Days after a new round of anti-vaccine rhetoric was stirred up, a case of one of the preventable diseases has come to Clearview Regional.
A single confirmed case of whooping cough at Clearview Regional High School in no way represents an epidemic. But whooping cough, also known as pertussis, is contagious enough to for us to emphasize that the advice to follow on vaccinations comes from public health officials - not Republican presidential candidates.
The school in Harrison Township opened normally Monday after crews spent the weekend sanitizing classrooms and buses. One student has pertussis, while tests on a second student who had shown symptoms earlier were inconclusive.
Meanwhile, some in the 2016 GOP field seem determined to do to childhood vaccinations what they did to "fictional" global warming. Preventive measures? Not necessary in either case.
Pandering to religious vaccine opponents and libertarian purists, candidates have trotted out debunked studies and anecdotes to placate parents who think it's OK to withhold effective immunization against a wide range of diseases. Pertussis happens to be one of them.
There was Donald Trump at the GOP debate last week, spouting fables linking vaccines to autism. The reputable health community says flat-out that no such link exists. A child of one of his employees, a week after receiving a shot, "got very very, sick, (and) now is autistic," Trump declared.
Pressed on the topic, Dr. Ben Carson, a pediatric neurosurgeon, refuted the false link, but said it might be OK to stretch out vaccination schedules. Some recommended shots could be optional, he added. Ditto Rand Paul, who is also a medical doctor.
Even Gov. Chris Christie, though not a vaccine denier, walked too fine a line in February during the midst of a measles outbreak that was traced to Disneyland. When asked, Christie called for "balance" between keeping the diseases in check and parents who "need to have some measure of choice in things as well."
Imagine if the measles outbreak had occurred before the governor was in presidential mode, with Great Adventure as its epicenter. You can just hear Christie, in his best "Get the hell of the beach!" voice, bellowing, "Get your damn kids their shots!"
Christie is no longer saying it, but we will: Your right to keep your children vaccine-free ends when it raises the odds that my children can get polio, measles, chicken pox and, yes, whooping cough. Community-wide immunity doesn't suffer from a few religious or health-related exemptions; problems occur when the non-immunized block becomes too large.
Anti-vaccine invective threatens immunization rates whether it comes from Republicans or from Hollywood loonies like Jenny McCarthy and Bill Maher. Protect your own children and your region. Don't listen to them. Listen instead to Deb Sellitto, who speaks for the Gloucester County Health Department:
"Pertussis is preventable, and we encourage parents to make sure their children's vaccines are up to date."
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