Oh goody, more outbreaks for preventable diseases

[Jimmy Higgins]

link

The Ohio outbreak, which began in November, comes at a time of heightened worry about the public health consequences of anti-vaccine sentiment, a long-standing problem that has led to drops in child immunization rates in pockets across the United States. The pandemic has magnified those concerns because of controversies and politicization around coronavirus vaccines and school vaccine mandates.

More than a third of parents with children under 18 — and 28 percent of all adults — now say parents should be able to decide not to vaccinate their children for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) to attend public schools, even if remaining unvaccinated may create health risks for others, according to new polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health-care research nonprofit.

Yup, in a world of reduced suffering, people get stupid and the suffering returns. The war against Covid-19 that Trump helped to enflame is growing the movement for people who think that vaccination is a personal thing, not a communal thing. Sadly, this isn't going to get better and more and more people will suffer, absolutely needlessly, because of the natural human tendency to be needlessly stupid.