How popular is the anti-vaxx movement in your part of the USA?

I live in a liberal area in Texas (a state where 45% of voters reliably vote blue, I'd like to add). As my friends and I all started to have children, some of them chose not to vaccinate their kids. Rationales given related to a lack of understanding of the severity of a disease like measles, a general distrust of the medical establishment and pharmaceutical industry, and a belief in "natural" remedies. This was a point of contention in our friendship and we had to just drop the conversation entirely. We basically kept our son away from them until he was 6 months and got his MMR, then started hanging out again.
Here we are, 6-7 years later, and with everything happening in the news and the outbreak in West Texas, they've all decided to vaccinate their children over the past 3 weeks. I was proud of them, it can be hard to admit to making a mistake like this.
- Thank you for sharing

I'm in San Diego and in the circles I run in anti vaccine sentiment is criticized ruthlessly and without hesitancy. Not saying that is the case all over the city, but everytime it gets brought up its immediately met with disdain. This is both at work and socially.
- Same for me in SD
  
  Happy to hear that! Makes sense if you consider all the biotech we have here.
- Yeah. But down the street in La Jolla, anti-vax is a prevalent opinion. Middle-aged white women living on their husbands' money love being "edgy" with shit like this.
  La Jolla is also where a lot of Republicans live.

If you want to know how popular it is in a particular area, just watch the heat map of measles infections in the United States over the next year.
Keep in mind that states are not homogeneous, so there will be hot spots. For example the outbreak started in a religious sect in West Texas.

NYC. I knew one guy who wouldn't get vaccinated. I told him we wouldn't hang out anymore until he did. He never did, we've never hung out since.

Hard to tell, but I get the sense that people stay quiet about it because they know they will be made fun of for being a dangerous, selfish, ignorant, fool of a person.

I live near a military community and the anti vax component seems to be larger than you would expect. All of the family members that are in the military are vaccinated due to requirements but their family is most likely not vaccinated. At the very least they don't get their children vaccinated. Especially after COVID there's been an increase in distrust of all vaccines.

The general anti-vax movement? It exists, but seems to be in the minority. Anti-COVID vaccine is pretty strong, though.

Im in a major city. I don't actually know anyone who is antivax in any real way, EXCEPT, for a doctor of all things. OOf.

As others are also noting here, the antivax movement is not all one monolithic concept - and especially people that would get all the childhood vaccines for their kids may not get the COVID ones, or oddly enough DO get those, but somehow are also against all vaccines at the same time as well? So I don't even know: it's like it appears more popular in theory than in actual practice?
I wonder if people get the vaccines for their kids out of love, but then out of fear don't want to admit that in order to avoid standing out against their local crowd.
- Ooh this is a good point and kind of applies to my situation. My daughter is massively needle-phobic. When the first covid vaccines were available, we had to physically hold her down (she’s almost 9 now). So I’ve made a deal with her that she has to get all of her scheduled vaccines but I won’t make her get the annual flu/covid vaccines because I just don’t want to have that fight with her. She’s a fighter generally. Meanwhile her brother sucks it up (as do I) and my husband says “Oh I need to get my annual flu vaccine” and then never does it, but I’m not going to parent him about it.
  
  The flu ones in the past made a ton of sense to not bother with, bc they so often guessed wrong what strain might come, and the effects were not so bad. On the other hand, long COVID is no joke, and the H5 bird flu that is affecting egg prices might be deadly (I dunno really though).

Strikingly low. Some places actually run out of the yearly ones on a regular basis. No assholes at school board meetings, no significant objections at schools.
They're present for surr, bit they're a tiny minority, luckily
- That's still a choice though, to not order more supply. Tbf, if a place is small enough to run out, then the incident rate of the disease is also likely to be lessened. Even so, for something like a childhood vaccination that has enormous effects and provides decades to a lifetime of protection, someone could drive or order more to make sure to receive it?
  
  Well, there's limits on how much a given provider can order how often. Can't recall what those limits are, but it's a thing due to how long a given vaccine is stable, what the supply is from the makers, etc. I never handled that end of things, so I don't recall the exact details, only that there's a dance between how much is predicted to be needed, and actual demand.
  Childhood vaccines here are rarely out, it's the seasonal ones. You might have to wait a few days, which isn't long, at most though, so driving a county over isn't something most folks do, they'll just wait, whether it's seasonal or not. I will, and have because I know to call ahead and verify what I need is available.
  Since pharmacies are doing it now, it's easier. Back a while, you only got vaccines at a doctor's office, so just driving to another wasn't an option. You have to make the appointment, deal with insurance, etc. Myself, I'll take a longer drive to get everything at once rather than make multiple trips. Some folks, it's the opposite.

I'm sure it exists but I haven't met any. So either I'm lucky or it's pretty small.

You think you're gonna get a useful assessment from people enlightened enough to be on Lemmy? Seems doubtful to me...
- Doesn't have to be useful, this community is for discussion, not representative panels studies