Give Florida a shot of reality. Tighten vaccination exemptions
Vaccines can eradicate disease. If only we could eradicate myths about vaccines.
Hearing about measles outbreaks in the United States is like hearing that televisions again have just three channels and water fountains in the South again are segregated. Yet there were 17 outbreaks last year. Five states face outbreaks now. On Tuesday, the World Health Organization reported that measles cases globally rose 300 percent between January and March compared to 2018.
No outbreak has occurred in Florida. Unfortunately, the Tampa Bay Times reported last week that the number of unvaccinated children due to religious exemptions nearly quadrupled between 2011 and 2018, to roughly 25,000. The biggest increases have occurred in the last two years.
A Legislature concerned about public health would end that religious exemption, which gives vaccine-fearing parents cover for opting out. Florida doesn’t allow exemptions on personal grounds — only medical.
But Tallahassee wants to ram toll roads through undeveloped Florida and tell cities and counties how to behave. There is no vaccine legislation and seemingly no appetite for one.
Given the trends, though, removing that exemption should be a priority for next year. Removing it would debunk two myths — that vaccines endanger children and that unvaccinated children don’t pose a threat.
Amy Silver lives in Hillsborough County and appeared in Sunday’s Sun Sentinel story about vaccinations.
She obtained a medical exemption for her two children because autoimmune weakness runs in her family.
Fair enough, but Silver said. “I don’t feel there’s any harm to others being around my kids.” This anti-vaccination mindset is wrong. Dangerously wrong.
Eradication doesn’t require 100 percent vaccination. Ideally, however, the rate should be 95 percent, to provide what researchers call “herd immunity” and protect those who haven’t been vaccinated from contracting the disease.
The Times reported that 94 percent of state kindergartners have received the measles, mumps Rubella (MMR) vaccine. The rate is 96 percent among seventhgraders.
But remember that rise in religious exemptions. Public health officials also note statewide figures can be much lower in counties or pockets of counties. In Rockland County, north of New York City, rates dropped in ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods, and an outbreak began.
I was born too soon for the vaccines that spared my children from through measles and mumps. My grandchildren also will miss chickenpox. That vaccine came out in 1995. Lucky them.
The anti-measles campaign was a triumph of American public health. In 1978, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention set out to eradicate the disease by 1982. The government missed that target, but the rate of measles cases declined by 80 percent.
In 1989, after a new measles outbreak, the CDC determined that children needed a second dose of the MMR vaccine. They should get the first at 12 months to 15 months and the second at four years to six years. With that upgrade, the CDC declared measles eradicated in 2000.
But in 1998, a British medical journal called The Lancet published a study by Andrew Wakefield. He claimed to have found a link between vaccines and autism. He blamed thiomersal, a vaccine preservative that contains mercury.
Under scrutiny, however, Wakefield’s “theory” collapsed. Among other things, he had taken money from a lawyer seeking to sue vaccine makers. The Lancet retracted the paper and Wakefield lost his medical license.
Yet social media keeps the supposed vaccine conspiracy alive, even if the amount of mercury in thiomersal equals that in a small can of tuna fish. Vaccine skepticism comes from the far left and the far right and from politicians on both sides — Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Then there’s Matt Bevin, the Republican governor of Kentucky. He boasted last month about taking his children to a “chickenpox” party and exposing them. To make a statement against his state’s mandatory vaccination rule, Bevin risked his children’s health.
Worldwide, the rate of children who get the first measles vaccine is just 85 percent. Even fewer get the second vaccine. Social media-fueled ignorance explains much of what public health officials diplomatically call “vaccine hesitancy.”
Florida should not indulge such parents. If they want to form a new country on an island from which they never leave, fine. Otherwise, follow the science, not the myths.