The anti-vaxxers and their primitive anti-scientific beliefs have put all children in Arizona at risk. These are most likely the same people who believe in creationism and Noah's Ark. Most probably worship Don the Con and believe everything he says. Most thought Joe Arpaio was a great llaw officer. It all comes with the package of ignorance and gullibility.
It is not a coincidence that Arizona is dead last in support for education compared to the 50 states, behind places like Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi. Arizona is currently voting on a referendum that would divert even more money away from public education and toward charter schools and home schooling. There is just as much supervision of curriculum as one would expect.
Now that herd immunity has been seriously compromised, parents of children who cannot be immunized because of medical conditions or because they are too young must consider if it is safe to send their children to schools with unvaccinated students who can expose them to life threatening diseases. Also the elderly and immune compromised individuals are at risk from these children who freely circulate in public places like grocery stores, movies, swimming pools, etc.
It will take something like the deaths of innocent children to convince this type of obtuse, gullible conservative that modern science and health care are not liberal conspiracies to sterilize them. The same kind of thinking causes people in Africa and Asia to attack health care workers trying to bring polio vaccines to remote villages.
Anti-vaccine body count
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"We're so sorry we couldn't make a go of this – strong forces against us," Brenda Jones, immunization services manager at the Arizona Department of Health Services, wrote in an Aug. 6 email to a Glendale school official, along with a notification about the course's cancellation.
In an email to two Health Department staff members on Aug. 14, Jones wrote that there had been "a lot of political and anti-vaxx" feedback.
"I'm not sure why providing 'information' is seen as a negative thing," said Republican state Rep. Heather Carter, who spent the last three legislative sessions as chairwoman of the House Health Committee and helped create the pilot program.
"Providing information doesn't take away a parent's choice to seek an exemption. ... This is a major concern. Vaccines have saved lives for generations. We all want to live in safe and healthy communities."
When too many kids skip getting vaccinated, schools and communities lose what's known as "herd immunity." Without herd immunity, disease spreads more easily. Babies too young to be immunized and adults and children with compromised immune systems – those with chronic diseases or undergoing chemotherapy for cancer, for example – are most vulnerable to the loss of the collective protection of the herd.
Kindergartners in Maricopa County as a whole are now below herd immunity for measles, said Rebecca Sunenshine, medical director for disease control for the Maricopa County Department of Public Health.
Many admitted they had not seen the course, but opposed it on principle.
Most of the emails did not identify where the parents live or where their children go to school.
One parent had the opposite worry: She wrote that she'd seen a post about the issue on Facebook, which is why she contacted GRRC. She vaccinates her children and is worried too many Arizonans are succumbing to anti-vaccine fear mongering, and that it's putting schoolchildren at risk.
"A lot of people don't see these vaccine-preventable diseases anymore. There's this sense that they are no big deal because they haven't seen them. They don't realize that before we had the measles vaccine in the 1960s we lost about 500 kids per year (in the U.S.) who died of measles."
The county health department has heard from families with children who are medically vulnerable when herd immunity is lost, officials said. In some cases, families are fearful of sending those children to school, Sunenshine said.
Primitive superstitions reign in Arizona