In my last column I wrote about some possible sleeper issues for the 2020 election campaigns. One of them was the requirement children need to be vaccinated to attend schools.
State legislatures consider vaccinations
Because state legislatures are now in session across the country many are now considering bills to tighten up, or instead loosen the exemptions currently granted from being required to have these vaccinations — usually an MMR vaccine (MMR stands for mumps, measles, and Rubella), Dtap (Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis), polio, and chicken pox.
These were once very common children diseases, killing thousands and harming many more. Almost every child got one or more of them. I got infected by mumps, measles, Rubella, and chicken pox. I was proud to be a “polio pioneer,” a test subject for the then new polio vaccine.
Despite the mortality and morbidity from these now easy-to-prevent infections, most children back in that day survived the MMR diseases with no detectable harm, a fact that anti-vaccine activists like to cite.
Polio was an exception. In the 1950s it really struck fear in the hearts of people. Many died or were paralyzed. Tetanus was, and is, a painful death sentence. We just saw a survivor of lockjaw (Tetanus). The care of this 6 year old Oregon boy cost almost a million dollars.
The mildest of the three MMRs is Rubella, also called German measles and three-day measles. Rubella, however, was discovered to be a severe menace to the unborn, producing thousands of severe birth defects and miscarriages. From 50 to 90 per cent of the pregnant women who got Rubella and gave live birth had infants with birth defects.
Pro and Anti-vaccination and personal exemptions
This year, the pro-vaccination side seems to be winning the battle of the legislatures, although I found it hard to get the latest information.
Most of the controversy is over exemptions for personal philosophical reasons or religious objections to vaccinations.
No one objects to exemptions when a child has an immune defect. In fact that is one reason universal vaccination is the law – to protect those with immunity problems from infectious disease. Vaccinations reduce the per cent of the population that is infectable so low that disease transmission can’t happen – like a fire going out due to lack of combustible fuel.
Those who cite religious objections are usually giving their own individual objections because few if any religious leaders in America are pushing a no vaccination stance.
I think religious objections are kind of like a sarcastic remark my teenage self gave to mother when she asked me to clean up my room. “Hey mom, doing that is against my religion.” She didn’t give me a religious exemption.
It can be easily argued that giving religious exemptions for idiosyncratic religious views is going way too far because they can be, and often are made up on the spot.
California has one of the least generous exemption policies and allows only for medically necessary vaccination exemptions. Since they changed to this stricter rule in 2016, and eliminated religious and personal objections, the number of medical passes given has risen by several times, clearly the result of the unethical sale of exemptions by some doctors. This year the legislature is cracking down on this.
Other states that refuse easy exemptions are Mississippi and West Virginia.
Idaho and vaccination exemptions
All other states gives religious as well as medical exceptions. Seventeen also give exemptions for “personal” reasons. This includes Idaho.
Idaho has an excellent schedule of free immunizations for children, but lets parents waive them for any old reason. As a result many parts of the state have such a poor vaccination rate that the rest of us get little community protection from infectious diseases, except inasmuch as we are immune due to vaccination or already suffering the disease.
Establishing herd immunity is a major reason for required immunization. If not for this benefit we might leave vaccinations as a matter of individual choice alone. People would only have themselves to blame if they or their children caught an infectious disease and were permanently harmed or died.
A 95 percent or better immunization rate gives us this protection and protects the 5 percent who cannot, or did not get vaccinated. In such an ideal situation, the unimmunized are mostly infants and others too young, or old people with failing immune systems and others with immune disorders. Epidemics cannot happen, but this certainly does not describe Idaho.
Every year, between 50,000 and 90,000 adults in the U.S. die from vaccine-preventable diseases, but that is perhaps 20 times fewer per capita than in the year 1900 due to the conquest of these diseases.
I do want to say that the conquest of these diseases depended on far more than vaccination. The spread of knowledge about germs and public sanitation had a huge effect too.
The minority, anti-vaxers, are better organized
It is difficult to find nationwide public opinion data on this controversy, but there’s enough to show that anti-vax is the minority, and a fairly small one at that.
Still, anti-vax is well organized, better organized, and has received some large donations. It is supported by some alternative medicine groups, some celebrity donors, and some right wing donors. There are charitable efforts that let people donate at least indirectly to anti-vax. This includes AmazonSmile, the feature that lets you donate 0.5 per cent of the cost of your purchase to some charity.
Amazon.com indirectly supports anti-vax in another way. If you search for books on vaccines or vaccination, Amazon’s algorithm brings up antivax books first compared to those that give objective information about diseases, vaccines, immunization, and main stream health care. This fact was reported over a month ago, and I checked just yesterday into the accuracy of this claim about Amazon. I found my first book favoring vaccination after 20 anti-vax titles.
At the various state legislative hearings on these bills, anti-vax shows up in large majorities and ready to rumble. They also get many more bills to stop vaccination introduced than do groups that promote it.
A role for Big Pharma? No
Part of the anti-vaccination strength grows from sentiment against “Big Pharma.” The belief is that vaccines are just a plot by them to make even more money. While I have little good to say about Big Pharma’s shakedown of American consumers, they don’t and can’t line their pockets with money from producing or requiring immunization with common vaccines.
Think of it this way. As a profit-maximizing drug maker, which would you do?
Would you make and push vaccines that will be used maybe once or twice in a person’s lifetime? Would you make new antibiotics that people use maybe once every ten years for only 5 to 7 days? Or would you make medicines that people will take for a long time, perhaps every day for the rest of their lives? I am writing about medicines that are needed but never cure. I am thinking of pills for pain, for arthritis, for heart and blood problems, for allergies, for hormonal imbalances, for gastrointestinal disorders. In other words, medicines for chronic disease.
I would like to go through the arguments against vaccination such as alleged contamination, autoimmunity, government control, abortion, autism and the sorry story of contemptable Andrew Wakefield, but it would fill the Idaho State Journal.
I can’t help but think that the cause for active immunization, including mandatory vaccination, will win like it did in the twentieth century by saving hundreds of millions of lives worldwide. First, however, we might have to endure some large unnecessary outbreaks of infectious illness most believe are long gone.
The long lines of people seeking vaccination when an outbreak happens tells me that people do have faith in its effectiveness and safety. What if dreaded Ebola turns up in the United States? Many Americans feared that was happening back in 2014. Would they turn down the first vaccine for it, now being used in Africa, because of fear of autism?
Dr. Ralph Maughan of Pocatello is a professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He retired after teaching there for 36 years, specializing in voting, public opinion and natural resource politics. He has written three outdoor guides, including “Hiking Idaho” with his wife Jackie Johnson Maughan. He is currently on the Western Watersheds Project Board of Directors.
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