Rossputin.com Rational Thinking About Our World

I realize the topic of today's note is rather far from my usual fare, but the subject occurred to me because of the combination of it being Father's Day (as I'm writing, not as you're reading) and seeing an article in my wife's current issue of Parents Magazine.

Boulder County, where I live, has, I am told, the nation's highest percentage of college graduates (but not of people with graduate degrees). It also has Colorado's lowest rate of children who get all the recommended vaccinations and, according to my pediatrician although I haven't verified it, one of the lowest vaccination rates in the nation. Yes, you read that right: One of the most highly educated communities in the world is one of the most likely places to find a parent willing to risk his child's life.

This isn't a new problem. Atlantic Monthly had an article about 6 years ago discussing how about half of the kids in a local private school weren't fully immunized and showing the rather remarkable disregard in this rather insanely liberal community toward the danger posed by not protecting children.

This quote was a jaw-dropper:

To many in Boulder, endemic pertussis is no cause for alarm. Shining Mountain's director, Robert Schiappacasse, says that his daughter, who had been immunized, got whooping cough but suffered no lasting effects. He became a little concerned, he told me, when the baby of one of the school's secretaries "coughed himself into a hernia" after visiting the school during an outbreak. Still, "parents here," Schiappacasse said, apparently including himself in the category, "are more likely to be worried about fumes from a new carpet than they are about any infectious disease."

Boulderites are the types who believe anything Al Gore says and assume that anything which is produced by any business larger than a commune must be inherently evil. They believe every bit of junk science hysteria, in this case the totally unfounded claims that vaccinations cause autism. Earth to Boulder: They don't, and you're risking your kids' lives on your superstition. More importantly, you're risking my kids' lives because, as that last quote suggests, it is possible for even an immunized child to catch the particular disease.

Immunizations work best when you create "herd immunity", as discussed in the article linked above. When even a few members of the herd become susceptible to the disease, they put the whole herd at risk.

It's not just an old story. A NY Times article from March of this year discusses an outbreak of measles in San Diego caused by parents there using an "exemption" based on personal views rather than religion to avoid complying with state law regarding vaccination.

As a libertarian, I have very mixed feelings about this. People clearly have the right to harm themselves. The question of risking their children's lives is not nearly as easy a call, given that government has a higher level of responsibility to protect kids than adults, but even there I would probably defer to the parents if that were the end of the story. The problem is that it isn't the end of the story because their not vaccinating their children causes a true public health risk. Therefore, as much as it pains me to suggest regulation of almost any sort, I would support a law which doesn't require a parent to immunize but doesn't allow a non-immunized child into any school.

The attitude of Boulderites caused my pediatrician to ask very gingerly if we planned on vaccinating our children, to which I responded "Do I look like an idiot?". The anti-vaccination views are all the more infuriating because they are based on nothing. The "science" behind the connection between vaccinations and autism is even weaker...far weaker...than that behind global warming, and of course you all know that I believe "global warming" is a hoax.

Indeed, according to this excellent article in Parents, the study which caused much of the current idiocy had only 12 patients in it!

So, please pardon my digression from politics as I write on this Father's Day, but as a father of two young children, the idiocy of Boulder liberals is driving me crazy. It's one thing to risk our economy with their econo-moronic support of leftist politicians, but it's another thing to risk our kids' lives because of a superstition.

[For those of you who find this article because you're searching for information on vaccinations, this part of the Parents series on vaccines is quite good.]