The United States is experiencing the biggest measles outbreak in over three decades. Ninety-two percent of the cases are from unvaccinated people.
"Measles are the canary in the coal mine," said Dr. William John Moss of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health to a Council on Foreign Relations audience on Thursday. That's because measles, virtually eliminated from the U.S. in 2000, spreads easily and is very effective at finding unvaccinated people. The risks of exponential measles growth are very high, given deeply worrisome anti-vaccination behaviors, misinformation and disinformation sewing seeds of mistrust in science generally and vaccines specifically, and continued cuts in vaccine research budgets. There is a noteworthy resurgence of whooping cough in the U.S. and other highly contagious diseases, as well, especially in states with relatively high proportions of unvaccinated people. Self-inflicted wounds all around, it seems, and children are often the greatest victims of the anti-vaccination impulse.
Dr. Seth Berkley of Brown University's School of Public Health and the Pandemic Center told the Council gathering that only five percent of people globally had access to vaccinations in the early 1970s compared to 90 percent now. The result, quite predictably? There was a 70 percent reduction in vaccine-preventable diseases over that period of time. Vaccines have eliminated or sharply reduced polio, mumps, hepatitis A and B, diphtheria, chicken pox, and RSV. We're now heading backwards, however, and simply begging for an epidemiological nightmare.
The Council's Bloomberg Chair in Global Health Dr. Tom Bollyky said that vaccination barriers are threefold: demand, supply, and distribution. Thanks to modern science, technology, business, and enlightened governments, however, supply and distribution issues have been well handled in recent decades. Thanks to irrationality, gullibility, superstition, and yes, some extremely rare albeit legitimate concerns, however, demand is being reshaped for the worse. Dr. Berkley added, "There's always been vaccine hesitancy, but COVID changed everything. New tools of misinformation and disinformation enabled people to say things that are clearly untrue but move with the speed of light."
Dr. Heidi Larson. Director of the Vaccine Confidence Project, reflected the astonishment shared by so many as to the magnitude and destructiveness of the unending number of lies on so many subjects now emanating from once-trusted U.S. government sources. Even in the early 2000s, however, as the anti-vaccination movement gained momentum and social media tools propelled it forward, she said "we were hearing things we had never heard before" - often untrue. "We took it for granted that people understood the benefits of vaccinations." Well, some do not and in the process they imperil us all.
Yes, vaccinations can have side effects. Extremely rare as they are, some side effects can be serious if not deadly. There are situations in which, for health reasons, some people should delay or even forego a vaccination. That's completely understandable, of course. Nonetheless, vaccines have eradicated many diseases, saved countless millions of lives, and are a central pillar of our national security and economic competitiveness. For our own health and welfare, we must move beyond this era in which foolishness and selfishness trump science, facts, common sense, and our responsibilities to one another as fellow citizens. If not, we're going to pay a very big price.
Image courtesy of The Atlantic.