vaccines in particular. At this point, if the government is attempting to force people to have any sort of medical procedure, particularly when it comes to children, there is obviously going to be some increased pushback being observed.

That’s a problem because, while they’ve clearly gotten plenty wrong during the current era, the public and the medical industry rely on the government to provide informed guidelines when it comes to many health issues. And while nobody is perfect, they’ve generally done a fairly good job in the modern era based on the best medical evidence.

Not so much in the past few years, though. We’ve watched the CDC, the FDA, and some of the nation’s largest medical associations become entirely politicized and indoctrinated into woke ideology. The public has watched science be replaced by The Science, or more correctly, The Narrative. Admissions of errors are unacceptable if such things damage people’s political careers. And the social contagion of the transgender movement has infected the American Medical Association and other professional groups at the highest levels.

Why would people, particularly parents, trust these characters at this point? If the government wants to see childhood vaccination rates rebound, officials need to work on reestablishing their credibility. And that starts with telling the truth and being fully transparent with the data. It’s okay to be wrong sometimes, but it’s the coverup that will bring you down.