What's the Big Deal About Measles?
Let's take a look back at this highly infectious disease
Measles just killed its first victim in ten years, claiming a child in West Texas. Shortly thereafter, the newly installed Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, stated that measles outbreaks are “not unusual” and that we have outbreaks “every year.”
Kennedy is old enough to know that outbreaks at one time happened every year but then, after 1963, outbreaks plummeted and then halted completely. (See chart below.) Indications now are that more parents are refusing to have their children vaccinated—the child who died was unvaccinated—and as history tells us, fewer vaccinated people means that more people will contract the disease and, possibly, die.
Why are we not heeding history?
The nation’s first dealings with measles came in the mid-1700s, when European immigrants first landed and brought with them measles and smallpox. Both diseases immediately decimated native populations. From the first measles outbreak in 1765 until 1963, when the first vaccine against the disease became available, millions of people became infected with measles and thousands died every year.
A recent study found that measles can lead to lasting damage to a person’s immune system, leaving them considerably more susceptible to other diseases. “Our study suggests,” said Michael Mina, an epidemiologist at Harvard’s school of public health, “that, more than a rash or a high fever, a measles infection is playing Russian roulette with a child's immune system.”
And before anyone asks, that whole “vaccines cause autism” crap has been completely debunked, and repeatedly so. Andrew Wakefield, the pink-slipped physician at the center of that debate, has become a pariah in his home nation of England and is now in the US trying his hand at discrediting the mumps vaccine.
Make no mistake, the science is clear on what will happen if we shirk the vaccine. That earlier chart will begin to look like this:
Hey, Mr. Kennedy, let’s please learn from history, shall we?
Excellent comments Andy. Of course, it’s not just history being denied by the anti-vaccine Yahoos. They seem to have contempt for the concept of established fact. While it’s true that for many aspects of the physical world, what is factual vs non factual may not always be crystal clear, the case for vaccination is not one of those. The anti-vax crap isn’t just crazy or ignorant. It is grossly dishonest, therefore immoral.