As
national Republicans are making political hay on the side of anti-science stupidity over the current measles outbreak,
states that have to deal with the epidemic are in a position of having to reconsider the laws they passed that allowed vaccination rates to plummet.
In California and Arizona, two states hit hardest by the current eruption of measles, lawmakers are introducing measures that would make schools' immunization rates public. Doing so would let parents know the percentage of unvaccinated students on a campus and then consider their own child’s possible risk.
Two bills are in the pipeline in Maine, which last summer saw more than 200 children sickened by whooping cough, to make opting out more difficult by making a parent first consult a primary care doctor, nurse or physician assistant.
On Thursday, Minnesota lawmakers introduced legislation with the same goal. It would require a signature from a health care provider and renewal as a child enters the seventh grade. […]
While leading public health and pediatric organizations express optimism that the outbreak could prove a true turning point, they‘re also realistic.
"I think we’re all hoping that this … will encourage people, particularly policymakers, to strengthen their vaccine laws and not weaken them and look very carefully at any exemptions they go to approve," said physician Georges Benjamin, who leads the American Public Health Association. Even so, he added, "there is no reason to believe it will be different."
Thanks to the likes of Christie and Paul who are reinforcing the idea that anti-science and anti-vaccine positions are actually valid and that there's some real question about whether eradicating potentially deadly, highly contagious, and easily preventable diseases is a good thing government can and should do, this has become a debate. A stupid, counterproductive and dangerous debate. That makes the job of the first-line defenders in this fight—state and local public health departments—that much harder, which is one reason why Benjamin and other public health experts are pessimistic.
This shouldn't be a political issue any more than rising global temperatures should be a political issue. But now it is, as the forces of anti-modernity do their damnedest to drag the rest of us back to the good old days when we could all die prematurely from poisoned water or air or childhood diseases without the government getting in our way.