Philosophical exemptions
This big measles outbreak down on the border with Oregon is a dangerous thing.
Almost a quarter of kids in Clark County, Wash., a suburb of Portland, Ore., go to school without measles, mumps and rubella immunizations, and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) recently declared a state of emergency amid concern that things could rapidly spin out of control.
Measles outbreaks have sprung up in nine other states this winter, but officials are particularly alarmed about the one in Clark County because of its potential to go very big, very quickly.
The Pacific Northwest is home to some of the nation’s most vocal and organized anti-vaccination activists. That movement has helped drive down child immunizations in Washington, as well as in neighboring Oregon and Idaho, to some of the lowest rates in the country, with as many as 10.5 percent of kindergartners statewide in Idaho unvaccinated for measles. That is almost double the median rate nationally.
And why? Because too many people are too damn gullible and feckless, that’s why.
Libertarian-leaning lawmakers, meanwhile, have bowed to public pressure to relax state laws to exempt virtually any child from state vaccination requirements whose parents object. Three states allow only medical exemptions; most others also permit religious exemptions. And 17, including Washington, Oregon and Idaho, allow what they call “philosophical” exemptions, meaning virtually anyone can opt out of the requirements.
Liberty! Liberty to spread lethal epidemics for no good reason! That is our Liberty Libertarian Philosophy!
“You know what keeps me up at night?” said Clark County Public Health Director Alan Melnick. “Measles is exquisitely contagious. If you have an under-vaccinated population, and you introduce a measles case into that population, it will take off like a wildfire.”
It will be just like the 14th century; what fun.
Measles, which remains endemic in many parts of the world, generally returns to the United States when infected travelers bring the disease back to pockets of the countrywhere some parents have chosen not to vaccinate their children. When immunization rates fall below a certain threshold, outbreaks can occur; pregnant women, young children and people with compromised immune systems who can’t get vaccinated are especially at risk. Last year, 349 cases were confirmed across 26 states and the District of Columbia, the second highest total since the disease was declared eliminated from the United States in 2000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Since October, an outbreak in New York’s Orthodox Jewish community has sickened 209 people. In the first month of 2019, 10 states, including New York and Washington, have reported cases, all signs of a resurgence of a disease that is entirely preventable with a vaccine that authorities say is safe and effective.
Yes but preventing it is kind of decadent and effete, don’t you think? Life should be more of a struggle than that.
[Officials are] encouraging parents to vaccinate their kids if they haven’t already, and are pushing back against rumors and misinformation, including that self-medicating with vitamin A will prevent measles.
Melnick said the county is also spending precious time and resources addressing false ideas being spread by anti-vaccine advocates, who he said posted “ridiculous” misinformation as comments on the county health department’s Facebook page.
Critics claimed, for instance, that the measles vaccine can cause encephalitis, or brain inflammation, he said. That was documented once in a child who had an immune deficiency and should not have gotten a shot. More commonly, encephalitis is a severe but rare complication of the disease itself. The department has a three-person team countering those assertions and responding to questions.
But what if we like disease and death?
Sure, let them opt out of vaccines, as long as they’re opting out of public school as well.
No, because they’re contagious in all other public spaces too. The story started with a woman who can’t go anywhere now because she has a baby too young to vaccinate and she’s terrified of picking up measles at the grocery store or wherever.
I would go further, Skeletor. They need to opt out of public life if they are unwilling to take basic standards of care to prevent other people, people who cannot be vaccinated, from coming in contact with a deadly disease. No one has a right to endanger other people, and in most situations, we understand that.
Ophelia, if the woman you mentioned in your response to Skeletor is the same woman I read about earlier, it’s actually worse than her being afraid to go out.
She had taken her son to her GP for a routine check-up and had a day or so later her doctor rang to ask if she had been vaccinated against measles. She had, but her 17 day old son obviously hasn’t, being too young. She was informed that a patient who had been in the waiting room just prior to her visit had developed measles, and as it is an airborne contagion there was a chance that she, her son, or her three-year-old daughter (who wasn’t at the surgery at the time) may have been infected.
She is now in quarantine at home, waiting to see if her son or daughter, who herself has had only the first round of shots, are going to develop the disease. As she put it, her son is at present a ‘Schrodinger’s baby’ who both has and has not got measles until time provides the answer.
Her anguish is heightened by the fact that she has already lost her five-year-old daughter to severe infections and is terrified of it happening again.
She has written a compelling and heartfelt message to all anti-vaxxers.
https://www.boredpanda.com/anti-vaxxer-mother-15-day-old-son-measles-jennifer-hibben-white/
The measles vaccine apparently protects against a host of other diseases as well, in a roundabout way. It seems that measles affects the immune system, undoing its “memory” of immunity to other diseases the victim might have had. Measles suppresses the immune system for up to five years IIRC.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/05/measles-vaccine-protects-against-other-deadly-diseases
So anti-vax idiots are endangering people in more ways than one. Your child may survive measles only to remain vulnerable for years to God knows what.
Lady M, I came here to publish a link to basically the same story. Blood. Boiling.
Lady M., Rob, Ophelia beat you to that by days. I swear, if you two don’t start paying attention……. :-))
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2019/childhood-deaths-from-all-infectious-diseases-plummeted/
AoS, you have a point. I now remember seeing that news both places. My excuse, apart from being increasingly old and distracted is… Nah, ets go with old and distracted. Oh, squirrel!
People who make the “sure, let them not vaccinate their kids as long as they don’t let them near other people” argument always seem to forget that children, even ones spawned by idiots, are human beings, and don’t deserve to be put at risk of catching horrible diseases any more than any other child.
Good point.
*points at Rob’s squirrel* Ooh, furry!
The solution is simple, penalise the parents by withholding welfare payments. Unvaccinated children can also be excluded from kindergarten and play groups.
The policy has been successful in countries with ‘socialised’ medicine.
We don’t have welfare payments. This is America, where the poor go to the wall and the middle class expect to be rich very soon.
Ophelia
I forgot that the US is different from other OECD countries.
So very different. Our stats on infant mortality, maternal mortality, and a long list of other items is way out of whack with the other developed countries. It’s shameful.
RJW, from what I’ve read the majority of anti-vaxxers tend to fall into one of two categories (a third – politically Right-leaning – is pretty much a given), albeit with a lot of overlap. There’s the middle-class ‘natural health’, shop-at-GOOP types, and the ‘Jesus is the only medicine we need’, religidiots, very few of whom would be welfare recipients in any case.
Ophelia,
Yes, and the US also spends a higher percentage of its GDP on health with far lower outcomes.
So much for capitalist efficiency. Also America has a high degree of inequality measured by the Gini coefficient which must contribute to the higher rate of “Third World” diseases in the US.
A of S
Here in Australia there’s probably more middle class welfare which gives state and federal governments considerable leverage. Exclusion of unvaccinated children from day care etc has also proved effective. I’d agree that the more fanatical anti vaxxers will resist, regardless, however apathetic parents will see the light and vaccinate their kids.
A of S
PS Vaccination rates in Australia are now the highest on record . Above 90%.
RJW: Part of the problem is that, since our medicine in the U.S. is also so backwards, the costs of vaccines can actually be a burden for a parent. The growth of the Precariat (those ostensibly middle-class folks who would be wiped out by missing two paychecks) means that when an opportunity to save money comes along, you find a way to reverse-justify it and hope for the best. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least to discover that a lot of folks who say they don’t want their kids vaccinated would jump at the chance if they didn’t have to pay for it out of pocket. Personally, I want a plan that says, “Fuck you, your kids have to go to public or credentialed private schools, and a week before classes start, we’ll vaccinate any who haven’t been and who aren’t actually allergic to the vaccine material.” But the Libby-Libertarians are completely in support of any system that allows child abuse, so long as it helps cut down on their taxes.
Freemage
The measles vaccine is free in Australia, many medicines are also subsidised by the government. I need a drug that would cost thousands of dollars on the market, the cost to me is $6.40. I’m elderly so I’m also entitled to free anti-flu immunisation. There’s nothing that I can see that would stop America from adopting a policy of free vaccines, apart from blinkered ideology.
Charging for vaccines that prevent epidemics is false economy and rather stupid, the old cliche about an ounce of prevention applies.
RJW, re. ‘There’s nothing that I can see that would stop America from adopting a policy of free vaccines, apart from blinkered ideology.’
I recently saw a conversation thread (the website name escapes me) in which an American man complained that 20 years-worth of saving hard had vanished when both his wife and son needed surgery one after the other, and their insurance didn’t cover nearly enough of the expenses. Somebody pointed out that in Britain, the operations would have been done for free through the NHS, and asked if he supported the idea of bringing social healthcare to the USA. His response? ‘Hell, no. I ain’t paying for no freeloaders to get healthcare.’
My brother-in-law, aged 63, who lives with my wife and me, suffers from congenital rubella syndrome. In other words, his mother had rubella while he was in the womb and passed it onto the foetus, leading to physical development difficulties (malformed heart, cleft palate, malformed joints, poor hearing, small stature), intellectual difficulties (can read and write but processes information very slowly) and lifelong dependence. So when I read about the MMR vaccine I always think about the R part. Thank heavens (figuratively) we’re not hearing about rubella outbreaks.
I think you can guess what I think of the anti-vacccine point of view.
Yes, I think I can.
Mark, I suspect quite a few of us here are old enough to remember as children seeing people with heavily scarred faces, legs framed with steel braces and various deformities (physical as well as intellectual) that resulted from largely childhood diseases. Then there were the whispers about the childless couple because the husband had had mumps as an adult and the stories of parents friends who didn’t survive into adulthood and schools and public places being closed down because of epidemics. We can not only guess how you feel we agree wholeheartedly.