This article won honorable mention in the 2020 Michigan Interscholastic Press Association spring awards ceremony.
According to the Center for Disease Control, measles in the United States was eradicated in 2000. CDC officials credited this to the “highly effective measles vaccine, a strong vaccination program that achieves high vaccine coverage in children, and a strong public health system for detecting and responding to measles cases and outbreaks.”
But only five months into 2019, the CDC has already confirmed 880 cases. This outbreak stretches across 24 different states and has the highest victim count since 1994.
Comparatively, the highest recorded count after measles was eliminated was 667 cases in 2014.
Michigan is contributing to this total with at least 43 confirmed cases of measles.
For many, the fear of measles is slim to none as the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine they received as children is 97% effective. But, for the people who are unvaccinated, the fear is alive and well.
ASL teacher Marie DeRegnaucourt is the mother of a 2-year old and 4-month old. She knows this fear first-hand. Due to the age requirement of 1-year old for the MMR vaccine, her youngest has yet to be vaccinated.
“My 4 month old daughter came home with a rash and they thought it could be a measles or mumps type thing,” DeRegnaucourt said. “Luckily it wasn’t.”
But this small scare along with outbreaks the United States has experienced of measles (and many other diseases) brings up the question of allowing people to opt out of getting their vaccines.
Currently in the state of Michigan, school aged children must have six vaccines: DTP/ DTaP/Tdap (diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis), polio, MMR (measles, mumps, rubella), Hepatitis B, MenACWY (meningococcal conjugate) and varicella (chickenpox).
But, there are three loopholes to this requirement. Parents/guardians can claim medical, religious or philosophical objections as to why they will not immunize their kids. If a parent/guardian claims these objections, they must attend a vaccine education course and then get a waiver from a local health department.
Previous to 2015, the education course was not required. A rule was then passed by the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules in December 2014 requiring the course in order to help curb the falling rate of immunization.
However, this has not stopped many from making this decision.
Dr. Gene Tay, a family practitioner, said in his practice he has noticed “a general trend over the last couple of years of not getting their kids immunized.”
Though some of the reason he believes this trend is happening is because of more people wanting to be “natural” and “have control over their and their children’s bodies,” he also believes that a fraudulent medical article also has left many abandoning vaccines.
The study was published in 1998 in the medical journal The Lancet. It claimed the MMR vaccine may lead to autism in children that get it. However, this study was proved false, retracted and the doctor who performed the study has since had his medical licence revoked.
Tay continually maintains the fact that these vaccines are safe for everyone to get but encourages those who do not trust vaccines to “do their research and if they do they will realize that vaccines don’t cause autism.”
Though some claim safety for the reason they do not vaccinate their kids, others claim religious freedom.
Different religions have different viewpoints on vaccines. While some do not care if you vaccinate or not, others have codes or laws against it.
While there is not Jewish code against vaccines and many rabbis even support them, some ultra-Orthodox Jewish people in New York actually go against their rebbe’s teachings and do not get their kids vaccinated. This has led to hundreds of thousands of measles cases throughout recent years in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.
In fact, 2019’s huge measles outbreak was believed to have been caused by an unvaccinated Orthodox Jewish traveler returning home to New York from Israel, who is also having a large outbreak. Another traveller then spread it to Michigan after fundraising in that community and contracting measles, then fundraising in Detroit, where it further spread.
Due to the extreme contagiousness of the disease, the number of cases quickly spiraled to 880 nationwide and spread beyond New York and Michigan.
Tay advises that all children received their scheduled vaccines because of what he references as the “herd immunity.”
“The more people immunized in the community, the harder it is to transmit that disease because there is not a susceptible person to transmit to,” Tay said. “So, more people vaccinated in a community means that there are less people the infected can spread the disease to. Conversely, the fewer people in a community that are unvaccinated the more people there are to transmit to.”
For those who were never vaccinated growing up, Tay stresses that it is never too late to get vaccines. After turning 18, teens legally can get immunized without parental consent.
“Do your research, ask your doctor questions, and then make an informed decision,” Tay said.
