Measles, a virus that invades the nose and throat, causing fever, cough and phlegm, is one of the most contagious pathogens on the planet. Before 1963, it infected some 4 million people every year in the United States alone. Nearly 50,000 of them would land in the hospital with complications like severe diarrhea, pneumonia and brain inflammation that sometimes resulted in lifelong disability. Of the 500 or so patients who died from these complications each year, most were younger than 5.
Until recently, those numbers were a matter of history. The measles vaccine, which was introduced to the United States in 1963, drove the annual case count from 4 million to zero inside of four decades. Measles was officially eradicated in America in 2000 and was largely wiped from our collective memory soon after.
But in the shadow of that memory lapse, a different virus has spread: anti-vaccine propaganda and vaccine misinformation. Both have convinced a small but growing number of parents that vaccines designed to inoculate against infectious diseases pose a greater health risk than the diseases themselves. As a result, these parents are skipping crucial shots for their children. And as the number of unvaccinated children grows, some vaccine-preventable diseases are making a comeback.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has logged at least six measles outbreaks this year, across five states, involving more than 100 patients. In recent weeks, as those numbers have ticked upward, both houses of Congress have held hearings to discuss the issue, while more states have considered limiting vaccine exemptions for school-age children and several prominent social media platforms have pledged to block anti-vaccine propaganda and vaccine misinformation from their sites.
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For a while, it was easy to dismiss the nation’s anti-vaccine contingent. The vast majority of Americans still recognize vaccines as a crucial element of personal and public health. Some 92 percent of vaccine-eligible people in the United States have been inoculated against measles, and nearly as many have had shots to protect against the other vaccine-preventable diseases, including diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis.
But the new rash of outbreaks has made clear that even small pockets of vaccine hesitancy and refusal can have grave consequences. And health officials say that if left unchecked, this outbreak crisis will only worsen.
The steps taken in recent weeks mark a good start to addressing a problem that can no longer be ignored. But much more is still needed:
Funding
Every dollar spent on childhood immunization saves between $10 and $16 in future costs to the health care system. Yet funding for the federal immunization grant program, part of the Public Health Service Act, has been relatively flat for a decade. The Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, which includes funding to help states respond to public health emergencies, has lapsed and is awaiting reauthorization. And the CDC, the nation’s leading public health agency, is in urgent need of a budget increase. For health officials to combat current outbreaks and prevent future ones, all these programs will need more money.
Cooperation
Pinterest, YouTube and Facebook have made a good start in acknowledging the problem of vaccine misinformation on their platforms, and they have all taken at least some steps to address it. Pinterest has restricted vaccine search results, YouTube has barred anti-vaccine channels from running advertisements and Facebook has said that it will no longer allow anti-vaccine advertisements on its pages. Other sites — like Google, Amazon and Twitter — should follow these examples, and all social media platforms should consider having scientists vet vaccine content for accuracy.
A partnership between federal agencies and private internet behemoths — to better understand and more quickly dismantle the anti-vaccine movement — also would help. As Vox points out, this movement has an outsize media footprint and an impressive lobbying arm; it will take more than a few websites acting independently to defeat it.
Leadership
As health care workers struggle to convince wary parents that vaccines are safe, elected officials who understand the importance of this work ought to stop undermining it. In one recent congressional hearing, Sen. Rand Paul, a medical doctor, acknowledged that the benefits of vaccines far outweigh the risks. But instead of taking a stand for vaccination mandates, he warned of sacrificing “liberty for a false sense of security.” Such statements — and the lax exemption policies that Paul and several of his colleagues support — might please some voters, but they will not nudge diseases like measles back into history.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.