(THE DAILY BEAST)
By Russell Saunders
It’s been years since I visited California’s Disneyland, only just once as a small boy. Now that I have kids of my own, I know that sooner or later a trip to its bigger Florida cousin, Disney World, is probably in the cards. (They did right by my special-needs godson, so they’re in my good graces.) I’ve heard that it pays to plan well, as certain storied princesses can be a little bit hard to find.
But what isn’t so elusive at Disneyland these days? A highly contagious infectious disease.
As of this writing, over 70 people have been infected with measles at the California theme park, including six infants too young to have been vaccinated. Roughly 25 percent of those who came down with the illness needed to be hospitalized. The outbreak has spread to several surrounding states, as well as to Mexico.
Another interesting statistic from the outbreak? Eighty-two percent of those infected were not vaccinated, either because they were too young or because they (or their parents) had elected not to be.
It’s nothing short of disgraceful that we live in a country where, in a little over a dozen years, a disease can go from being eliminated to record numbers of new cases. The reason the disease was once considered eradicated in the United States is because there is a safe and effective vaccine against it, and the reason it’s coming back is because people are making the impossibly absurd decision to skip it. It’s why there were outbreaks in major cities across America last year, and why you can bet your last dollar we won’t be done with measles in 2015 after this outbreak has faded from the headlines.
Why? Because when enough people refuse the vaccine out of a self-centered willingness to let other parents take the imaginary risk they associate with the vaccine, there won’t be enough responsible people to keep it effectively at bay.