most were isolated cases, some were from immigrants who didn't get shots (or maybe whose shots didn't work: in my experience the vaccine is unstable and doesn't work if not given properly).
herd immunity probably kept the disease from spreading to most unvaccinated kids, but the outbreak among Orthodox Jews in the NYCity area was an exception.
I know why the antivax idiots refuse the shot: Because Hollywood types spread the message that the vaccine causes autism.
And I know why the Muslims in some areas refuse the shots: Because the Imans read the hysterical anti vax stuff in the British papers and told their people it was a plan to destroy Islam.
And I know why the Philippines has an outbreak: The Denguevax scandal, where some kids who got the vaccine (but shouldn't have) got a fatal cases of Dengue, so some parents now refuse all vaccines (we also have polio and at least one case of diphtheria here).
But why Orthodox Jews, who usually are sophisticated? Maybe because an anti vax type group targeted them:
NYTimes article:
“The Vaccine Safety Handbook” appears innocuous, a slick magazine for parents who want to raise healthy children. But tucked inside its 40 pages are false warnings that vaccines cause autism and contain cells from aborted human fetuses.
“It is our belief that there is no greater threat to public health than vaccines,” the publication concludes, contradicting the scientific consensus that vaccines are generally safe and highly effective.
The handbook, created by a group called Parents Educating and Advocating for Children’s Health, or Peach, is targeted at ultra-Orthodox Jews, whose expanding and insular communities are at the epicenter of one of the largest measles outbreaks in the United States in decades.
or maybe because they were told the vaccine contained forbidden substances (similar to the ubercatholic trads who refuse vaccines because they were made from stem cell lines from aborted fetuses, despite the Vatican saying it was okay if the alternative vaccines weren't available).
WaPost notes it's not just NYCity, but Israel who has an epidemic;
why?
The reason, health officials say, has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with the ultra-Orthodox way of life, as well as public health services that don’t meet the needs of large families. “Most rabbis encourage vaccination based on the Torah commandment to protect one’s life,” said Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, founder and head of the ethics department of the Tzohar Rabbinical Organization in Israel. “In Judaism, the majority has the right to dictate what takes place in the public space to ward off danger.” Still, “there is no pope in Judaism, and no one can force you to vaccinate,” Cherlow said. In 2018, Israel’s Health Ministry reported 4,000 cases of measles, compared with 30 the year before. In the United States this year, 387 cases have been reported through March, compared with 372 during all of 2018, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
no, it's not religion, but anti vax beliefs about autism.
maybe because they don't trust the government.
and maybe because it is spread from other countries in Europe including the Ukraine, where immigrants come from.
Or maybe, the article says, because they have so many children they don't get around to getting the kids all their shots.
Ironically a lot of the cases are in kids under one year of age: Usually we don't give the vaccine to these kids since it doesn't work well (due to immunity inherited from mom). In Africa, we did give it to kids over 6 months but repeated it at 18 months, because partial immunity was better than none, and most of the kids who had partial immunity who got measles survived.
This is where "herd immunity" is important: If enough people are immune, the disease is less likely to spread to the entire community, and means most infants would never be exposed to it.
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