Vaccine scepticism comes for pet owners in the United States too

In the four years since she opened her own veterinary practice, Dr Kelly McGuire has seen her fair share of heartbreaking cases.

- Emily Anthes and Teddy Rosenbluth

There was the dog whose kidneys shut down after it contracted leptospirosis, a bacterial disease often carried by rodents.

Several of her canine patients had come down with severe cases of parvovirus that they died after “sloughing their guts to the point of dehydration and malnutrition”, said Dr McGuire, who owns Wildflower Veterinary Hospital in Brighton, Colorado.

And, after she was unable to rule out rabies, she had been forced to euthanise a 20-week-old puppy that was having seizures.

The deaths were wrenching, especially because they were preventable. Those pets would likely have survived had they received all their recommended vaccines.

For most of Dr McGuire’s career, vaccination was a routine, unremarkable part of her work as a small animal veterinarian.

But after the Covid-19 pandemic hit, she found herself having long, sometimes adversarial discussions with pet owners about the safety and necessity of vaccines.

Clients accused her of pushing the vaccines to line her own pockets. And, increasingly, pet owners insisted on spacing out shots or refused vaccines altogether, including for deadly and incurable viruses like rabies.

Over the last several years, the anti-vaccine movement has gained ground in the United States, fuelled, in part, by the politicisation of Covid-19 vaccines and the increasing power of vaccine critics.

Once vanquished diseases, like measles, have come storming back. And vaccine mandates are under fire. In September, Florida announced plans to end all vaccine mandates, including for school children.

But antipathy towards vaccines is also spilling over into veterinary medicine, making some people hesitant to vaccinate their pets.