Media stories focusing on vaccine hesitancy can distort reality and drive a false narrative that a large percentage of parents are refusing to get their children vaccinated, according to an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine by two pediatricians from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.
The article, published online Saturday in the Perspective section of the prestigious medical journal, said stories indicating widespread vaccine hesitancy among parents are at odds with the facts and can have long-term consequences.