The War on Science? Anti-Vaxxers Trump the Right

Vaccine chart lat
We’ve all been ranting about “The Republican War on Science: anti-climate change, anti-evolution, anti-God-knows-what-else: all those conservatives refusing to see what’s in front of them.

Well, my friend Erin Kotecki Vest, whose immune system is seriously compromised, posted on Facebook yesterday from a pharmacy where she’d gone to pick up a prescription.  Next to her was a man who had brought with him his son, who has whooping cough!  That’s kind of the equivalent of waving a gun at her.

Whooping cough (Pertussis) can usually be prevented through a DPT injection; although this kid’s vaccination status is unclear, the more people who  refuse to vaccinate their kids, the less safe the rest of us are.  This is not an observation, it’s an epidemiological fact.

Meanwhile, measles is haunting California, from Disneyland to affluent Marin County and other Northern California communities*.  And the folks fighting the science?  We have met the enemy and they are us:  Whole Food progressives who refuse to accept hard evidence that the “vaccines cause autism” research was a fraud.

Imagine how scary this is for those of us in California (which always leads the way for the rest of the country by the way, so don’t write this off as California crazy.) I have three grandsons under four; two of them are under 6 months old. They can’t have MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) immunizations under 12 months. So here we are: Daycare at the gym? Children’s concerts? Family restaurant dinners?  Story time at the library?  Would you go?

What I want to know is, if it’s wrong to deny the theory of man-made climate change and wrong to deny the theory of evolution – both of which have been repeatedly found to be true by researchers, why is OK to risk the lives of entire communities of kids when the decades of research have proven these vaccines to be safe and reliable?  What’s the difference?  And which side’s “war on science” is doing the most damage to us and our families — and threatening our children and grandchildren —  right now, today?

*The  chart above is from the Council on Foreign Relations via the LATimes.

Do We Americans Still Have It? Do We Care? #MicroblogMonday

Apocalypse-road-sign-resizedI’ve spent most of my life thinking about disasters and potential apocalypses and injustice and misery: I’m a journalist, or at least I was, so I don’t get discouraged easily.  So far the world, or at least our country, has always seemed to right itself in the nick of time.  I seriously wonder if we can still do it though.  We all know why:

A bitterly divided country

Racism

Institutional injustice

The terrifying assault on women’s rights and well-being, here and elsewhere

The decline of our public schools

Climate change

The rise of fundamentalism

The coarsening of our culture

The cost of a college education

Ebola

ISIS

Hunger

Anti-Vaxx-ers (seriously)

Add your own here____________________

Beneath those individual issues lies the biggest threat: what appears to be the larger change in our values.  As I watched The Roosevelts and, strangely enough, re-watched The King’s Speech, I wondered (not for the first time) where those sorts of world leaders (FDR, a president with political skills, toughness, vision and an understanding both of where the country was and where he needed to take it, Teddy Roosevelt who took on income inequality through trust busting and began what became the environmental movement (and yes he also started a couple of wars… or a reluctant King George IV, who not only held Britain together and committed under horrible circumstances but also led by example) are today, whether they could be elected or heeded —  whether they would even be willing to try.  Even more, I wondered if our country would accept them; whether we are still capable of selflessness or a sense of duty or a thoughtful response to a call to sacrifice.  I hope so.