Alaska
Opinion: A plea to Alaska’s congressional delegation for responsible economic policy
The Trump Administration’s unilateral imposition of tariffs, tax cuts for the rich and elimination of cabinet departments and federal employees invite U.S. economic calamity.
The trade war tariffs will neither reduce U.S. trade deficits nor bring about a renaissance in American manufacturing. Federal government revenue generated by these tariffs will cover only a fraction of the revenue lost to tax cuts proposed in the federal budget bill. The oppressive, indiscriminate federal workforce reductions brought about by the Department of Government Efficiency raise deep concerns about the delivery of immediate critical health, safety and welfare services and longer-term agency function. One would be hard pressed to craft a more irresponsible economic policy. It punishes the poor today and future generations of Americans.
The Trump fiscal plan is corrosive for the U.S. as a whole and disastrous for Alaska in particular. Consider each of these fiscal plan elements in turn:
Trade war
The Trump administration’s heavy-handed tariffs on steel, aluminum, automobiles and other raw materials and finished goods are illegal and will raise the costs of imported cars, equipment, machinery and supplies to American manufacturing firms and ultimately result in higher costs passed through to intermediate goods and end-product consumers. In general, a tariff on imported goods and services amounts to a sales tax levied on domestic, U.S. businesses and consumers. It’s a highly regressive form of taxation, hitting low- and middle-income households the hardest. Right now, the blended ‘sales tax’ rate on all imported goods stands at 17.8 percent, up 15 points from its pre-2025 levels. Since imports are more than 11 percent of GDP, it’s a huge pending inflation uptick to consumer prices, which can already be seen in the recent, steep decline in consumer sentiment. Beyond this, the chaotic, haphazard implementation of tariff policy is acutely counterproductive to business investment because trade policy predictability is the cornerstone of well-managed fiscal policy. This is why federal law does not authorize the president to impose tariffs without congressional approval.
For Alaska commerce, which lies at the very edge of the global logistics, the impact from this hurtful cost structure and supply chain disruption has already fueled business network chaos and American brand destruction. Other damages include 1) weakened crude oil price impacts on state royalty and tax revenue, on Permanent Fund earnings, and on oil company capital project optics; 2) time-critical Alaska seafood market disruption from China and other Asia-Pacific counter-tariff policies; 3) falling tourism bookings and 4) disastrous cost increases on the already budget-stressed Alaska LNG energy lifeline. The ultimate outcome of this trade war for Alaska and American business is higher structural inflation, investment contraction, business slowdown, rising unemployment, climbing interest rates, and widening housing and stock market implosion – all tipping the U.S. and especially Alaska toward a recessionary downward spiral. And all entirely unwarranted and unnecessary.
Federal budget and tax cuts. The proposed “big beautiful” budget bill passed on May 22 by the House of Representatives will deepen federal debt to $40 trillion or to 125 percent of GDP by 2035. In response to this nightmare scenario, Moody’s rating agency lowered the U.S. government’s credit score. The U.S. bond market reacted; yields on medium- and long-term US Treasury bonds spiked yet again. According to CBO estimates, the proposed tax cuts will lower after-tax income to the bottom 40% and raise after tax-income to the richest 10%. In addition to tariff shocks, Alaska household disposable income and business earnings will be impaired by the combined impacts of regressive income taxation and higher interest costs.
Beyond these disturbing policy and market dislocations, the proposed budget bill imposes unconscionable safety net impairment to America’s most vulnerable population, including added work requirements and cuts to healthcare spending ($715 billion), SNAP/food stamps ($300 billion), and Medicare ($500 billion). Alaska’s 279,000 Medicaid recipients (including 109,000 children) would face about $3 billion in uncovered healthcare costs for which no safety net alternative exists.
Department of Government Efficiency actions. Over the past 90 days, DOGE has carried out indiscriminate layoffs of about 280,000 federal employees and contractors without consideration for organizational structure and job function; all in the quest to save money by eliminating waste. The layoffs have extended beyond federal agencies, affecting contractors and nonprofit organizations that rely on federal funding. The ripple effect has led to additional job losses, with over 4,400 positions eliminated in related sectors.
Alaska’s 15,000 federal employees, including about 8,000 military, play a disproportionate role in our economy, both in public service delivery and in disposable income. Alaska’s federal workforce serve in mostly year-round jobs, are among the state’s highest paid workers and, critically, they spend locally. Setting aside diminished quality-of-life, public safety and security, a 15% reduction in Alaska’s federal workforce — well below DOGE 20-30% federal reduction target — would result in direct, devastating $250 million in lost wages to local business spending, based on $1.6 billion in reported Alaska federal workforce earnings in 2024 from Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development. Add to this further indirect, additional multiplier losses that would follow in step.
Taken together, the Trump Administration’s tariffs and tax cuts will cause economic chaos and destruction. So far, global tariffs — even those recently scaled back — have resulted in trillions of dollars in U.S. capital market destruction, enormous financial market instability, and the promise of rising inflation with slowing economic growth. President Trump’s faulty perception of tariff ‘medicine’ to fix bilateral trade deficits and to generate new federal revenue is analogous to a physician prescribing heavy chemo doses to a perfectly healthy patient. Furthermore, giving gigantic tax cuts to the wealthiest households is like to prescribing steroids to the now-ailing patient — due entirely to unnecessary and irresponsible tariff poisoning! And DOGE’s reckless efforts have brought disruption and dysfunction to all levels of the federal government’s responsibility for: protecting individual rights, overseeing infrastructure and commerce, and providing a safety net lifeline.
Bottom Line: The Alaska congressional delegation must continue to build the congressional coalitions to accomplish three critical things:
• Assert congressional tariff-making authority and oversight to reign in the president,
• Restore congressional authority for federal program formation and spending, and
• Craft a budget that protects the safety net and keeps guard rails on federal deficit expansion.
Will Nebesky is an economist and pilot who lives in Anchorage.
• • •
The views expressed here are the writer’s and are not necessarily endorsed by the Anchorage Daily News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)adn.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser. Read our full guidelines for letters and commentaries here.
High School
Hockey
Tuesday
Monroe Catholic 8, Lathrop 3
West 3, Wasilla 1
South 2, Dimond 0
Wednesday
North Pole 9, West Valley 6
Delta 6, Monroe Catholic 5
West 1, Chugiak 0
Thursday
Palmer 5, Kenai Central 2
North Pole 8, Colony 2
Friday
Palmer 6, Soldotna 0
West Valley 7, Colony 2
Juneau-Douglas 4, Kenai Central 2
Kodiak 6, Service 3
Dimond 3, Eagle River 0
Saturday
Service 4, Kodiak 3
Juneau-Douglas 8, Kenai Central 2
Palmer 14, Homer 2
Wasilla 6, Chugiak 3
• • •
Volleyball
Thursday
Nelson Island 2, SISD 0 (25-20, 25-15)
Susitna Valley 3, Metlakatla 0 (25-16, 25-19, 25-14)
Martin L Olson 2, Nunamiut 1 (25-14, 23-25, 25-21)
Dillingham 3, Glennallen 1 (19-25, 25-18, 25-17, 25-23)
Shaktoolik 2, Gustavus 1 (25-12, 22-25, 25-15)
Sand Point 3, Tri-Valley 0 (25-17, 25-17, 25-13)
Aniak 2, Emmonak 0 (25-15, 25-11)
Tanalian 2, Nelson Island 0 (25-15, 25-18)
Unalaska 3, Wrangell 0 (25-13, 25-23, 25-20)
Martin L Olson 2, Scammon Bay 0 (25-13, 25-14)
Susitna Valley 3, Dillingham 1 (25-9, 23-25, 25-15, 25-21)
Shaktoolik 2, Anchor Lutheran 0 (25-9, 25-17)
Kisimgiugtuq 2, Aniak 0 (28-25, 25-20)
Unalaska 3, Sand Point 0 (25-16, 25-13, 25-23)
Friday
Scammon Bay 2, Gustavus 1 (20-25, 25-21, 25-17)
Nelson Island 2, Emmonak 0 (25-23, 25-18)
Metlakatla 3, Glennallen 0 (25-21, 25-21, 25-12)
Aniak 2, SISD 0 (25-16, 25-20)
Nunamiut 2, Anchor Lutheran 0 (25-13, 25-5)
Nunamiut 2, Aniak 0 (25-22, 25-16)
Nelson Island 2, Scammon Bay 1 (25-10, 23-25, 25-0)
Wrangell 3, Tri-Valley 1 (25-27, 25-23, 25-18, 25-10)
Tanalian 3, Martin L Olson 1 (25-13, 8-25, 25-22, 25-23)
Shaktoolik 3, Kisimgiugtuq 0 (25-14, 25-5, 25-15)
Sand Point 3, Metlakatla 0 (25-20, 25-20, 26-24)
Nelson Island 2, Kisimgiugtuq 0 (25-13, 25-10)
Martin L Olson 2, Nunamiut 1 (25-27, 25-16, 26-24)
Tanalian 3, Shaktoolik 1 (25-20, 17-25, 25-19, 25-23)
Unalaska 3, Susitna Valley 1 (23-25, 25-23, 25-22, 25-22)
Wrangell 3, Dillingham 2 (16-25, 25-21, 25-21, 20-25, 15-9)
Sand Point 3, Wrangell 0 (25-14, 25-21, 25-18)
Saturday
Martin L Olson 2, Nelson Island 0 (25-16, 25-21)
Martin L Olson 2, Shaktoolik 0 (25-22, 25-21)
Susitna Valley 3, Sand Point 1 (25-17, 17-25, 25-21, 25-17)
Tanalian 3, Martin L Olson 1 (27-25, 23-25, 25-22, 28-26)
Unalaska vs. Susitna Valley (Late)
• • •
Wrestling
Tuesday
Dimond 55, Bartlett 47
Boys – 145: Prince Bonilla (5-15), Dimond over Benjamin Fudge (13-14), Bartlett (F 3:48)
Boys – 135: Taven Carbaugh (12-13), Dimond over Aurelius Atwood (4-12), Bartlett (F 5:51)
Boys – 119: Yeng Lao (17-6), Bartlett over Joshawa McCorkle (3-22), Dimond (TF 19-3 (3:03)
Boys – 285: Denver Spencer (17-11), Bartlett over Juan Hernandez (0-0), Dimond (F 1:26)
Boys – 215: Jayce Casarez (10-4), Bartlett over Creed Cvancara (12-5), Dimond (F 3:30)
Boys – 189: Donald Goss (0-4), Bartlett over Tristan Mason (5-23), Dimond (F 4:21)
Boys – 171: Everett Monteil (6-7), Dimond over Alton Drones (4-6), Bartlett (TF 18-1 (4:33)
Boys – 160: Yaroslav Ustymenko (16-16), Dimond over Jonny Larsen (6-6), Bartlett (SV 7-4)
Boys – 152: Keller Jackson (18-6), Dimond over Isiah Anaruk (16-10), Bartlett (F 5:12)
Girls – 126: Nyah O`Neil (17-5), Dimond over Teresa Vicens (8-6), Bartlett (TF 17-2 (3:48)
Girls – 100: Kaylee Kofford (22-6), Bartlett over Aoife Stout (13-7), Dimond (F 3:56)
Chugiak 62, Eagle River 46
Boys – 135: Lukas Nuxall (7-5), Chugiak over Izzak Alonzo (7-18), Eagle River (F 3:59)
Boys – 130: Jacob Driscoll (23-10), Eagle River over Briar Otts (4-8), Chugiak (F 0:56)
Boys – 119: Archer Hicks (17-12), Chugiak over Wyatt Zeiler (14-8), Eagle River (MD 9-1)
Boys – 112: Oliver Dunlavey (13-13), Chugiak over Aiden Smith (7-6), Eagle River (F 0:44)
Boys – 103: Tanner Bailey (16-11), Chugiak over Grant Brunner (14-12), Eagle River (Dec 11-4)
Boys – 215: Braden Ott (16-5), Eagle River over Oliver Stoltze (6-6), Chugiak (F 2:42)
Boys – 189: Bryson Diola (16-1), Eagle River over Morgan Robinson (4-3), Chugiak (F 5:02)
Boys – 171: Elias Rimbert (20-6), Chugiak over Gavin Wiess (27-10), Eagle River (MD 17-5)
Boys – 160: Richard Dunlavey (21-8), Chugiak over Vern Stott (5-11), Eagle River (F 2:34)
Boys – 152: Kamdon Marchant (13-8), Chugiak over Caleb Driscoll (24-15), Eagle River (Dec 9-5)
Boys – 145: Michael Roschi (16-0), Eagle River over Mason Scow (9-12), Chugiak (F 1:46)
Boys – 140: August Rogers (16-17), Eagle River over Brock Baker (2-9), Chugiak (F 4:46)
Girls – 126: Sabreena Otts (29-8), Chugiak over Cheyenne Bobo (0-0), Eagle River (F 2:36)
Girls – 114: Talia Jenkins (22-5), Chugiak over Lillian Dwyer (17-18), Eagle River (F 3:06)
Girls – 107: Rylee Ruggles (17-6), Chugiak over Violet Roschi (29-9), Eagle River (F 5:44)
Girls – 152: Lily Boze (13-10), Eagle River over Ereale Campbell (15-17), Chugiak (Dec 6-0)
South 122, Service 24
Boys – 189: Bohdan Porter (25-4), South over Lucas Witwer (13-17), Service (F 2:00)
Boys – 152: Shane Ostermiller (19-2), South over Lucas Gross (0-1), Service (F 1:25)
Boys – 140: Benson Mishler (21-2), South over Braiden Sanchez (15-9), Service (MD 19-6)
Boys – 135: Shaw Gerondale (20-4), South over Mason Childress (8-10), Service (F 1:36)
Boys – 130: Dylan Frawner (19-6), South over Urijah Eppelsheimer (10-6), Service (TF 16-0 (2:38)
Girls – 152: Savannah Stout (27-2), South over Julie Ishnook (17-13), Service (TF 20-3 (2:21)
Girls – 114: Julia Dunlap (32-6), South over Scarlett Easton (28-12), Service (Dec 8-5)
Girls – 100: Ava Rogers (11-9), South over Rebekah Ellsworth (5-11), Service (Dec 8-1)
West 75, Bettye Davis East 53
Boys – 285: Matt Manumalealii (0-0), West over Jerome Keil-Mano (5-2), East (F 3:29)
Boys – 215: Aiden Luzano (2-8), West over Scottie Saechao (1-0), East (F 0:58)
Boys – 189: Ezekiel Alabado (2-4), East over Declan Gee (7-12), West (Dec 6-4)
Boys – 171: Ryder Thomas (11-7), West over Kalek Donnelly (8-5), East (F 1:00)
Boys – 160: Lucas Starck (15-4), West over Julian Ferreira (7-8), East (F 2:00)
Boys – 152: Liam Ferreira (6-7), East over Chris Espina (4-12), West (Dec 11-8)
Boys – 145: Damien Ambrose (14-9), West over Levi Hanks (2-2), East (F 3:33)
Boys – 140: Ramon armenta (6-3), East over Gage Williams (3-9), West (F 3:56)
Boys – 135: Mason Rhude (7-12), West over Warren Smallwood (4-1), East (SV 13-10)
Boys – 119: Jerriel Medina-Salazar (3-3), West over Eranda Dissanayake (1-0), East (F 4:35)
Boys – 112: Colter Campbell (13-1), East over Juan Rojas Arismendy (11-3), West (TF 19-2 (2:13)
Girls – 165: Kenya-Marie Bruno (17-2), East over Laura Souza (1-4), West (F 0:49)
Girls – 145: Bridey Lee Piscoya (6-10), West over Victoria Orozco (6-4), East (F 3:36)
Girls – 132: Lily Oldham (18-7), West over Aniyah Smalley (5-5), East (F 1:51)
Girls – 120: Ivy Shanklin (3-9), West over Molly Antijunti (0-1), East (F 5:13)
• • •
College
Volleyball
Thursday
UAF 3, UAA 0 (25-21, 25-18, 25-15)
Friday
Point Loma 3, UAF 1 (25-22, 25-20, 20-25, 25-18)
• • •
Women’s basketball
Thursday
Western Oregon 82, UAF 24
Saint Martin’s 69, UAA 60
Saturday
Saint Martin’s 74, UAF 37
Western Oregon 77, UAA 69
• • •
Men’s basketball
Thursday
Saint Martin’s 78, UAA 63
UAF 80, Western Oregon 70
Saturday
Saint Martin’s 66, UAF 56
UAA 64, Western Oregon 56
• • •
Hockey
Friday
Stonehill 3, UAA 2
Saturday
UAA vs. Stonehill (Late)
UAF vs. Grand Canyon (Late)
PALMER — High winds knocked out power for thousands in Mat-Su on Saturday morning with gusts forecast up to 80 mph in places before the weekend ends.
As of 9 a.m., there were nearly 17,000 members without power, according to Matanuska Electric Association. Major outages included Knik-Goose Bay and Fairview Loop roads. Another large outage knocked out more than 2,000 members from Palmer to Hatcher Pass.
There were reports of trees down on some side roads and damaged railroad crossing gates, as well as at least one small brush fire sparked by a downed power line.
By 10 a.m., the Palmer Airport had recorded a gust of 84 mph while the Wasilla Airport and the Glenn Highway near the Parks Highway had seen gusts of between 70 and 74 mph, according to weather station observations.
A high wind warning from the National Weather Service is in place until 11 p.m. Sunday for the Matanuska Valley including Wasilla, Sutton, Big Lake, Chickaloon and Palmer. The warning calls for northeast winds of 30 to 40 mph with possible gusts up to 80 mph. Wind chill could drop to between minus 10 and minus 20 degrees by Sunday evening, the agency said.
Power outages began early Saturday morning.
“We have multiple crews out in the field and are calling in more as they become available. Winds are not expected to die down today and will last into at least tomorrow evening,” Matanuska Electric Association said in a Facebook post, encouraging people to avoid downed power lines. “Please stay safe – there is a lot of debris scattered outside.”
Wasilla police warned that numerous traffic signals were dark Saturday morning due to power outages. The Matanuska-Susitna Borough announced the central landfill near Palmer is closed Saturday due to high winds.Palmer airport officials on Friday urged pilots to secure all aircraft.
A high wind advisory for the Anchorage area and the northwest Kenai Peninsula — including Nikiski, Kenai, Soldotna and Sterling — remains in effect until 11 p.m. Sunday. Forecasters expected north winds of 20 to 30 mph and gusts up to 50, and wind chill dropping to between minus 5 and minus 15 by Sunday night. Knik Arm, West Anchorage and areas along the coast of northern Cook Inlet were likely to experience the strongest winds, according to the advisory.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
Western Alaska, where almost all the residents are Indigenous, used to have the world’s highest rate of childhood liver cancer caused by hepatitis B. After decades of screenings and vaccinations, that problem has been eliminated; since 1995, only one person under the age of 30 has been diagnosed with hepatitis-caused cancer.
Now the Trump administration is seeking to end one of the key tools credited with accomplishing that goal: hepatitis B vaccinations of newborns.
The federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices on Friday voted to drop a longstanding recommendation for universal hepatitis vaccines for newborns. That is in accordance with the controversial views of U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic who fired all members of the previous committee and appointed like-minded members to replace them.
Current federal childhood hepatitis B vaccination guidelines recommend one dose of the vaccine at birth, followed by additional doses at intervals through 18 months. The recommendation for newborn vaccinations has been in place since 1991.
The advisory committee, part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, determined that children under 2 months should not be vaccinated unless their mothers are infected or could be infected by hepatitis B.
Some vaccine critics in the administration, including Kennedy and President Donald Trump themselves, argue — contradicting medical experts and years of medical research — that hepatitis B vaccines for young children are unnecessary, claiming that it is spread primarily or exclusively through adult behavior like sex and sharing of needles for illegal drug use.
“Hepatitis B is sexually transmitted. There’s no reason to give a baby that’s almost just born hepatitis B. So I would say wait till the baby is 12 years old and formed and take hepatitis B,” Trump said at a Sept. 22 news conference.
Those claims are false, said Dr. Brian McMahon, medical and research director of the liver and hepatitis program at the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium.
There is no credible evidence of a link between the vaccine and autism of any other health problem, McMahon said.
And sexual transmissions accounted for only a tiny percentage of Alaska’s hepatitis B cases, he said.
Aside from mother-to-infant transmissions, which occur during childbirth, hepatitis B was predominantly spread in Western Alaska through normal daily activities. That is because, unlike the HIV virus or other hepatitis viruses, the hepatitis B virus can live for seven days on surfaces in schools and homes, like tables and personal-grooming items.
“The virus can be found all over, on school luncheon tabletops, counters and homes,” McMahon said. “Kids have open cuts and scratches from bug bites or anything else, and then they shed millions of particles of the virus on environmental surfaces. And then another kid comes along with an open cut or scratch.”
Such risks are exacerbated in rural Alaska, he said, where homes can be crowded and people pursue traditional subsistence lifestyles with a lot of outdoor activities.
“They’re hunting, fishing, cutting up meat, et cetera, and mosquito bites are real prominent,” he said.
Nationally, only 12.6% of chronic hepatitis B cases recorded from 2013 to 2018 were attributable to sexual transmission, according to a 2023 CDC study. Transmissions of all forms of hepatitis, including hepatitis B, are possible through contact sports like football, rugby and hockey, researchers have found.
Alaska’s disease and vaccination success
Before the past decades of vaccination and screening, hepatitis B was so prevalent in Western Alaska that it was classified as endemic there. It was the only part of the United States with such a classification. In some villages, 20% to 30% of the residents were infected, McMahon said.
Geography and ancient migration patterns accounted for historically high rates of the disease in Western Alaska, as well as other Indigenous regions of the Arctic.
Various strains have been carried from Asia to Alaska over millennia, according to scientists. And the remoteness of Indigenous communities meant isolation from medical services, making early diagnosis difficult in the past, allowing infections to linger and be passed down through generations, according to scientists.
In Alaska, children infected with the virus early in life had a high likelihood of winding up with chronic infections that caused serious complications later, such as liver failure. The worst cases resulted in cancer, and even death.
For McMahon, now in his 80s, treating cancer-stricken children in the Yukon-Kuskokwim region, where he worked in the 1970s, was harrowing.
One of his patients was a 17-year-old high school valedictorian. A few months earlier, she started having abdominal pains, but she ignored them.
“She was really busy with school, and she’d gotten a full ride scholarship and was excited about going to the University of Alaska, representing her community,” McMahon said.
The pains turned out to be cancer, caused by a hepatitis B infection that she had not known she had. Too sick to be flown home, she died in the Bethel hospital.
“It was horrible,” McMahon said.
Another patient was an 11-year-old boy, also diagnosed after he complained of similar abdominal pain. McMahon visited him at home, where the boy was “in horrible pain” and yellow from jaundice.
“He was just crying. He said, ‘I know I’m going to die. Just help me with my pain,’” McMahon said.
“My wife was with me. She was a public health nurse. She was in tears. The community health aide practitioner was in tears. I was fighting my tears and pulling everything I could out of my bag to try to help this patient sedate. It was just something I’ll never forget. Never,” McMahon said.
He has relayed these and other experiences to the vaccine advisory committee in hopes of persuading members to keep the infant recommendations in place.
“I said, ‘Do you want to be responsible for children getting liver cancer because of this decision?’” McMahon said. “So I’m probably not very popular right now.”
Alaska was one of the first places in the world where the hepatitis B vaccine was used as soon as it became available in 1981.
The pilot vaccination project was at the insistence of Alaska Native organizations, along with the state government and the Alaska congressional delegation. Under that pilot program, according to newly published study by McMahon and other researchers from ANTHC and the CDC’s Arctic program, tribal health organizations and their partners screened 53,860 Alaska Native people for infection and gave vaccines to 43,618 Alaska Native people who tested negative, along with starting the universal newborn vaccinations.
Health officials have followed the outcomes since then, and the new study lists several achievements 40 years after universal newborn vaccination started.
Since 1995, according to the study, there have been no new symptomatic cases of hepatitis B among Alaska Natives under 20 anywhere in the state. Since 2000, no new cases of hepatitis-related liver cancer have been identified among Alaska Natives of any age in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, a region where prevalence was concentrated in the past, the study said. And follow-up surveillance has revealed that childhood hepatitis B vaccinations remain effective for at least 35 years, the study said.
Successes are also reflected in the trend of acute hepatitis, the form of infection that is short-lived and can be cleared from the body.
There have been no identified cases of acute hepatitis among Alaska Native children since 1992, according to Johns Hopkins University. The rate of acute hepatitis among Alaskans of all ages and ethnicities dropped from 12.1 cases per 100,000 people to 0.9 per 100,000 in the 2002-2015 period, according to the state Department of Health’s epidemiology section.
Alaska’s rate of chronic hepatitis B — the long-term and persistent infection that can lead to serious liver problems — remains higher than the national average. As of 2020, Alaska’s rate of chronic hepatitis B was 14.2 cases per 100,000 people, nearly triple the national rate of 5 cases per 100,000 people, according to a report by the state Department of Health’s epidemiology section.
McMahon said that is partly because of the legacy of infections in the older Native population, people whose childhood predated widespread vaccination, and prevalence among foreign-born residents who come from countries without widespread vaccination.
Debate over hepatitis B risks
This year, vaccine skeptics who are members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, however, along with people who are advising the committee, have argued that the risks of hepatitis B among children are too low to justify universal infant vaccination.
One of the officials making that argument at Thursday’s committee meeting was Dr. Cynthia Nevison, a vaccine skeptic hired as a CDC consultant. She contradicted McMahon’s description of children spreading the virus through casual contact with contaminated surfaces — a process known as “horizontal transmission.”
“There’s very little evidence that horizontal transmission has ever been a significant threat to the average American child, and the risk probably has been overstated,” she said at the meeting. Also overstated, she said, are the risks of “vertical transmission,” the viral transmission between mothers and their newborns.
The committee’s new recommendation must be approved by the CDC administrator before it becomes federal policy.
McMahon said that no matter how national policy might change, Alaska Native tribal health organizations will continue administering hepatitis B vaccines to newborns.
“I know they’re not going to stop. Even if they have to pay for it. They’re so aware of this,” he said.
His fears, he said, are for low-income families who depend on free vaccinations through state programs that might lose funding and for parents who are getting conflicting messages that may lead to conclusions that the vaccine is not necessary.
“It could be a real mess,” he said.
Originally published by the Alaska Beacon, an independent, nonpartisan news organization that covers Alaska state government.
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