California parents who refuse to have their children vaccinated will now have to home-school them. A bill to eliminate immunization exemptions for personal and religious beliefs passed both houses of the California Legislature with bipartisan majorities, and Gov. Jerry Brown signed it into law Tuesday.
It was the right thing to do. And with that, California became the third state (after Mississippi and West Virginia) to do away with personal and religious exemptions. Colorado lawmakers should take note.
The problem with vaccines is simple: They work. They prevent the spread of dangerous diseases that can cause a lengthy list of physical problems – including death. Moreover, they do so safely and inexpensively.
With that, however, memories fade. An increasingly large majority of Americans have never had what were once common diseases. And we now have parents who have never known the terror of polio or the pain of seeing their child delirious with fever from measles.
Lacking that experience, too many can fall victim to junk science and rumors about vaccines causing harm. The notion that vaccines cause autism is particularly persistent even though it has been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked.
Others can dismiss worries about “childhood diseases” because in their memory, or their parents’ tales, everybody had them. Memories from childhood, however, tend to leave out the fact that not everybody got better.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 28 percent of children younger than 5 who had measles from 2001 to 2013 had to be hospitalized. Especially for young children, measles can lead to permanent brain damage, pneumonia, deafness and even death. Measles is also extremely contagious and, the CDC says, “almost everyone” not immunized will get it if exposed to the virus.
The California legislation was at least in part prompted by an outbreak of measles centered on Disneyland. More than 100 people in the U.S. and Mexico were infected.
At one time, that was unheard of. The CDC says that measles was declared eliminated from the United States in 2000, meaning it was no longer constantly present. In 2004, there was a total of 37 cases nationwide, most infected by contact with someone outside or from outside the country. In 2014, there were 668 cases.
There is simply no reason for measles or other vaccine-preventable diseases to be a regular part of American life. Allowing parents to opt out of childhood immunizations has proven dangerous for children and, more to the point, for the community at large.
Some people cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons: infants, for example, or those whose immune systems are compromised. The way they are protected is through what is called herd immunity – the idea that when enough of the group is protected, a disease cannot establish itself among its members.
For that to work about 95 percent of the group has to be immunized. And given the few who cannot be vaccinated, that means that if more than a very few parents choose not to have their kids vaccinated, the entire effort is undermined and everyone is put at risk.
As California has quite rightly decided, there is no reason to accept that.
