A news story today illustrates very effectively the insanity of avoiding vaccines.
Eileen Shim s online piece entitled The Case for Vaccinations in Three Stunning Charts was posted yesterday on the News.Mic site. The article makes such a compelling case for vaccines that no logical person could disagree.
Although the piece gives data on the efficacy of vaccines against a number of infectious diseases, its main focus is measles. If what follows is horrifying to you, you are not alone. The three stunning charts are just that. Shown below is the near-elimination of serious infectious diseases. With the exception of pertussis (89 percent), there has been a drop in the incidence of 98-100 percent since these vaccines were used.
In 2010, one would conclude that measles was pretty much gone, yet four years later, the opposite is true. The number of measles cases is already ten-times that in 2010, and these data cover only the first three quarters of 2014. At the current rate you can estimate that there will be about 800 cases of measles in the US in 2014.
Source: CDC/MMWR Summary of Notifiable Diseases, United States, 1993; CDC/MMWR Summary of Notifiable Diseases, United States, 2008.
ACSH s Dr. Josh Bloom says, This is just plain crazy. A serious disease was essentially wiped out by a very effective vaccine, yet there will be more cases of measles this year than than in any year since 1993. It makes you wonder if another epidemic of bubonic plague can be far behind.
It is obvious what is happening. Parents are choosing not to vaccinate their children. And this is not happening in poor areas of the the country. The leading locations for this parade of fools are Beverly Hills and Santa Monica, where the vaccination rates are the same as in Chad and South Sudan. There have not surprisingly been outbreaks of whooping cough in these wealthy areas, reflecting the Luddite/organic mentality found there.
Dr. Bloom says, Some of this arises from pure selfishness. Parents figure that since everyone else s children are being vaccinated that their Little Precious doesn t need to be exposed to that nasty needle, or what s in it. Let s just call this suboptimal parenting skills, since if I wrote what I really think I would be banned from the Internet.
How do parents get away with this? There is a ridiculous loophole that gets around vaccination requirements by simply claiming religious or philosophical objection. To which Dr. Bloom says, I have a philosophical objection to putting coins in parking meters. Hasn t worked out very well so far.
Source: CDC
