How a well-timed legal assault unraveled Mississippi's stellar record in vaccinating kids

On the fourth floor of the Mississippi Department of Health, Dr. Daniel Edney sits at a desk cluttered with reports and medical journals. As the highest-ranking public health official in a state that regularly ranks lowest in nearly every health indicator, Edney’s got a lot on his mind.

The elevator to his office is broken. A bucket and pieces of his ceiling sit in a pile on his floor — debris from a leak he can’t ignore much longer. “Public health in all its glory in Mississippi,” he said. “We’re trying to fix things.”

His to-do list is long: maternal death, infant death, obesity, heart disease, diabetes, teen births, poverty. The need goes on and on, while Mississippi spends less money on public health per resident than almost any other state. Nearly a third of the state’s rural hospitals are at "immediate risk" of closing. More than 40% of the jobs at the health department are currently unfilled.

This spring, less than a year into his tenure, another problem dropped in Edney’s lap: childhood vaccines.

For the first time in more than 40 years, Mississippi began granting religious exemptions from the state’s strict requirement that every child receive five vaccines — diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis; polio; hepatitis; measles, mumps and rubella; and chickenpox — before attending day care, public school or private school.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/mississippi-anti-vaccine-religious-exemptions-school-public-health-rcna130004

Mississippi Goddamn.