We Thought We Already Eradicated Measles - But Thanks To Ongoing Anti-Vaccine Beliefs, It’s Back

[mickeym]

Federal health officials are warning that measles - a highly-contagious respiratory infection that the U.S. virtually eradicated back in 2000 - is making a serious comeback. This year is on track to have the highest number of measles cases in the past 17 years, and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) researchers say that’s likely because of pervasive

Comments

[the_physicist]

There's a steep rise in the UK in measles too, not linked to religious people who are against it, but due to the MMR vaccine scare. Now the uptake of the vaccine has dramatically increased all across the UK, but the children who weren't immunised when MMR scare was at it's height are the ones contributing to the high numbers we are seeing now. And absolutely, there's no link to autism and the people who say they still want to be on the safe side and think that means being anti vaccination are clearly on the wrong side (as well as being ableist shitheads in the process with their often disgusting arguments).

[wrestlingdog]

There's still a lot of people in the US who don't want to vaccinate because of the MMR scare, but many states will only grant exemptions for medical or religious reasons (only Mississippi and West Virginia don't allow religious exemptions). (I've actually found a few sites for US anti-vax parents that literally just list the sort of religion they can say their kids are to get exemptions, and there's at least one pastor who's made a carpet industry of providing waivers for exemption.

These particular outbreaks are all very much linked to religious communities, of course.

[the_physicist]

Thank you for explaining! I didn't realise that this was something you had to have some religious reasons to be exempt from. I think here it's probably up to the parents completely, as I've never heard of someone needing to come up with some religious reason for not getting it.

[wrestlingdog]

In some places you don't- there are at least seventeen states that allow for "personal or philosophical" exemptions, in which case the decision basically is up to the parents. And I believe the rules can be different in private schools- at the very least, I know there have been multiple outbreaks of polio and measles over the years at Christian Science schools.

(I wrote a paper on this a couple months back, so I tend to get tl;dr, sorry.)

[chasingtides]

Well this isn't terrifying at all.

[neurotoxia]

I had a biology teacher who preached anti-vaccination during class (among a whole other lot of bullshit like you can't actually die of thirst or starve and AIDS and HIV being an invention of pharmaceutical companies). In 10th grade, he spent two days on telling us how bad vaccinations are and what they do to us, all accompanied by a nice little handout. According to his handout, vaccines cause dyslexia, autism, allergies, miscarriages, anti-social behaviour, ADHD...and so on.

The guy is completely barmy (drinking only distilled water might do that to you) and yet he's still teaching at my old school.

[wrestlingdog]

Oooh, that sucks, especially from a biology teacher.

When I presented my paper on religious exemptions from mandatory vaccine laws last semester, I was so glad that I didn't have to argue with anyone about why the laws were a good idea. I started out by saying "In a room full of public health students, please tell me I don't have to argue why vaccines are a good thing, right?" No one did, but I was still really nervous about it.

[the_physicist]

wow, that's really bad! i think it's often underestimated how much of an effect such teachings can have on kids, but generally we believe our teachers when they say such things. I know i believed incorrect things my junior school teachers taught me for a long time, because I couldn't conceive they didn't know XYZ (i'm not even talking science, but stuff like punctuation rules).

[wrestlingdog]

Oh.

For.

Fuck's.

Sake.

I wrote a huge paper on this for my Religion & Public Health class last semester. The anti-vax movement is one of those things that pisses me off to no fucking end and this shit is why.

ETA: Don't we have a "this is why we can't have nice things" tag?

[nycscribbler]

Between this and the whooping cough article, I actually asked my husband what decade we were in.

[littlelauren86]

Haha, I was asking myself the same thing.

[mickeym]

Right? It's kind of mind-boggling how we seem to be slipping BACK in time, rather than moving forward. o_O

[peace_piper]

I see articles like this and I wonder if we're not on the Oregon trail. I had dysentery just a few years ago, so my partner loves to crack jokes about it.