The U.S. has now reported more than 800 measles cases in at least two dozen states. The vast majority of cases — more than 600 — are in Texas. In the midst of the outbreak, a new poll shows how much misinformation people are seeing about measles.
The good news is the vast majority of people still have confidence in the safety of the measles vaccine, says Liz Hamel, director of public opinion and survey research at KFF, a nonprofit health policy research organization which conducted the poll.
The bad news: People are being exposed to a lot of false claims about measles — and many don't know what to make of it.
"What we have seen is that a large share of people are at least somewhat uncertain about how to evaluate that misinformation," Hamel says.
The survey was conducted earlier in April and included a nationally representative sample of 1,380 adults. Pollsters asked respondents about three false claims: that the measles vaccine is more dangerous than getting the disease; that the vaccine causes autism in children, and that vitamin A can prevent a measles infection. None of these things are true.
Only 5 percent of adults polled said they thought these falsehoods were definitely true, and a much larger share of respondents said they were "probably false" — but they weren't completely confident that these were falsehoods. Hamel says that shows there's a large group of people out there whose views on measles have room for uncertainty.
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