January 24, 2015 8:25 AM

Vaccine denial: When stupid becomes the coin of realm, we're all at risk

[W]hat isn’t so elusive at Disneyland these days? A highly contagious infectious disease. As of this writing, over 70 people have been infected with measles at the California theme park, including six infants too young to have been vaccinated. Roughly 25 percent of those who came down with the illness needed to be hospitalized. The outbreak has spread to several surrounding states, as well as to Mexico. Another interesting statistic from the outbreak? Eighty-two percent of those infected were not vaccinated (Ed. note- emphasis mine), either because they were too young or because they (or their parents) had elected not to be.

I often wrestle with deciphering the distinction between the stupid and the merely ill-advised. There are situations in which poor decision making can be ill-advised (investing your entire retirement fund with your Nigerian relatives) or just plain stupid (refusing to vaccine your children against preventable diseases). Making poor investment decision really only impact you and your future. Refusing to vaccinate your children against preventable diseases has a much wider impact because the public health is endangered.

I’m not going to say that vaccines are perfect, but this is a case where the smart thing would be to not allow the perfect be the enemy of the good. Vaccines, like virtually anything else in life, carry risks, but when you weigh the risks of vaccination against those of not being vaccinated, the evidence is pretty overwhelming. Refusing to vaccinate your children is as stupid as it is irresponsible. You’re allowing your fear, ignorance, and overreaction to imperil the health of not only your children, but others who may come into contact with them. Highly infectious diseases like measles had essentially been eradicated…until people decided that vaccines were unsafe- even absent any scientific proof to buttress their decision.

I’ve interacted with vaccine deniers who tend to spout the same arguments- “Vaccines are a stew of toxic chemicals!” “Vaccines can cause autism!” “Vaccines aren’t safe!” “They’re not telling you the truth! Dig deeper!” I’ll agree that vaccines aren’t perfectly safe, but what in this life is? As for autism, there’s no- ZERO, ZIP, NONE, NADA- proof that vaccines cause autism. The one study that did link the two has long since thoroughly discredited…but guess what people are willing to believe? It’s not the facts; they’ve defaulted to fear-mongering, ignorance, and denial of scientific reality. Not to put too fine a point on it, but they’re being irresponsible and unbelievably stupid.

Now vaccine deniers have succeeded in delivering measles to the happiest place on Earth…though I suspect they deflect the blame onto other causes, some likely made up out of whole cloth. When you’re wedded to denial of abject reality, you’ll generally go to any length, no matter how absurd, to avoid admitted you erred.

It’s nothing short of disgraceful that we live in a country where, in a little over a dozen years, a disease can go from being eliminated to record numbers of new cases. The reason the disease was once considered eradicated in the United States is because there is a safe and effective vaccine against it, and the reason it’s coming back is because people are making the impossibly absurd decision to skip it. It’s why there were outbreaks in major cities across America last year, and why you can bet your last dollar we won’t be done with measles in 2015 after this outbreak has faded from the headlines.

Why? Because when enough people refuse the vaccine out of a self-centered willingness to let other parents take the imaginary risk they associate with the vaccine, there won’t be enough responsible people to keep it effectively at bay. Herd immunity, the effect that comes with sufficient numbers of people being immunized to keep the community as a whole protected, breaks down below a certain threshold. The more vaccine exemptions people get, the weaker our collective immunity will be.

When people make stupid decisions for stupid, unsupportable reasons, it can and in this case does, place the collective at risk. As increasing numbers of parents opt out of vaccinating their children, the concomitant risk to public health increases. That goes beyond merely stupid to unreasonable, irresponsible, and borderline criminal. Children are dying from easily preventable diseases that would have been prevented by a simple vaccination. A few seconds of prevention would have prevented a life a pain and suffering…and yet some very highly educated people have deliberately chose to ignore the evidence and the truth.

No, vaccines aren’t perfectly safe…but measles and pertussis, among other childhood diseases, certainly aren’t to be considered safe. They can and do kill, even though there’s a relatively safe way to significantly reduce the odds of mortality.

The worst part is that the self-centered decision of some to refuse to vaccinate their children places the collective at far greater risk. There’s a relatively safe and easy way to protect their children, and along with it public health…yet they refuse, making their decision not on facts and truth, but on fear, ignorance, and a willingness to ignore scientific reality.

STUPID. ASTONISHINGLY, MIND-NUMBINGLY STUPID. CRIMINALLY STUPID.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on January 24, 2015 8:25 AM.

Self-knowledge coming late is better than self-knowledge not coming at all was the previous entry in this blog.

One reason I find it easy to love San Francisco is the next entry in this blog.

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