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The number of people with this highly contagious, sometimes fatal, disease increased by 78 during the first week of April, while four other states reported their first case in 2019. Today, the Measles has been found in over a third of the United States – up and along both coasts and across the plains, the Midwest and the South – with most diseases occurring in children.
In 2000, officials announced that they had eradicated measles in the United States. However, since then, the number of cases has increased dramatically, especially in 2014, when 667 cases were reported – the highest annual total since the beginning of the century. That year, the disease was reported at a rate of 1.83 cases per day. In 2019, however, the rate rose to 4.84 cases per day. If this pace continues, this year could exceed 2014 by June.
As the Washington Post has already pointed out, public health experts badociate this push with pockets of unvaccinated children nationwide, populations deemed vulnerable largely because their parents have hesitated or refused to do so. vaccinated. One of the main reasons is an anti-vaccination movement that has spread misinformation around the world.
"Even more bad news," said Peter Hotez, infectious disease specialist at Baylor College of Medicine, in a Twitter message on the new CDC issues. "A totally useless and self-inflicted injury, and a direct result of an aggressive antivax campaign."
Hotez and colleagues from other Texas academic centers have predicted an outbreak of measles and other childhood illnesses preventable by vaccination during a study conducted last year. This report identified the 18 states that allowed parents to opt out of the vaccination requirement for reasons of religion or philosophy.
Now, Hortez told the Washington Post last week that of the 15 countries with the largest number of non-medical vaccine exemptions, half report measles cases.
In a highly publicized showdown in Rockland County, the epicenter of the worst measles outbreak in New York in decades, a judge has put a damper on controversial efforts by local authorities to ban unvaccinated children from the disease. access to public places.
The judge's decision on Friday overturned a ban that would have remained in place for another 20 days. When he announced the ban last month, county director Ed Day said his goal was to end the reported number of measles cases, a total of 167 since September.
"We will not sit idly by as long as the kids in our community are in danger," Day said at a press conference in March.
But in the days that followed, the parents of a Waldorf private school filed a lawsuit calling the ban "arbitrary" and "capricious". The parents argued that county officials had exceeded their legal powers and that the prohibition "effectively prevented them from traveling and denied them the right to gather and gather in public places".
Elsewhere in New York, including Brooklyn and Queens, the Orthodox Jewish community has been particularly hard hit. On Monday, the New York City Health Department reiterated its December order to the Williamsburg Yeshivas, enjoining them to exclude unvaccinated children from school and nursery schools.
"This epidemic is fueled by a small group of anti-vaxxers in these neighborhoods," said Oxiris Barbot, public health commissioner, in a statement. "They spread false dangerous information based on false scientific data."
Anti-vaccination protesters have recently decided to equate public health measures such as the Rockland County ban on the persecution of Jews by the Nazis – a comparison that has earned the blame of the anti-immigrant League. defamation and memorial and museum of Auschwitz.
Many state legislatures are considering measures that would tighten vaccination requirements or eliminate non-medical exemptions allowing parents to avoid immunizing their children.
At the same time, health advocates, experts and international agencies have continued to raise alarms about "vaccine hesitancy". The World Health Organization has recently described it as one of the biggest global threats in 2019.
This article was written by Reis Thebault, a Washington Post reporter.
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