THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Yet again, Asheville has made international news for all the wrong reasons. This time, the dishonor comes courtesy of an alarming number of parents who have allowed junk science-fueled paranoia to put their children - and their community - at risk.

As of last week, 36 students at The Asheville Waldorf School had contracted chickenpox. The school has one of the highest rates of religious exemptions from vaccination in North Carolina. Those two facts are not unrelated.

And unfortunately, the school is not an outlier. Buncombe County led the state in religious exemption rates for kindergartners with 5.7 percent.

Why Asheville area parents are so uniquely opposed to these life-saving and health-enhancing measures remains something of a mystery.

Parents who reject vaccines are more likely to be college-educated with higher family income - a fitting description of families attending local private schools where vaccine exemption rates are highest.

But the science on this vaccine and others is clear: the chickenpox vaccine is safe for a vast majority of children.

There is no credible scientific evidence to contradict that fact. Full stop.

Chickenpox produces an itchy rash in most cases and is not usually life-threatening, though two to three out of every 1,000 children infected require hospital care, said Dr. Jennifer Mullendore of the Buncombe Department of Health and Human Services. At special risk are infants, pregnant women and those with compromised immune systems.

Each year, the vaccine prevents more than 3.5 million cases of chickenpox, 9,000 hospitalizations and 100 deaths, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states on its webpage.

More:A leader in vaccine exemption, Asheville Waldorf has NC's worst chickenpox outbreak since '95

"People don't think it's a serious disease, and for the majority of people it's not. But it's not that way for everybody," Mullendore said. "To me, that's not a mild disease, and if you're the parent of one of those (hospitalized) children, you probably don't think so either."

North Carolina law allows for religious exemptions to the immunizations required of all school children. We suspect the religious exemption is being used by people who have other problems with immunizations. In either case, the result endangers the public.

When parents withhold immunizations, it’s not just their children who are at risk. A large number of non-immunized children, as at Asheville Waldorf, creates a reservoir in which the virus can take refuge and multiply. The virus then can infect others, including children who have not been immunized for valid medical reasons.

We suppose some people have sincere religious views about immunizations. But we can sympathize with them only up to a point. Since when does freedom of religion include the freedom to endanger public health? Would someone be allowed to drive without a seat belt by claiming a religious objection?

North Carolina needs to re-examine its law.

More:Parents plan unsafe chickenpox party. One parent 'swamped with requests' to share disease

Even more disturbing are those who base their opposition to immunization on the quack science that has been making the rounds on the Internet. The most noted example is the claim of a link between the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine and autism.

That claim was made in a 1998 British paper so poorly done that it later was retracted by its publisher. At least 12 follow-up studies have shown no link whatsoever. Nevertheless, a lot of people continue to oppose the MMR vaccine based on the original study.

That is sad, but it shouldn’t be surprising given the growth of anti-science attitudes in our society. The idea of subjecting ideas to rigorous testing is rejected to favor of saying something and assuming it to be true.

More:Rate of Buncombe kindergartners exempt from vaccination rises again, official says

Asheville Waldorf, which enrolls children from nursery age through sixth grade, has the dubious distinction of having North Carolina’s third highest rate of vaccination exemptions. Of the 28 kindergartners who enrolled in the 2017-18 school year, 19 had an exemption to at least one vaccination required by the state. No wonder the malady has spread so rapidly.

"It's not just about you," said Susan Sullivan, a nurse with the state DHHS. "It's about the people you interact with: Pregnant women, people with AIDS, people finishing chemo. They're a part of our community, too, and we have to do what we can to protect everybody."

Vaccines are safe, and they save thousands of lives every year. Don’t deny this important protection to yourself and your loved ones.