A global pandemic converging with a vaccinations crisis is a nightmare scenario for public health. It is also coming closer to becoming our waking reality: COVID-19 alongside outbreaks of any number of vaccine-preventable illnesses, such as the measles, severe pneumonia, or meningitis (to name a few possibilities).

Some of the danger of that happening is because of the pandemic itself, some because of our institutional and public reaction to it, and the rest because of preexisting behavioral trends — all of which threaten to create a perfect storm of distrust of vaccines and public health authorities, the biggest victims being an entire generation of children who would grow up susceptible to any number of diseases that should have been on their way to eradication. Pediatricians were already on the front lines trying to convince increasingly wary parents to vaccinate, and their jobs have only become more difficult as a result of the pandemic and the lockdown measures instituted to alleviate it. One Chicago-area pediatrician told me, “Everything we’ve accomplished [on vaccines] we’ve lit a torch to.”