Anti-vaxxers are a menace to the health of everyone
IAM not by nature rude. I can dish it out on this page, for sure. Put me physically in front of someone, however, and – like most of us, I’m sure – I try not to be rude. I shy away from direct confrontation, no matter how wrong-headed I may think someone is.
But there are two firm exceptions. Show me a racist – or a bigot of any stripe – and my anger will immediately rise to the surface. As for the other exception: if I come across a parent who refuses to have their child vaccinated, I can barely contain my anger.
There is something so appalling about the combination of selfishness and ignorance of such people – masquerading as some sort of special knowledge – that I cannot stand back and say nothing.
In recent years the number of such parents has risen to such an extent that Britain is no longer classified by the World Health Organisation as “measles-free” – a self-inflicted health disaster that should shame those responsible.
Which is why I salute Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, who at this week’s Conservative conference floated the idea of requiring all parents to vaccinate their children as a prereq- uisite for attending school.
HANCOCK’S idea shows a promising tendency from the Tories to bring on policy recommendations that aim to act for the greater good of society.
Vaccinations are one of the wonders of modern medical science. Thanks to vaccines, previous killer diseases such as polio, tetanus, hepatitis B, hepatitis A, his (Haemophilus influenzae type B), whooping cough, pneumococcal disease, diptheria, measles, mumps and rubella have all either been eliminated or hugely reduced in scale.
But in recent years, largely because of the fraudulent work of one former doctor – former, because he was struck off for faking his research – a movement has arisen which claims vaccinations are themselves to blame for many illnesses.
In 1998, Andrew Wakefield claimed that there was a link between the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine and autism in children and said that parents should stop giving their children the “three-inone” vaccination.
Wakefield was exposed and his research was accurately described by the British Medical Journal as “an elaborate fraud”. But the damage was done and the “anti-vaxxer” movement was born.
It dovetails perfectly with so much of the other so-called “alternative medicine” mumbojumbo (such as homeopathy) that credulous people believe. And so, even though scientists are united that the anti-vaxxers are dangerous and naive, some parents think they are putting their child first by not “taking a risk” with vaccinations.
In reality, they are gambling with their child’s life. If any child catches measles, mumps or rubella, they may well die. But it’s not just their own kids whose life they are gambling with – vaccination programmes rely on what is known as herd immunity to be effective.
Take measles, a deadly disease now – shockingly and entirely avoidably – on the rise again. Every person with measles infects on average another 18 people. So you have to vaccinate 95 per cent of the population. That is the only way enough people will be immune, and to prevent those who are not immune from being infected by someone who has it.
BUT that also means that only a tiny number of people refusing to let their child be vaccinated has a disproportionately large effect on the numbers infected if the disease emerges.
Official figures published last week showed that the uptake of each of the 13 vaccinations routinely given to children under the age of five has dropped yet again. Babies given the MMR vaccine dropped from 91.2 per cent in 2017-18 to 90.3 per cent in 2018-19, well below the WHO target of 95 per cent. Coverage of the MMR jab has fallen for five years in a row.
Uptake of the five-in-one jab, against diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, polio and HIB is now at a 10-year low.
Mr Hancock was spot on in his view that parents must “take responsibility”. As he put it: “When we, the state, provide services to people, then it’s a two-way street: you have got to take your responsibilities too. So I think there is a very strong argument for having compulsory vaccinations for children when they go to school because otherwise they are putting other children at risk.”
No one has the absolute right to do whatever they wish, no matter what their impact on others – especially in how they treat children.
Anti-vaxxers should be shunned. Lives are at stake.
‘Every person who has measles will infect another 18 people’