Tuesday, July 21, 2026 • Dangerously hot. Temps 100-103. ☀️

We received 158 votes on the Monday poll, “Have you watched the new Christopher Nolan film, ‘The Odyssey,’ yet?”

• 5 said Yes
• 81 said, “Not yet, but I plan to.”
• 72 said, “I have no plans to ever see it.”

New poll question at the bottom of today’s newsletter. (You can also suggest a poll question by emailing me at [email protected].)

By Courtney Bell, Oklahoma Voice
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Cecilia Ramirez spends her summer crisscrossing the Oklahoma City area.

She drives a van decorated with smiling cartoon kids and suns designed to look like they were drawn with chalk. Her van is stocked with all the vaccinations necessary for Oklahoma school enrollment, such as tetanus, measles and polio. It also has some immunizations that are recommended but not required, like meningitis and human papillomavirus.

Ramirez’s van is one of several operated by the Blue Cross Blue Shield’s Oklahoma Caring Foundation that travels around the state to administer free vaccines to children who are uninsured or on Medicaid and who otherwise might not be able to easily access them.

Last year, the Caring Vans program vaccinated over 6,850 kids at over 760 stops.

But despite efforts to increase immunization rates by providing free and more accessible vaccinations, experts say Oklahoma’s overall child vaccination rates are down amid skepticism about the efficacy of vaccines. They also said they’re seeing an increasing number of parents utilizing a state law that allows the children to opt out of required vaccinations, which raises the risk of contracting preventable illnesses when school starts again next month.

Dr. Steven Crawford, a family physician and the chair for the Oklahoma Alliance for Healthy Families, says child vaccination rates in Oklahoma have been declining for many years, but the state saw a big drop after the COVID-19 pandemic. 

This downward trend worries Crawford because he said when fewer kids are vaccinated for preventable illnesses like measles, polio and chickenpox, the diseases spread more easily.

Last year, the state experienced a spike in the number of measles cases amid a national outbreak. Most cases involved individuals not vaccinated against the disease, according to health officials.

“Being in a school environment puts both the children themselves and their classmates at risk of transmitting infections that could be totally prevented,” Crawford said.

State law allows parents to obtain exemptions for their child for “medical, religious or personal beliefs.” 

An Oklahoma Department of Health survey found exemption rates were up, with 7.6% of public school kindergarteners and 12.4% of kindergarteners in private school being granted exemptions last school year, compared to 3.3% of kindergarteners in public schools and 7% of private school kindergarteners exempted in the 2021-22 school year. An overwhelming majority of the survey’s reported exemptions were for non-medical reasons.

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