New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio during a news conference.
The problem goes beyond U.S. shores, where vaccinations are often acceptable but hard to access.
“Measles” is a word you see with increasing frequency in news headlines in America. The number of cases reported nationwide, and across 23 States, in the January 1-May 3 period is 764, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This is a record since the year 2000, when the country had declared that the disease had been eliminated.
Since an unvaccinated child brought back measles from Israel last October, some 215 cases have been reported in Rockland County, New York State, and 423 cases have been reported in New York City’s Brooklyn and Queens boroughs. Most cases, as per the CDC, have been in the Orthodox Jewish community, where there has been some objection to the vaccine. This despite a number of Jewish leaders urging people to get vaccinated. The issue goes beyond religion — resistance to vaccination in the community is bolstered by misinformation that is spread through “handbooks and hotlines”, as per The New York Times, which reported on a handbook that targeted Orthodox Jewish communities and included content on vaccines being made from dead foetuses and causing autism.
But misinformation extends beyond the Orthodox Jewish community and is also spread online, often by individuals who are suspicious of the pharmaceutical lobby and the government.
No link with autism
In March, the American Medical Association wrote to the heads of Facebook, Google, Twitter, Pinterest and Amazon asking them to step up the fight against vaccine-related misinformation. The CDC has funded or conducted nine studies since 2003, it says, and has failed to establish a link between vaccines that contain thimerosal (a mercury based compound) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD); nor has it established links between the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and ASD in children.
All States and the District of Columbia allow medical exemptions with regard to vaccinations. All but a handful of States allow exemptions on philosophical or religious grounds. As the number of measles cases increases, so has the concern around exemptions. Even U.S. President Donald Trump has changed tack on vaccinations. “They have to get the shots. The vaccinations are so important. This is really going around now. They have to get their shots,” Mr. Trump said on April 26. In 2015, at a presidential candidate debate, Mr. Trump had said that he was in favour of vaccinations but suggested that the timing and spacing of doses caused autism.
Mr. Trump isn’t alone in modifying his stance on vaccines. Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg’s campaign had originally told Buzzfeed News that Mr. Buttigieg believed religious exemptions should continue if herd immunity can be maintained and there is no public health crisis. On May 1, the campaign issued a clarifying statement saying that only medical exemptions should be permitted. Some 11 other Democratic candidates cited in the BuzzFeed piece have encouraged vaccinations and indicated their belief in them, and said that exemptions should be rare.
The problem goes beyond U.S. shores, where vaccinations are often acceptable but hard to access. Overall, there has been a 300% increase globally in measles cases in 2019, compared to a year earlier. Apart from impacting unvaccinated communities in countries with high levels of vaccine coverage, such as the U.S., Thailand, Tunisia and Israel, measles outbreaks are being reported in countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Myanmar and Ukraine, where the deaths have mostly been among young children, as per the World Health Organization (WHO).
Gaps in “herd immunity” cause diseases to spread. “For immunity to work, a large enough proportion of the population has to be vaccinated. This number is thought to be around 95% for measles, which is highly contagious, according to the Oxford Vaccine Group, multidisciplinary group at the University of Oxford. Right now, State and local governments as well as the scientific community in the U.S., are grappling with ways of getting vaccination levels up, so that members of the herd, especially the young ones, can stay protected.
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