I think the anti-vaccine crowd is stupid, but this kind of journalism bugs me. The conclusion: measles kills too many children, some Americans don't vaccinate their kids, therefore those parents are the cause of the high number. The problem is that it uses global measles numbers, not US. How many of those numbers are in countries where vaccinations are unavailable, and factors like hygiene and clean water supplies come into play?
The very first sentence has a link to the paper. That paper is really interesting, for example how the authors had to cull the data to get to usable factual data that had the true cause of death. For what you are interested in there is a in particular an excellent graph on page 143. I rather like science blog posts like this compared to what is more typical and this post mentions what your concern is in paragraph three of four. No where in those four paragraphs does it leap to the conclusion "therefore those parents are the cause of the high number."
The blogger never suggested that US anti-vaxers are the cause of the high number. I believe the intent of the post was to say "this is a deadly disease in some countries and yet there is still a movement to not vaccinate children against this disease."
Was watching an older episode of the Nightly Show the other day and they were talking about anti vaxxers. Had a woman there from the Thinking Moms Revolution [1]. Larry asked her if someone came out with a vaccine against autism would she give that to her kids. She said she would not because she wouldn't trust it. So the problem is not autism but trust.
Another great insight from that show: this is about guilt and control. Something bad happens to your child => you feel guilty. You have the urge to do something about it, and while you cannot control lots of things, you can decide whether to vaccinate. This is similar to how people get eating disorders: food is often times the only thing they can control in their lives.
This was interesting to me because I cannot fathom how you can stare facts in the face and stubbornly disagree, putting your own child at a huge risk. This in no way excuses it, but it does highlight how someone goes from "I want my child to be well" to "I will not vaccinate".
I think knowing this it is stupid to encourage the vaccination of children under 2. Under one year olds have half of deaths and a big enough share of life threatening issues for all children under 15. Now every time they get a shot and then die/have a real issue, the mechanic of guilt and control will make parents want to find a culprit. Given that most of the life saving of vaccination doesn't come from individual but rather mass immunization it is probably not the greatest strategy nowadays to fixate so much on the immunization of babies as a strategy. Society should rather aim at getting more people immunized long term. I for one find it utterly perplexing that in Austria where I live there is no immunization strategy except immunizing babies. Grown ups have to pay for their own shots, cannot get blood levels done easily there is no information except for tick vaccination because it is paid by pharma marketing dollars. Getting vaccinated in a society with good vaccination rate is like a blood donation. There is almost zero individual benefit. Society should recognize it and make it painfully easy and beneficial to do so.
I am pro vaccination but I hate how it is turned into a moral question rather then a simple numbers game it is. And yes I realize the game involves people dying but so does every single transportation decision or policy. This is no different
The 'guilt and control' phenomenon also looks like it shows up in deciding whether to leave your children at home during a quick trip out. While a road accident may be much more likely than an accident alone at home, good luck explaining that to either the parents or the law. The desire to feel in control frequently seems to be very hard to reason against.
I know this is a little dark, but perhaps trust and desperation are related for humans.
If everyone saw tons of kids dropping dead from measles, they would feel a type of desperation to save their kid, and the amount of "trust" needed for them to get their kid vaccinated drops.
This is good worldwide perspective on mortality risk for young children. The journal article in The Lancet[1] mentioned in this news article provides more details.
[1] "Global, regional, and national age–sex specific all-cause and cause-specific mortality for 240 causes of death, 1990–2013: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013"
Let us hope, that we are getting closer to discovering the vaccine for human idiocy. While one can argue and appreciate natural selection at work, the helpless children pay the steep price, not the stupid parents.
There are stupid people everywhere, not just the USA. There are also anti-vaccination movements in lots of places, not just the USA. There is a big one in Spain, for example.
You would think they'd have died from starvation long before succumbing to measles if that were the case.
The flippant attitude of this comment is... irritating, to say the least. It's as if you're unaware of the massive global effort to eradicate hunger. Perhaps you're one of those people who thinks it's "not enough", in which case please show us the multi-million and billion dollar checks you're writing every year for the cause.
Providing effective healthcare does wonders for lifting people out of poverty. It's not that poor people are sitting around helplessly waiting for food--they're competent, productive people who work in order to be able to provide for themselves. Sick people, and people with sick kids, miss work.
Food aid is a major component in fighting poverty, but if you don't also provide clean water, healthcare and education, you're severely limiting the positive impact you can achieve.
It costs a total of about three dollars for all rounds of infant immunization in those parts of the world, that's not going to get much food. Also then the people don't get sick and health care costs are lower, so the rest of the money can go farther for things like food and education.
