So there’s a lot of diseases in the world, ones that were responsible for a lot of human death, that we’d pretty much eradicated. The primary mechanism for this is has been vaccines as they’re the only proven way to guarantee that an individual won’t contract the disease again and, more importantly, not be a carrier for that disease in the future. However there’s a small, determined minority who think that vaccines do more harm than good but they seem to conveniently forget that none of their friends have polio or any other of the myriad of diseases that have been readily preventable for the better part of a century.
That little bugger above, the measles virus, is one of them. I can’t name a single person I’ve known that has had the measles and I can wholly attribute that to the fact that MMR vaccine, the one so many people wrong assume is the cause for autism, has been in widespread use long before I was born. Of course thanks to the misguided efforts of some high profile individuals we’ve ended up with pockets of ignorance which in turn have led to clusters of people who lack these vaccinations. Now it’s been hard to track this as whilst small clusters of outbreaks of certain diseases have occurred in the past there hasn’t been a convenient cluster that’s undergone an epidemic.
That was until just recently of course.
The Eagle Mountain International Church has been known for its skepticism over vaccines and it appears the teachings have not gone unheard in the congregation as many chose to forego vaccinating their children. Then, thanks to someone travelling overseas and then returning home, they were introduced to the wonderful virulent disease is measles. This has since led to at least 10 children becoming infected and, funnily enough, the isolation granted to them by the “protection” of home schooling (which is mandated by the state, since unvaccinated kids can’t be allowed in public schools) was made completely irrelevant by their church going ways.
What’s particularly interesting though is that has then led on to news that the Netherlands is actually suffering through an epidemic of its own (currently down, but the Google cache of it shows all the facts) with over 1160 cases reported. This, conveniently, ties in with their own “bible belt” which is vehemently against vaccination. Those figures are just from May to August for this year as well which means that there’s potentially more out there and it will only continue to increase until all of them are infected.
I’ve talked about herd immunity and how disease spreads in its absence and these outbreaks are a classic example of what happens when people refuse to vaccinate. Make no mistake measles is an entirely preventable disease and its prevalence in these areas is wholly due to their willful ignorance about the efficacy and safety of vaccines. So don’t be daft, don’t buy into whatever malarkey you might have read on the Internet about the dangers of vaccines because the simple fact is they work and these recent outbreaks are proof that failure to use them is doing far more harm than good.
