5/13/19 USA Today:
The number of measles cases reported nationwide this year jumped by 75 last week, pushing the total to 839 in 23 states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday.
This year's total marks the most U.S. cases since 1994 – and since measles was declared eliminated in the USA in 2000.
The antivaxxer stuff is pure nonsense. But the only losers are children whose parents refuse to have their kids vaccinated. As long as the rest of the population is rational, only the children off antivaxxers lose. Yes, there are some public health costs from this (as can be argued for parents encouraging promiscuity, dangerous sports, and half a dozen other activities).
There is an argument that the government intervening in parental decisions should be regarded with great suspicion: part of why
Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925) struck Oregon's ban on Catholic schools:
2. The Oregon Compulsory Education Act (Oreg. Ls., § 5259) which, with certain exemptions, requires every parent, guardian or other person having control of a child between the ages of eight and sixteen years to send him to the public school in the district where he resides, for the period during which the school is held for the current year, is an unreasonable interference with the liberty of the parents and guardians to direct the upbringing of the children, and in that respect violates the Fourteenth Amendment. P. 268 U. S. 534.
Requiring children to be vaccinated certainly is an "interference with the liberty of the parents... to direct the upbringing of their children." There are also serious freedom of religion arguments when parents have a religious opposition to a practice that they regard as fundamental to their beliefs. But refusing vaccination is definitely more of hazard to children than refusing to allow them to learn German or not attend high school as was the case in
Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972).
Whatever the philosophical objections that I have to this nanny state imposition, it is really cruel to the children. I know a home schooling family who are antivaxxers, and all their kids came down with whooping cough. Please, do not be stupid.
