Yet more ammunition for my ongoing crusade to keep kids out of public school who, for some reason other than medical issues, do not receive the usual round of childhood immunizations.
It doesn't take much imagination to see the public health risks: Man travels abroad and brings home measles. Infects his family. Kids go to school and infect all the other kids who either couldn't get their measles shots or whose parents procured one of those increasingly easy to obtain religious or conscience waivers. Those kids go forth and start infecting the broader populace, most notably babies too young for inoculation or people with compromised immune systems. Next thing you know, you've got a bona fide outbreak like they had in California last year.
I understand the myriad concerns about vaccines, including fears that God dislikes them or that there is some as-yet-unproven link between measles and autism. I sympathize (and will, in fact, match my autism paranoia against that of any new mom out there). But, I'm sorry, those unsubstantiated anxieties don't override the extremely well substantiated dangers of unleashing the uninoculated on the rest of us.
Get your kids the shots, or keep them locked in an airtight vault in your gameroom.
--Michelle Cottle