A month ago news outlets were reporting of a measles scare across multiple U.S. airports, and this caused people to point fingers at those who question vaccinating their kids.
While noting that the disease had practically been eradicated in the U.S.,nearly every media outlet says unvaccinated children are to blame, but they are wrong.
Fatherly.com is just one of the numerous outlets blaming the wrong group:
Uninformed anti-vaxxers, who embrace anti-science thinking, and believe in conspiracy theories, have effectively been successful in reversing the progress that began in 1963. And, yes, this puts children at risk. Although the measles vaccine is super-effective, if the virus is on the rise again, it makes possible for things to get worse. Or, in the words of the CDC: “More than 73 percent of the cases were linked to recent outbreaks in New York. Measles is more likely to spread and cause outbreaks in U.S. communities where groups of people are unvaccinated.” This is kind of like in Ghostbusters when all the ghosts and demons get let out of the containment unit at the same time. Anti-vaxxers aren’t just bringing back one deadly demon, they’re opening up the door to an onslaught.
In other words, the disease has magically reappeared thanks to kids not getting their shots. Sadly, this ignores one critical detail: if the disease were believed to have been eradicated, how did it start showing up again?
ABC News reported back in December that three unvaccinated children who had traveled to a country with an ongoing measles outbreak tested positive for measles when they returned.
Back in 2017, a Minnesota politician spoke about the large Somalian community in the state that refuses to vaccinate. It’s worth noting that Somalia had over 3,500 reported cases of measles in 2019.
“Well, as far as I can tell, it’s a matter of education and information,” Jeff Johnson told Valley News Live. “We have a lot in the Somali community who are very concerned about what vaccinations might mean. They have information that may or may not be accurate or not. I think the most important job for our health officials in the county and state is to make sure that they as parents, because this is mostly happening to little children under five largely — that the parents have the information they need to make a good decision about vaccinations here. It’s just not happening.”
“One among 7 Somali children dies before their fifth birthday and many of these deaths are preventable by use of vaccines”, Dr. Mamunur Malik, WHO Representative in Somalia, said. “Although we have made progress over the years to improve routine immunization coverage in the country, there is an urgent need to further scale up the vaccination coverage, especially for measles and polio, by working together with partners, communities and grass-root level organizations”.
In an attempt to not insult anyone, no politician or talking head points to the fact that these diseases have to come from somewhere. Seeing as measles had been thought to have been completely eradicated, it’s safe to say these diseases are being brought here from parts of the world where they are still prevalent.
This kind of rhetoric treads dangerously close to “shit hole countries”, but it’s the truth. You can’t fix a problem if you don’t find its cause. While people who don’t vaccinate their kids might be putting them at risk, the fact remains that diseases like measles have to originate from somewhere. If the United States had essentially “eliminated” the measles in the country, that means it’s being imported, either by tourists, or immigrants.
The anger at “anti-vaxxers” is entirely misplaced because people can’t bring themselves to accept that these once eradicated diseases are coming from people outside of the U.S. While some of the people coming here might be part of the “anti-vax” movement, there has to be some distinction between people living in communities where these diseases haven’t been around in decades, and those coming from countries where it’s still a problem.
The people most concerned with the health and wellness of American citizens should be the strongest proponents of strict immigration laws. There’s no better way to make sure a disease isn’t transmitted among people than by preventing people from parts of the world with diseases from entering entirely.
Conservative Daily Update 