Hundreds of people were quarantined in Los Angeles County as of Apr. 25 after five cases of measles were reported in the area, threatening the lives of thousands of people by potentially spreading an easily preventable disease. Measles is known for its ability to be easily transferred from person to person, even just through coughs and sneezes, which gives reasoning for health officials’ insistence on peoples’ sequestration. The public’s refusal to accept vaccination practices shows just how much privilege some Americans have, in that they blindly support pseudoscience and endanger other people at their own behest.
Not only does the anti-vaccination movement, which entails the opposition of vaccination based on incomprehension or fear of preventative medicine, not bode well for public health, but it also uncovers a trend of willing ignorance. About a fifth of American parents don’t support mandatory vaccination of children, largely due to the publishing of a scientific paper in 1998 that supposedly linked the development of autism to vaccinations. The publishing of this article marks the first peak of the American anti-vaxx movement. Despite the discovery that the author had a financial conflict of interest, and the results of the paper were disproved time and time again by medical professionals, people still seem eager to hold onto that wildly inaccurate notion.
By ignoring the scientific facts behind vaccinations, people show that they’re willing to risk lives based on ill-founded opinions rather than what legions of scientists and medical professionals uphold as facts. Given that infants aren’t typically vaccinated until after they turn one, they are at high risk of contracting the disease if they come into even remote contact with carriers. In fact, most of the 110,000 measles deaths in 2017 were comprised of small children. Of course, it’s unlikely that every single anti-vaxxer has digested all of the facts involving the safety of vaccines, but it’s also unlikely that every one of them has done their full, proper research into the matter. The World Health Organization itself asserts the safety of vaccines, so the fact that people would risk the lives of their children and others over their own misguided opinions is unnerving. Be it via the outbreak of an almost completely eradicated disease or people’s denial of other scientific phenomena, such as global warming, it’s disturbing that people are so eager to ignore the facts and live in blissful ignorance.
The ability to ignore facts and science is also an unwarranted privilege that people with access to wealth seem to indulge in more than others. To be able to brush off widespread concerns about spreading a potentially deadly illness is truly an utmost privilege, and studies show that unvaccinated children are much more common in exclusive, elite, and expensive schools.
The ability to choose whether or not you protect both your child and others’ by getting a simple vaccine illuminates the fact that people don’t take the health of others seriously enough, and instead uphold their own ill-conceived notions.
It’s obvious that the measles outbreak was caused by a number of factors, most of them disconcerting involving the attitudes of the American general public towards science and mental disabilities. People need to begin focusing more on the well-being of others and trusting in the findings of experts, rather than their preconceived opinions. When this becomes a reality, the country would undoubtedly begin to prosper more.
