Measles is highly contagious and can present significant problems, especially to young children and toddlers who are not old enough to have had all their vaccinations. This year, the measles outbreak throughout the country is the highest seen in more than two decades. It astounds me that parents refuse to vaccinate their children, especially to the most common childhood diseases.
Measles is highly contagious and can present significant problems, especially to young children and toddlers who are not old enough to have had all their vaccinations. This year, the measles outbreak throughout the country is the highest seen in more than two decades. It astounds me that parents refuse to vaccinate their children, especially to the most common childhood diseases.
In reading a very thorough report from The Washington Post, “California’s epidemic of vaccine denial, mapped,” California is one of the states that allow children to remain unvaccinated with its “personal belief exemption” (PBE). It is estimated that around 2.5 percent of children in kindergarten are PBEs, but nearly 10 percent begin kindergarten not fully vaccinated. A majority of these are considered “conditional entrants,” meaning they are behind on vaccinations but plan to get them.
I will start right off the bat and say I am all for vaccinating children and believe that parents that choose not to do so are risking the health of their children and other children they come in contact with. And to go further, I believe that California should drop its PBE exemptions, requiring all children that enter into public and private schools be fully vaccinated. This trend of claiming PBE has grown from 0.77 percent in 2000 to 3.15 percent in 2013. In many parts of California, including parts of San Diego County, maps show that some of these rates in certain areas are up to five percent.
Currently, we have 10 reported cases here in San Diego County, but as quickly as the measles spread it is predicted that this number will increase with the number of children not vaccinated. These numbers are much higher in private schools and wealthier communities according to the maps provided by the California Department of Public Health.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports the largest reason for not vaccinating children is that parents do not believe that the diseases we vaccinate for still exists. It recognizes that some diseases like polio and diphtheria are very rare in the U.S., but stands firm that it is because of the continuous vaccinations that have taken place over the years. The CDC states that there is a need to keep vaccinating children until the disease is eliminated. It further says that if we stopped vaccinations now, the diseases would “stage a comeback.”
This happened in Japan in 1979, when the people heard that the whooping cough vaccination was no longer needed. It went from 80 percent of children vaccinated in 1974 to only 10 percent in 1976. In 1979, more than 13,000 cases of whooping cough were reported with 41 deaths.
It is evident that measles is here and still a disease to contend with.
With the smallpox vaccine, vaccinations “stopped the leak” and eradicated the virus. Vaccinations not only protect our children and the children around them, but our grandchildren and their grandchildren if we can eradicate the disease. Without vaccinations people are choosing to fuel it rather than suppress it. It is time for vaccinations to once again become a mandatory thing for children entering school and not something that can be opt out of. If parents choose to opt out of vaccinating their children then they need the education behind them to keep their children at home and homeschool them. There has to be a line drawn somewhere and allowing five to ten percent of our children to go to school unvaccinated is a line that should not be crossed.
