Plague Enthusiasts Oppose Move to Prevent Another Hepatitis A Outbreak
Yes, indeed, the good old days...
Sometime back in late February social media enthusiasts heard the call to stop calling opponents of vaccinations “anti-vaxxers.” The new preferred term is plague enthusiasts. I heartily endorse its use, since the one thing those folks seem immunized against is rational thought.
The Voice of San Diego reports Assemblyman Todd Gloria’s office is getting dozens of daily calls from anti-vaccination activists, afraid about a bill aimed at preventing another flare up of Hep A. Fear is the operative word here, since --even though AB 262 never mentions vaccines-- the bill would allow public health officers to issue directives to other governments to take action during health scares.
Social media-distributed lists of bills distributed by plague enthusiasts now include the bill since vaccinations could be used as a tool in fighting outbreaks of communicable diseases. The idea of such actions being declared mandatory is, apparently, a threat to their freedom.
San Diego’s 2017 Hep A outbreak saw at least 577 illness with 20 deaths and 396 hospitalizations. Some of those illnesses spread to local restaurant workers.
Christina Hildebrand of A Voice For Choice, a group that argues vaccines are linked to autism – a claim that the CDC has expressly shot down – said her organization has separately reached out to Gloria’s office to urge updates and submitted proposed amendment language.
“When you have a such a broad piece of legislation giving broad authority, we’re really just concerned that that can be overreach,” Hildebrand told VOSD.
Hildebrand’s group also came out against SB 277, co-written by Gonzalez and signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown in 2015, which required that any child enrolled in public school to be vaccinated against 10 diseases.
“Overreach” in this case assumes the rest of us must sublimate our health concerns so a minority of people living in a social media bubble laden with pseudo-science can have their way. Their “choice” weakens the benefits of large scale prevention dependent on minimizing exposure to a population.
Most of the (re)activism toward vaccinations in California has been focused on measles. State law requiring immunizations for school children raised the overall rate for several years. Now that rise in community immunity has stopped, thanks to parents shopping for doctors charging fees in exchange for writing exemptions.
From CalMatters:
“We delegated that authority to licensed physicians, and the problem is we have physicians abusing that authority,” said Democratic state Sen. Richard Pan, a Sacramento-area pediatrician who authored the state’s controversial ban on personal waivers after a measles outbreak originating at Disneyland infected 136 people. “I think we need the health departments to basically say when someone is abusing that authority—and to withdraw that authority and invalidate exemptions that were fraudulent.”
State Public Health Department data shows medical exemptions among kindergartners rose to now represent 0.7 percent statewide in the last school year, from 0.2 percent two years earlier—an uptick largely in private schools, where more than 1 in 50 students now have a medical waiver from the vaccination law. All told, 4,111 California kindergarteners had permanent medical exemptions from vaccination in the last school year, out of more than a half-million kindergarteners enrolled.
The favored argument against childhood immunization among plague enthusiasts comes from a 20 year old study, withdrawn from circulation because of serious errors in methodology.
A recently published study following the medical histories of 650,000+ children over 10 years found vaccines do not trigger or increase the risk of autism. In fact, immunized children were 7% less likely to develop autism than children who didn't get vaccinated, researchers reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Nationally, measles outbreaks have sprung up in 10 states, concentrated in areas targeted by active anti-vaccination campaigns. Cases of measles, which declined steadily for years, increased globally last year by 50% – and tripled in Europe – leading the World Health Organisation (WHO) to declare it a global health threat. Disinformation spread by plague enthuisiasts is considered a key cause of the resurgence of the disease.
The wife of Trump’s communications director (and former Fox executive) Bill Shine regularly tweets disinformation, claiming childhood diseases such as measles, mumps and chickenpox “keep you healthy and fight cancer”.
https://twitter.com/DarlaShine/status/1095679791154581506
In Texas, Republican politician Bill Zedler has been campaigning against vaccinations falsely claiming measles could be treated with antibiotics, saying: “When I grew up, I had a lot of these illnesses. They wanted me to stay at home. But as far as being sick in bed, it wasn’t anything like that. They want to say people are dying of measles. Yeah, in third world countries they’re dying of measles.”
Where do people get these crazy ideas? Mostly from social media, although there is a strong anti-science movement linked to the rise of populism in Europe, according to a recent study quoted in the Guardian:
The study mapped findings from the Vaccine Confidence Project, carried out for the European commission, with votes for populist parties in 14 western European countries.
It found a strong correlation between votes for populist parties and doubts that vaccines work.
As far as the U.S. is concerned, my experience has been that plague enthusiasts span the political spectrum.
But I think it’s a short hop from irrationally denying science to supporting a leader who says “only I can fix America.”
Today’s Trumpism:
https://twitter.com/Mediaite/status/1103283734361636865
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Lead image: Screen shot from Monty Python's the Meaning of Life