The sickness of more than 400 Texans and New Mexico residents has highlighted the importance of vaccinations in keeping once-irradicated childhood diseases at bay.
We learned during this development that, tragically, an unvaccinated school-aged child passed away after contracting measles: a highly contagious and easily preventable disease that was once eradicated in the United States.
No longer.
Paul Offit, MD, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia and one of the nation’s foremost experts on vaccinations, said recently that measles “it’s more contagious than Covid, more contagious than the flu, more contagious than Ebola.” Yet some parents have succumbed to listening to health information “research” posted on social media rather than their pediatrician. Concerned parents can also learn a lot by listening to experts on infectious disease who understand how easily transmittable measles is and how this first tragic death in over a decade was wholly preventable.
Minneapolis infectious disease physician Dimitri Drekonja had this to say about the latest outbreak: “Importantly, while the Texas outbreak is centered in an area with many unvaccinated children, the Texas measles vaccination rate for kids entering kindergarten (94.3%) is better than Minnesota’s (87%, according to CDC data). The elementary school I went to in the St. Cloud district has a rate of 86.7%, with others being in the 70% range. This is not limited to outstate areas — multiple suburban schools (Roseville, Hopkins, Eden Prairie, etc.) and also in Minneapolis and St. Paul have rates below 80% or even 70%.”
FACT: concerned parents and grandparents can check out the Minnesota Department of Health’s spread sheet and see if you child or grandchild attends a school that has achieved “herd immunity.”
You can find a link to that document HERE.
