Late in the day on Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released a statement calling the recent measles outbreak across the country, the “greatest number of cases reported in the United States since measles was eliminated from this country in 2000.” According to the CDC, there are 695 confirmed cases, across 22 states. This includes the outbreaks in Washington state and New York City, driven by communities poisoned by misinformation about the safety and efficacy of vaccines.
This anti-science and anti-health charlatanism has been promoted by citizens across the political spectrum, but it has only seemed to have found a home amongst conservative politicians, as a political promotional tool. The pigheaded quality of the opposition to vaccines has led to parents suing state and city boards of health in order to allow their unvaccinated students return to schools during the outbreak.
The reality around infectious diseases is that they are frequently “highly” infectious. One sick person can quickly lead to dozens, especially if vaccination rates for the disease are not above 90 percent in the areas where the disease appears. Madagascar, with just over a 50 percent vaccination rate has been hit with a measles outbreak unprecedented in the country’s history—with well over 1,200 dead, and at least 115,000 infected with the disease. What is happening in Madagascar is terrifying, but as anti-vaccination sentiments continue in our country, declining immunization rates threaten all of us, and most specifically those people with already compromised immune systems that actually cannot get vaccinated, and depend on herd immunization for protection.
