Calitics has the story about that whooping cough epidemic:
With whooping cough now at epidemic levels, it's becoming clear that one of the primary culprits is the idiotic trend over the last 10 years of parents, mostly affluent whites, opting out of vaccination out of a baseless fear that the vaccines are unsafe.
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Noted skeptical author and podcaster CJ Ãkerberg takes a look at one of the most active and visible anti-vaccine cranks in Sweden, Sanna Ehdin, and at the history of vaccination. The entry was originally published in Swedish on the Tankebrott blog, and I asked CJ to translate it for Aard.
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Here we go again.
Every so often, criticism of the antivaccine movement builds to the point where it extends beyond the blogosphere to enter the national zeitgeist in a way in which people other than blogging geeks like myself start to take notice. It happened a few years ago, when washed up…
Vaccination rates won't recover until a sizable body count builds up.
Recovery would be faster but Wakefield is still free rather than in jail where he belongs. Still, nice to see that justice of a sort prevailed and he lost his license.
I guess a reason for not using vaccination due to safety concerns can be an issue, but I think economic factor can play a bigger role. Ideally, costs shouldn't matter when it comes to health. Unfortunately, avoiding high costs at the expense of maintaining good health is becoming problematic. This can be the case for Californians.
Recovery would be faster but Wakefield is still free rather than in jail where he belongs. Still, nice to see that justice of a sort prevailed and he lost his license.
Please don't think I am being mean spirited and spiteful when I hope that this kind of behavior might reduce the frequency of deleterious genes in the pool. Of course, the loss of herd immunity may put innocents who cannot be vaccinated for valid medical reasons at risk, too, and that is the real tragedy here.
Okay. Maybe that was mean-spirited and spiteful, but the point remains.
@Sam - as pointed out in the article, it is mostly stupid affluent people who intentionally opting out.