It appears that California's "anything goes" attitudes have once again caught up with its population in the form of measles, a highly contagious disease that was considered eradicated in the USA in 2000. Who knows if this latest outbreak is due to the anti-vaccination crowd, the recent massive influx of illegal alien children, exposure from unvaccinated foreign visitors or a combination of the above.
A couple of Congressmen have blamed it on illegal aliens, and so has Ben Carson. Carson took the Rand Paul tact and said, "It's a fact that people are entering the country illegally without being screened for measles." Uhm, if they haven't been screened, how do you know? When asked to prove just one example of an illegal alien with measles who wasn't screened for measles, he couldn't do it. He responded with, "Let me put it this way, if I found you somebody who came in from another country who had not been vaccinated and caused a problem, would that convince you? No." (rand Paul stated, There are many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines." Yet when asked to provide just one example of this, he walked that back and said he didn't necessarily say there was a causality between the two. That's like saying there are many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after having worn disposable diapers as an infant.)
Playing the "illegal alien" card on measles is nothing more than a dangerous and irresponsible flirtation with politically expedient misdirection.
It's almost certainly not from the influx of illegal alien children. For several reasons. One is, genetic testing of the Disneyland-linked virus shows too similarities to strains of the measles found in Dubai, Qatar, Azerbaijan, and Indonesia to be any other than one of those strains. The most likely explanation is that a tourist legally in the US brought measles to the country while visiting, or that a US citizen visited a foreign country and brought it back with them (which is how the 2014 measles outbreak began in Ohio, after an Amish missionary returned to Ohio from the Philippines, and the Amish in Ohio have a low vaccination rate).
Another reason is, all these illegal alien children pouring across the porous border that we're freaking out about all have higher measles vaccination rates than we do. The U.S. has a measles vaccination rate of 92 percent (down from 98 percent just a few years ago), while Mexico and Nicaragua have 99 percent vaccination rates and Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador each have 93 percent vaccination rates. If anything, those countries should be concerned about Americans coming down to visit.
The bottom line is that people who get their kids immunized don't have to worry about their nasty little classmates or their nutty parents that still believe certain vaccines cause autism or other related maladies.
Maybe, maybe not. It actually depends on how many nasty classmates and nutty parents there are. The vaccination rate need to be above a certain percentage in order for it to be effective. For measles it needs to be above 90 percent for what is called "herd immunity" to kick in. If you have a room with 10 kids and 9 are vaccinated, the chances are that none of them will get the measles. If only 7 of them are vaccinated, the chances are that at least 5 of them will get it. So just getting vaccinated isn't necessarily enough to ensure you won't get it, it depends on everyone else. Even though the US has a 92 percent rate overall, there are clusters (like in CA, or in some Amish communities) where the rate is 70, 60, 50 or even lower. In those clusters kids who have not been vaccinated and kids who have can both get it, and then it spreads to other areas and states where unvaccinated kids will get it.
In 17 states, the vaccination rate is less than 90 percent. Despite California's "anything goes" attitudes, they're not one of the 17. California is 92.3 percent. The lowest is Colorado (81.7). (V
accination Coverage Among Children in Kindergarten | United States, 2013-14 School Year - CDC) In those 17 states the average is 86 percent. Mississippi has the highest rate at 99.7 percent. Mississippi and West Virginia are the only two states which permit neither religious nor philosophical exemptions to its vaccination program. Only children with medical conditions that would be exacerbated by vaccines may enroll in the schools there, and even at that once the medical condition warrants it, they have to get the vaccines to stay in school.
On the other hand, should the state or local govts have the right to mandate these vaccines? Apparently yes, so long as they dictate the terms for kids who attend public schools, and it certainly makes sense. However, one can't help but wonder how all these illegal alien children being absorbed into the nations' school systems are being screened since most of them have probably never even seen a doctor, to say nothing of being immunized for contagious diseases.
Most have probably never seen a doctor? Where do you think these illegal alien children are coming from, Panama in the 1890s? They're coming from modern countries with concentrated population centers and rural areas just like we have. Mexico and most Central American countries have way faster broadband than we have.
Contrary to popular belief, smoking doesn't cause every illness and death known to man, and illegal alien children aren't the cause of every political and social ill in society.
