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Apodaca: Educated parents should know better and vaccinate

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Will those parents who continue to withhold vaccinations for their children now please, please, please wake up?

The recent measles outbreak must at least give pause to those who harbor misguided beliefs about vaccinations. For here in recent weeks we have a fully drawn illustration of what happens when medical advice based on sound science is ignored: 71 cases of measles identified so far in California and elsewhere — with the highest concentration in Orange County — a number that threatens to rise as health officials struggle to untangle a growing web leading to others who may have been exposed.

The script from this unfolding drama reads like a Hollywood-imagined, cautionary tale. One unvaccinated person infected with the measles virus out for a day of fun at Disneyland instead turns the happiest place on earth into Ground Zero for an infectious disease outbreak. Before authorities are even aware, the scene is set for infection to spread to other park attendees, and from there outward into the community, throughout the state, across the country, and even abroad.

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And it all could have been prevented.

This new outbreak has occurred just as researchers at Kaiser Permanente released a study showing clusters of under-immunization in Northern California. Culled from data collected by the giant health care provider in 2010 through 2012, the study showed pockets of under-vaccination or outright vaccination refusal in some low-income areas, but also largely and significantly in highly affluent, well-educated areas.

Overall rates of under-immunization rose over the years of the study, which examined medical records from 154,424 children born between 2000 and 2011, from 8.1% in 2002-05 to 12.4% in 2010-12. Kaiser researchers said its considering looking at similar data from Southern California.

If you’re a parent, and you’re not alarmed by such findings, you should be.

Extremely high rates of immunization are needed to provide a so-called “herd effect” that protects communities from just the kind of outbreak we are now witnessing. What’s more, the realization that the danger is being driven, at least in part, by highly educated people who should know better makes the scenario that much more frightening. It’s one thing to try to reach people who withhold vaccines out of ignorance or lack of access and then provide them with the proper information and resources; it’s quite another to try to change the minds of those who willfully ignore all credible evidence.

Let me inject here that if you are a vaccine denier, and you’re preparing to fire off an angry response to this column, don’t bother. I received more than enough hostility the last time I wrote about this issue, certainly enough to realize that a small but entrenched portion of our populace will never accept what decades of data and an overwhelming consensus of medical professionals tell us: Vaccines work.

Measles is just one of a host of diseases that were once a public scourge but were largely tamed — at least so we thought — through vaccines. A highly contagious, airborne viral disease, measles cannot be cured once contracted. After exposure, symptoms begin with a fever that lasts for a couple of days, followed by a cough, runny nose, conjunctivitis and a rash. Infected people are usually contagious days before the rash appears, and remain so days after it wanes.

Children typically receive their first dose of the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine at 12 months old or later. The second dose is usually administered before the child begins kindergarten but may be given one month or more after the first dose.

Some of the anti-immunization crowd have bought into the thoroughly debunked assertion that vaccines cause autism. Another common pattern has emerged of parents delaying immunizations out of the mistaken belief that sticking to the recommended schedule will overwhelm their children’s immune systems.

What these parents are really doing is putting their own children at risk along with other vulnerable members of our community, including babies too young to be fully immunized and those whose immune systems are compromised because they’re battling cancer or other diseases. What’s more, as highly effective as they are, vaccines aren’t 100% perfect at preventing disease, meaning that a small percentage of people who have been fully vaccinated remain susceptible to infection at some point.

Last week, county health officials confirmed that one student at Huntington Beach High School had been infected with measles and ordered other students who had not been vaccinated to stay home for three weeks.

What else could they do?

The state recently enacted a new law making it a teensy bit more work for parents of public school kids to opt out of immunizations for personal reasons. Still, as long as we tolerate such a huge loophole there’s little school or health officials can do until a student is demonstrably contagious.

As the infection spreads, vaccine deniers will no doubt take refuge in the elaborate fantasy they’ve constructed, their own twisted version of Sleeping Beauty’s fanciful castle facade that unsuspecting Disneyland patrons saw when they recently visited the park.

But perhaps there are some doubters who have been on the fence, and who might now be persuaded that opposition to vaccines is built on a noxious fairy tale. That at least might provide us with a silver lining to this latest sorry episode.

PATRICE APODACA is a former Newport-Mesa public school parent and former Los Angeles Times staff writer. She lives in Newport Beach.

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