Make measles great again: A case study of the politicization of school vaccine requirements in MI
Last week, I wrote about how antivaccine activists have been targeting the Somali immigrant community in Minnesota, with disastrous results in terms of public health, with Andrew Wakefield himself having made at least a couple of visits to proselytize his religion in which vaccines are Satan. Basically, MMR uptake among the Minnesota Somali community’s children has plunged over the last decade, from 92% to 42%. Completely predictably, that very same community is in the midst of a measles outbreak, whose toll has risen to 32 since last week (and is continuing to rise), making it bigger than the last outbreak among the Somalis in 2011. Meanwhile, yesterday a coalition of antivaccine groups targeted the same community with the message that the “epidemic is autism, not measles,” featuring antivaccine activist Mark Blaxill. I can’t help but wonder how many children will be sickened before this particular outbreak is contained and whether it will spread far beyond the Twin Cities area where it is concentrated now. That doesn’t even consider my concern about the politicization of what used to be a bipartisan consensus on school vaccine mandates.
Such thoughts were on my mind as I received a letter from my State Representative Jeff Noble on Saturday. My wife received an identical letter the same day. The reason was that we had both reached out to his office to express alarm and opposition to two bills related to school vaccine requirements and policy being considered in the Michigan House right now, HB 4425 and HB 4426. Rep. Noble told us, in essence, thanks for contacting his office, but bugger off. Here’s the letter:
Neither my wife nor I reacted very well to this letter, as you might imagine. After all, unlike me my wife is a pediatric nurse practitioner in primary care. She administers vaccines every day.
more...https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/make-measles-great-again-a-case-study-of-the-politicization-of-school-vaccine-requirements-in-michigan/
