State Health Experts Feel Vaccine Apathy May Be Contributing to Low Vaccination Rates

Tuesday, March 25th, 2025 -- 3:00 PM

(Hope Kirwan, Wisconsin Public Radio) Dr. Raj Naik has been a pediatrician in the La Crosse area for more than 25 years. This year’s flu season is one of the worst he’s seen.

According to Hope Kirwan with the Wisconsin Public Radio, influenza has hospitalized more than 6,500 Wisconsinites since Sept. 1, according to state Department of Health Services data, and the virus is still spreading at a high rate in the northcentral part of the state.

There were a total of 3,901 flu hospitalizations in the state during last year’s flu season, which typically runs from October to May. This year’s severe season comes amid a dramatic decline in seasonal vaccination rates.

Only 34 percent of Wisconsinites got a flu shot this season, the lowest rate recorded by the state in a decade. DHS data shows flu shot uptake has declined by 10 percentage points in the last four years.

Primary care providers are worried not only about how the decline affects immunity to the seasonal disease, but also what it says about changing attitudes towards vaccines in general.

Naik, who works at Emplify Health by Gundersen, said it’s becoming more and more common for a family to arrive at his office unwilling or uninterested in talking about vaccines.

“It’s not usually hard to pick up on the fact that there is some fatigue or even resistance to the discussion, both from verbal and nonverbal communication,” he said.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, mistrust of vaccines has risen to national attention in new ways. The current preseidential administration appears to be continuing the trend.

Longtime vaccine critic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. now leads the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In February, the Food and Drug Administration canceled without explanation an annual meeting focused on preparing next year’s flu shot.

But Naik and other Wisconsin health experts say anti-vaccine sentiment is not the only reason fewer people are getting the shots. They say patients’ apathy, both toward vaccines and the seriousness of diseases like flu, is just as serious a threat to public health.

Data shows the COVID-19 pandemic was a clear turning point for uptake of the seasonal flu shot in Wisconsin. After years of growth in flu shot rates, they have rapidly fallen each year since 2020.

For years, vaccination rates had been on the rise, going from 34 percent during the 2014-15 respiratory illness season to 42 percent for the season starting in 2019.

Heading into flu season in late 2020, state and federal health officials focused on very specific messaging around the influenza vaccine, according to Ajay Sethi, director of the Masters of Public Health program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

They wanted to prevent a “twindemic” that would involve both COVID-19 and flu infections spreading unchecked. Sethi said public fears about the new disease and hospital capacity meant that message worked.

Nearly 44 percent of Wisconsinites got a flu shot that season, the highest percentage in recent record. Only 28 residents in the entire state were hospitalized with influenza that winter.

But the united effort behind vaccination started to deteriorate as the pandemic went on. Sethi said the country went through several mild seasons of influenza, with hospitalizations and deaths remaining relatively low despite declining vaccination rates.

Instead of inspiring continued vaccination, it fed the perennial idea that influenza is not a real public health threat.

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