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The evidence continues to accumulate as Illinois needs to toughen its law on vaccine exemptions.
According to a new WBEZ badysis, in dozens of schools in the Chicago area and in hundreds of state states, vaccination rates are lower than expert recommendations to prevent the spread of measles .
According to experts, at least 98% of students in a school should be vaccinated for their own protection and to provide group protection to children who, for legitimate medical reasons, can not be vaccinated against the very disease. contagious.
But WBEZ found that in 67 schools in the Chicago area and 514 schools in Illinois, vaccination rates exceeded 95% or less. In four schools in Chicago, less than 50% of children had proof of vaccination.
None of this should be surprising. As we wrote last month, the number of religious exemptions relating to childhood vaccines has increased alarmingly in Illinois, despite a 2015 law supposed to make more difficult to obtain such an exemption.
Meanwhile, in late March, the Cook County Public Health Department released a scary timeline showing how an infected person had exposed thousands of others to measles for seven days.
It is play with fire that to let students go to school without the required vaccinations. In addition to being highly contagious, measles can lead to serious complications.
Scientists have repeatedly proven that the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps and rubella) was safe, despite conspiracy theories and myths that contradicted it.
Yet these unfounded myths fuel an alarming increase in measles cases across the country. When we first wrote about the dangers of anti-vaccine myths, 206 cases of measles were reported in the United States. Five have been reported in Illinois.
Since then, the national number has more than doubled to 465, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Two other cases have been reported in Illinois.
It's time to follow the advice of the American Academy of Pediatrics: Eliminate all exemptions for non-medical children's vaccines.
Do it for the health of our children.
– Chicago Sun-Times
Resume elections in Illinois; ask for just cards
While time is running out to put Illinois voters back in the 2021 elections, we are enthusiastically joining the state's editorial pages in urging readers to call their leaders in Springfield to demand concrete action.
A nonpartisan coalition of 17 public policy groups is asking Illinois citizens to tell Illinois Senate President John Cullerton to let senators vote on the Fair Map amendment.
Our readers are not new to the fight against partisan gerrymandering. They know that this allows politicians to separate voters from the process with extreme precision and, in many cases, devastating results for the democratic process.
Springfield insiders say such an effort is exaggerated. But these figures tell a different story:
• Nearly half of national legislation was unchallenged in 2018.
• 82% of the races were not competitive (which means that the winner got more than 55% of the votes).
• In previous elections, this number has exceeded 90% of all races.
Illinois and other states, as well as our nation, have suffered the consequences of the concentration of power in the hands of a small group of leaders who intend to keep it. As former Cullerton colleague in the Senate and former President Barack Obama said, gerrymandering is "how a party wins more seats while getting fewer votes, which is not fair" This means that politicians do not have to worry so much about the other side's serious challenge, which takes our debate away from the rational and reasonable environment where most Americans are at the extreme. "
Some 70% of Illinois residents are in favor of independent cards, according to the Paul Simon Institute of Public Policy. But the number of polls does not replace the combined voices of the citizens of Illinois who demand action. After all, it was a citizen appeals campaign that convinced the heads of state to end the unprecedented fiscal stalemate.
Many Quad-Citizens who joined this effort are part of a group of volunteers who helped collect nearly 600,000 signatures to put independent cards on the ballot in 2014. Only the Supreme Court of the Illinois prevented the vote.
The reformers are back with a new amendment designed to survive a court challenge and put an end to the "racket of the politics of protecting elected officials." But time is running out to keep him alive. The deadline for the vote on November 3, 2020 is May 3. Otherwise, voters could be sentenced to arguing for another ten years with the old system, unfair and broken.
Do not let this happen.
– Dispatch (Moline) and Rock Island Argus
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