Los Angeles Vaccination Rates 2014
[Via Hollywood Reporter]
Vaccination rates are plummeting at top Hollywood schools, from Malibu to Beverly Hills, from John Thomas Dye to Turning Point, where affluent, educated parents are opting out in shocking numbers (leaving some schools’ immunization rates on par with South Sudan) as an outbreak of potentially fatal whooping cough threatens L.A. like “wildfire”
[More]
Three infants have died in California (In 1995, only 6 infants in all of America died). Over 250 children in the hospital with almost 60 in ICU (usually with a tube down their throat to allow breathing). One infected child can infect 12-16 others.
How many lives have been destroyed because of the anti-vaccine movement? Vaccination does more than protect the vaccinated child. It protects society as a whole, providing herd immunity for the weakest. People who refuse to vaccinate are not just making choices for their children. They are making choices for anyone with an infant or an elder.
A community needs vaccination rates of 94% to maintain herd immunity. Any community that allows its vaccination rates to drop below that is culpable in the deaths and hospitalizations of hundreds.
I wonder just how anti-vaccine these guys will remain once Ebola breaks out of Africa? Declining vaccination is surely a first world problem. People living on the front lines of infectious disease are crying out for vaccines.
Maybe Ebola with its high mortality rates will get their attention.
Or maybe they will change when they realize the devastating effects of Dengue or Chikungunya virus here in America. Both are urban, mosquito-borne diseases that can produce years of pain. An epidemic can rapidly overwhelm the healthcare infrastructure of a city.
The former is nicknamed breakbone fever. One million cases in the Americas so far. Over 400 deaths. 172 cases in the US.
The latter is particularly worrisome. Upwards of 40% of the unvaccinated population can get sick, with perhaps 1 in 1000 people dying. It has been reported in all but 6 states of the US. Climate change, by extending the range of mosquitos, will make this worse.
Infectious disease will not go away. Some idiots have to be reminded of this from time to time, through the deaths of the helpless.
A Man With A Ph.D. 