Good Essay About Measles In California

Current Events Assignment 1

561 words
According to CNN, the California health department has said that there were 79 cases of measles confirmed in the state. The California Department of Public Health also discovered that 52 of the 79 cases were linked to the recent outbreak at Disneyland. Four of these cases are confirmed in the Riverside County, where the school district told 66 students who had not been vaccinated for measles or show proof of vaccination that they had to stay home from the trip. Another reporting station said that a student from Palm Desert High School was also suspected of having measles. The district has sent the students with measles home until the incubation period has worn off, and the soonest the infected children could return to school would be February 9. Outside of California there have been 16 cases linked to Disneyland. These outbreaks were triggered when visitors reported getting the measles after visiting Disneyland between December 15 and December 20. Five employees of Disneyland were also diagnosed with measles (Almasy, 2015).
The question then, is how did all these people get infected with measles, when it is a very preventable disease when acquiring the vaccination? An article from wired.com explains. The answer is that most of the infected people were those who were unvaccinated against the disease, including some children who were too young yet to receive this vaccination. Many of these people are called “anti-vaxxers,” as they are against all vaccines. However, some who receive the vaccine still got infected, which raises further questions (Palmer, 2015).
According to an article from reason.com health experts, the measles vaccine is one of the most effective vaccines in the word. It has a 97 percent success rate, if given two doses of the vaccine. Of course, there is some variance in how some people’s bodies create antibodies, and this no doubt was a situation where those infected with the vaccine had not reacted correctly to the measles vaccination. If not vaccinated, measles is highly contagious, usually up to 90 percent contagious. Nevertheless, when people do not get vaccinated against the measles, they are putting approximately three percent of the population at further risk of catching measles. This shows the importance of vaccinations, and how diseases can easily spread throughout the world (Bailey, 2015).
These articles raised several issues. First, there was the scientific factor of the vaccine efficiency rate. Even getting the vaccine does not completely guarantee a person not to get this disease. Furthermore, it shows how diseases spread rapidly among people with no protection, and the affect geography plays in this. However, the most fascinating issue concerning vaccinations and the measles outbreak is why people would choose not to vaccinate their children, especially from such a harmful disease like measles.
It appears that this is basically a socio-cultural factor. There are many people living in America with false beliefs about vaccinations. There are always news stories about how vaccines have been linked to autism, and these studies are putting the entire population at risk. While most scientists have proven these studies false, that does not mean there are not people who believe them anyway. This story shows how the importance of scientific study needs to be accepted by all people, otherwise infectious diseases could have a major impact on the world and spread easily, due to the current globalization of the world economy.

References

Almasy, S. (2015, January 28). California measles cases still increasing - CNN.com. Retrieved January 29, 2015, from http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/28/health/california-measles-outbreak/index.html
Palmer, K. (2015, January 26). Why Did Vaccinated People Get Measles at Disneyland? Blame the Unvaccinated | WIRED. Retrieved January 29, 2015, from http://www.wired.com/2015/01/vaccinated-people-get-measles-disneyland-blame-unvaccinated/
Bailey, R. (2015, January 28). The Voluntarily Unvaccinated Are Harming Other People in California Measles Outbreak. Retrieved January 29, 2015, from http://reason.com/blog/2015/01/28/the-voluntarily-unvaccinated-are-harming