A1A South

BALTIMORE, March 21 (UPI) — Health officials and physicians in California say they’re concerned about the growing number of school-age children being exempt from being vaccinated.All states allow medical exemptions, and most permit religious exemptions. However, an increasing number of the vaccine exemptions fall into another category — parents objecting to inoculations because of personal beliefs, usually tied to an unproven premise that vaccines are linked to autism and other disorders, The New York Times reported.

Twenty states allow some type of personal exemption, Johns Hopkins University reported.

“I saw medical studies, not given to use by the mainstream media, connecting them with neurological disorders, asthma and immunology,” said Sybil Carlson, of San Diego, whose 6-year-old son is immunized against some diseases but not measles.

She said she knew she was putting other children at risk.

In 1991, less than 1 percent of children in personal-belief exemption states weren’t vaccinated based on the exemption, said Saad Omer, an assistant scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. By 2004, the figure rose to 2.54 percent.

“If you have clusters of exemptions, you increase the risk of exposing everyone in the community,” Omer said.
Source:  UPI.

Parents are refusing to vaccinate their children based on advice from nonmedical people about their children’s health.   Seems awfully risky to me.

How common is measles in the United States?
Before the vaccine was licensed in 1963, there were an estimated 3-4 million cases each year. In the years following 1963, the number of measles cases dropped dramatically, with only 1,497 cases in 1983, the lowest annual total reported up to that time.

A measles epidemic occurred in the U.S. from large outbreaks in many cities. From 1989 to 1991, 55,622 cases were reported with a total of 123 measles-associated deaths. Half of the cases and deaths were in children younger than five years of age. The most important cause of this epidemic was low vaccination rates among preschool-age children.

Due to extensive vaccination efforts, the number of reported measles cases fell during the 1990s. Only 37 cases were reported in 2004. It appears that measles transmission in the United States has been interrupted. However, measles is still common in many other countries in the world and can easily be imported, so continued vaccination against the disease is still important.

55,622 cases of measles from an outbreak in the United States in the recent past with 123 deaths gives a death rate of 1 out of every 452 that was infected.   I’ve read some of the anti-vaccine propaganda out there and consider it nonsense on the level of the 9/11 conspiracy.