One Small Voice: Don’t fall for anti-vax measles propaganda

by Lynn Mandaville

A little girl comes home from school not feeling so well.  Her mom puts her to bed and checks her temperature.  It’s a little high, so mom knows something is going on.  Mom gives her lots of juices and water, and a little something to eat if she’s hungry.  In the morning the little girl complains of itching, and mom finds little red spots beginning to emerge on the girl’s back and tummy.

Mom remembers that these spots are symptoms of a sickness called measles, so she calls the doctor who comes over to the house and declares that she is right.  The little girl has brought home measles.

After calling the school to let them know, mom sets up a sick room in the family room.  There is a pull-out trundle bed that will fit the little girl and her sisters.  And for the next two weeks that is where the three girls spend their days in quarantine.  Both the girl’s sisters come down with the disease, too.  Her own case is mild, but her sisters have a worse time of it with high fevers and exceptionally fierce rashes.

Mom does her best to alleviate the symptoms with children’s aspirin, cool baths with Epsom salts and cool compresses with witch hazel.  The doctor visits frequently until the worst is over.

In the end, all three little girls are now immune to the disease, and they have not spread the sickness further throughout their school.

This is how we treated measles in the early 1950s, before John Enders isolated the Edmonton B measles strain and Merck manufactured the first live attenuated vaccine against this disease.  Until then you got exposed, you let it run its course (hoping that you were not among the 0.2% who statistically die of it), and you hoped you’d acquired immunity that was enough to prevent a recurrence.

This is how my mother treated all the childhood diseases we girls brought home, from chicken pox to mumps to measles.

And although the first measles vaccine wasn’t available until we were well into elementary school, when the vaccine came out, Ma made sure we all received the recommended courses of immunization.  The MMR vaccine:  measles, mumps, rubella.

The MMR became standard practice for children by family doctors and pediatricians.  Kids no longer had to endure the symptoms, and parents no longer had to fear losing children to these viruses.  By the year 2000 measles, for all intents and purposes, had been eradicated in the United States.

When my boys were in elementary school, I recall a case where one little girl did come down with measles, and she had died.   This incident was considered serious enough that the Allegan County Health Department immediately began a program of inoculations for anyone who had never been immunized, as well as for those who desired a “booster shot” against it.  There was reasonable concern to take precautions against that worst of fates that had befallen this little girl.

It was a wake-up call for parents that we still had to be vigilant about protecting our kids against “bugs” we couldn’t see.

To reiterate, since the year 2000, measles has been, essentially, eradicated from the United States, just as small pox has been since that vaccine was devised in its many forms. But this year we are seeing a disturbing resurgence of measles.

So it begs the question, why are so many parents opting to put their children in peril of a disease that can be anywhere from unpleasant, to downright wretched, to fatal?

The anti-vax movement is not new, it is just resurging in its most recent, outspoken and propagandized incarnation.  Anti-vaxers go all the way back in history (according to measlesrubellainitiative.org/anti-vaccination-movement) to 1763 in France.  The current anti-vax movement began in 1998 when a British doctor released a paper citing a connection between vaccination with the MMR vaccine and bowel disease and autism.  In 2011 the paper was found to be fraudulent, but the damage was done.  In 2007, celebrity Jenny McCarthy jumped on the bandwagon and declared that her son had developed autism due to the MMR vaccine, and she promoted anti-vaccination through advocacy groups.  She spoke loudly, and often, and at every venue she could secure, and her embracing of the idea that vaccines cause disabilities was, in essence, the stamp of approval not to vaccinate, and thousands bought into the concept without further investigation.

And here we are today, watching the daily count of new measles cases rise at an alarming rate.

One might be tempted to say the anti-vaxers deserve what they get for defying what has been a scientifically proven method for preventing dangerous diseases.  But the victims are not the parents who make this foolish (in my opinion) decision.  Victims now also include other children not yet inoculated (children in the US routinely receive MMR beginning between the ages of 12 to 15 months for the first dose, and 4 to 6 years for the second dose, thus leaving them susceptible until they can be vaccinated), people of all ages with compromised immune systems, and the elderly.

Thus, a disease which could have entered the ranks with small pox as virtually non-existent, measles has re-emerged as a national health concern, with more cases in 2019 than since the disease was eradicated.

I don’t have mixed feelings about what we, as a nation, should consider a fair and equitable approach to the problem of vaccinations.  Vaccines protect humanity the world over.  It is, more often than not, successful in ridding populations from malaria, human papilloma virus, yellow fever, typhoid, hepatitis A, polio, dengue fever, and a host of other exotic diseases.

By requiring vaccination of all children at the appropriate times of their development, and vaccination of adults who travel abroad, we protect each other from those nasty microbes that can do so much damage to our fragile bodies.

Yes, there are valid, medical reasons why some people cannot and should not be vaccinated against certain things.  Therefore, it becomes all the more important that the rest of us who have no such prohibitions be vaccinated so as not to be a threat to those who cannot.

Do I believe there should be religious exemptions to vaccination?  Absolutely not.

Vaccination is an issue of public health, the greater good, the needs of the many superseding the needs of the few.  Anyone who believes his or her children, or themselves, are above the medical needs of the many should be prepared to be shunned as the Typhoid Marys of the modern age.

I know, it sounds harsh and uncompassionate.  But how does that differ from the selfishness of being, or allowing your children to be, carriers of death to those more fragile beings among us?

In the “olden days” of the 1950s it was fine to resort to the tried-and-not-so-true means of establishing immunity to childhood diseases.  But now, through science, we don’t have to resort to those methods and the seeming endless periods of quarantine we used to impose and endure.

Better living through scientific advances has made it possible to relegate things like small pox and measles to “the ashbin of history” as it were, subjects we only read about in Wikipedia.

My guess is that most readers here have been vaccinated, and that their children have been, likewise.

But if you are one who has bought into the hogwash espoused by the anti-vax movement, I would urge you to reconsider.  Do some homework on both sides of the question.  You may choose a modified approach to vaccination, as my son and daughter-in-law did, whereby all the prescribed inoculations are given, just not all at once, to spread out the possible symptoms or mild reactions these shots might cause.

Because, in the end, mild reactions to these vaccines, which are rare in themselves, are far preferable to the diseases.  And certainly preferable to the worst case scenario of failure to vaccinate.