CNN is reporting today that of the 159 measles cases so far, 92% were from children who were either unvaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown.



"This is very bad. This is horrible," said Dr. Buddy Creech, a pediatric infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University who was on a telephone briefing with the CDC Thursday morning. "The complications of measles are not to be toyed with, and they're not altogether rare." Those who choose not to vaccinate put other people's babies at risk, since babies cannot be vaccinated until their first birthday, and are therefore vulnerable to the disease. "I hope that those who are vaccine hesitant or vaccine avoidant realize there are consequences to their actions," Creech said. "None of us lives in isolation."

If you want your child to contract horrible diseases like whooping cough or measles, that's your choice, but you don't have the right to endanger the rest of the children in your community.

Vaccination is not designed to be an individual medical treatment.

Vaccination is communal medicine.

Vaccination is supposed to create Herd Immunity.

That is, we need to have enough people vaccinated to create some level of protection for the immunodeficient.

That means that we need enough people vaccinated to protect small babies that can't yet be vaccinated. Immunodeficient in this sense means babies, the very old, and people with other medical problems or allergies to vaccines.

If you do not vaccinate your own child, you are putting people who cannot receive vaccinations at risk.

Not convinced that you should vaccinate?

Please read my earlier diary on vaccination.