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.
At least, that’s one of the possible conclusions a California Watch study reached:
Seven of the 12 California counties with the highest whooping cough rates also have above average rates of kindergarten students showing up to school with “personal-belief” vaccine waivers, a California Watch review of state data shows.
The state’s emerging whooping cough epidemic took center stage yesterday when a state public health official called on those caring for infants to get vaccines and to immunize children….
Last month, I reported on the high rate of cases in Marin County, where the county’s health officer pointed to personal-belief vaccine exemptions as a possible culprit….
The picture is less clear, though, in Fresno and Madera counties. They take fourth and fifth places in terms of whooping cough-infection rates. Yet both have a low rate of personal-belief exempted kids, at about 1 percent.
I think the answer here is actually pretty obvious. The stats from Marin and Fresno/Madera aren’t contradictory at all. They’re just telling us different things.
The evidence does clearly seem to indicate that parental refusal to protect their children and the community as a whole by stupidly not vaccinating their kids is fueling the epidemic. But what the California Watch article doesn’t mention is that this is compounded by another problem: the lack of access to affordable health care services in the Central Valley, especially among poorer residents.
While this hypothesis would need to be tested, one could pretty easily conclude that affluent parents on the coasts created an epidemic that has spread to hit hard those families who can’t afford to give their kids the kind of medical treatment they need.
This epidemic is already leading to another round of bashing these privileged parents who have followed junk science in refusing to vaccinate their children, weakening social immunity to whooping cough and other diseases. And such bashing is most definitely warranted.
But neither is it enough. The underlying problem here is that decades of right-wing attacks on government – especially on regulatory bodies and on public health services – has created conditions where this epidemic can grow and spread.
Here’s what I mean. One reason why the junk science about vaccinations spread is that Republican attacks on government regulatory bodies, from underfunding them to staffing them with industry-friendly hacks who look the other way when problems arise, made it possible for affluent parents to believe there could be a problem with vaccines. If you don’t trust government to keep food and drugs safe because you think government has been captured by industry (which it certainly has been), then it becomes possible to believe that vaccines cause autism.
That problem is bad enough. It is compounded by the consistent underfunding, including cuts, made to public health services that less prosperous Californians need for themselves and for their children.
A stronger, more robust government that provides better regulatory oversight and better public health services is necessary for vaccinations to work. Otherwise you’ll see these kinds of epidemics continue to spread, even though they are preventable.
It logically follows that if industry has captured the drug regulation, how do we know they haven’t also captured the investigatory apparatus that declares drugs safe and effective?
Vaccine skepticism amongst educated affluent parents, such as those in Marin, is a result of informed cynicism, not right wing blather.
Scorn and derision aren’t going to change their minds. Honest scientific investigation will.
well done. there’s a whole lot of blame to go around, and a whole lot that desperately needs changing if we’re to avoid similar sorts of waves of infectious disease in the near future, esp. as the economy puts more and more californian families in the position of having to defer medical care until it’s ER time.
You are certainly correct about the impact of folks not immunizing their children.
There are two issue to which I will add my thoughts:
Anent the Central Valley rates, you could substitute “poorer residents” with “illegal aliens”. It’s a word choice and you are in the activist business.
Anent the continued vitality of junk science, the plaintiff’s bar props it up at least, if not more, than, what was your term…rabid right wing attacks? (if not, it should have been)
Otherwise, I concur.
Istvan
part-time plaintiffs’ counsel
…Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey don’t know more about medicine than the medical community? Wow, who woulda thunk?
It would be interesting to find out the political philosophy of those who opted out of the vaccines. I would doubt that they are predominantly conservative, since we’re talking about Marin County. I doubt that the years of “Republican attacks on government regulatory bodies” (mis)informed these decisions.
I don’t know what motivated people to opt out of the vaccines, but I do know a couple that is very nervous about vaccinating their kid because of all the crappy books that are out there alleging corporate greed behind the vaccination regime. I doubt a conservative makes that argument, but I dare say it is more likely that a liberal would. Junk science comes from both parties, unfortunately.