What should bring PM, Poilievre together
The federal government’s new online harms legislation is designed, in large part, to protect children from sexual exploitation. Lately, however, I have begun to wonder who in our society needs more protection from the internet: children or their parents.
The latter may not be the primary target of so-called “revenge porn,” but they are the primary target of an online ill that is arguably just as dangerous to children as the threat of sexual exploitation.
That ill is the parent-driven anti-vax movement, which while not solely responsible for the resurgence of measles in our society, certainly bears responsibility.
You may have heard that measles — the airborne illness that should be a part of our heritage — has a terrifying and wholly unnecessary role in our present. According to a recent statement from Canada’s chief public health officer, “Global health authorities are reporting a significant increase in measles in 2023 that continues into 2024, due in part to a decline in measles vaccinations during the pandemic.”
In 2023, The World Health Organization (WHO) “reported a 79 per cent increase in the number of global measles cases” compared to 2022, with a notable increase in Europe. This month, in Ontario, health officials confirmed five cases of measles; according to reporting from the Star’s Megan Ogilvie, “The province’s immunization rate is below the threshold experts say we need.”
Worse, writes Ogilvie, it is “not precisely known how thin our vaccination protection has become because a lack of data” makes it difficult to estimate provincial vaccine coverage.
There are many things governments can do to curb the threat of measles — a disease which, thanks to routine vaccination, has been largely absent in Canada since the late ’90s. They can rigorously collect data about vaccination and issue stern reminders about its importance prior to travel. They can double down on efforts to urge parents who never got around to vaccinating their kids against measles during the pandemic to do so right away.
But if COVID-19 taught us anything let it be that we underestimate the anti-vaccine movement at our own peril. Social media is currently rife with mom-run anti-vax accounts both downplaying measles as a serious threat and in many cases denying it exists. A popular tactic of these influencers — many of whom have several hundred thousand largely millennial followers — is to pivot from peddling misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines to measles vaccines.
And then there are the more “official” anti-vax outfits. According to NBC, Mary Holland, the president of what may be the United States’ most high-profile antivaccine organization — the perniciously named Children’s Health Defense — described measles as “a couple days of spots and then you move on.” (According to a report from the WHO and the CDC, roughly 136,000 children died from measles between 2021-2022.)
Unfortunately, it doesn’t take long to be persuaded by the kind of snake oil Holland and the like are selling; research shows that one need only spend a few minutes on an anti-vaccine site before doubt about a vaccine’s safety starts to creep in.
The question is why aren’t our political and public health leaders loudly and aggressively working to cast those doubts aside? In recent weeks, the federal Liberals and Conservatives have spoken at length about protecting our kids — albeit with very different methods. But not nearly enough of their time is spent protecting kids from parents who are swayed by vaccine misinformation online. Granted no one wants to see their teenager become obsessed with extremist YouTube videos or hardcore porn.
But in order to get to the pornsurfing-hate flirting stage one has to survive preschool first. Routine vaccination helps with that. Surely, even in these polarizing times, and even among card-carrying Conservatives opposed to COVID-19 vaccine mandates, enthusiastic support for routine measles vaccination remains an uncontroversial, multi-partisan point of view.
Let that be the cause that brings Justin Trudeau and Pierre Poilievre together. And if that can’t do it, we are truly doomed.
There are many things governments can do to curb the threat of measles. But if COVID-19 taught us anything let it be that we underestimate the anti-vaccine movement at our own peril