Childhood deaths have decreased worldwide since 1990. In their foundation’s annual letter last week, Bill and Melinda Gates estimated science saved 122 million children in the last quarter-century. ADVERTISING Childhood deaths have decreased worldwide since 1990. In their foundation’s annual
Childhood deaths have decreased worldwide since 1990. In their foundation’s annual letter last week, Bill and Melinda Gates estimated science saved 122 million children in the last quarter-century.
That’s a population larger than three Californias.
What saved them?
Vaccines, mostly.
The percentage of children receiving basic immunization is now at a historic high, internationally speaking. It’s “incredible progress,” the Gates Foundation report said, a triumph of foreign aid, charitable giving and bootstrap determination on the part of developing nations.
By any measure, it’s something to celebrate.
So, why on earth, amid that good news, would other famous Americans want to undermine childhood immunization?
In Washington, D.C., Robert Kennedy Jr. and Robert De Niro spoke as part of a panel stoking conspiracy theories about the safety of vaccines. Their stance was based on widely discredited research that purports to link vaccines and autism.
There is no such link, and claims to the contrary are not only fake science, but irresponsible and pernicious.
Though vaccines eradicated many lethal childhood diseases, those diseases can come roaring back if we don’t maintain an immunization rate of about 90 percent or higher. And anti-vaxxers — the hardcore kind and the easily led worriers who simply delay or resist vaccinations — managed in some communities to lower herd immunity to dangerous levels.
That’s how the Disneyland measles outbreak happened, and why vaccine laws were tightened in California.
But most states still allow exemptions for religious and philosophical reasons. And in recent years, vaccination has become almost as politicized as climate science.
In Texas, for example, anti-vax political action committees are trying to prevent that state’s vaccine laws from being tightened, the better to resist alleged government intrusion. As a result, public health experts fear the next major measles outbreak will be in the Lone Star State.
De Niro, the famed actor, has a child with autism. Kennedy, of the political dynasty, previously said President Donald Trump wants him to lead a national commission on vaccines. Trump said they were just tossing around ideas, but during the 2016 campaign, Trump publicly questioned vaccine safety.
It is appalling such willed ignorance should be threatening Americans just as the rest of the planet is making so much progress.
First World problems, indeed.
— The Sacramento Bee
