One of the two people that died of measles in Pennsylvania was an infant.
All the anti-vaxxers who inquire (in bad faith) that if we have our measles vaccine, why do we care if others don't get it? Since we'll be protected by our magic shot, right?
This is why. Infants who are too young* for the vaccine can get the measles, and they are more likely to die of it than those of a more robust age. (Like six, which was when I got the measles. Not the shot. The actual disease. I lived before the vaccine was available, when children were still dying from the disease. About 200 kids died of it that year in America.)
“The real vulnerability is in infants between 6 and 11 months of age, as maternal antibody is waning and they haven’t gotten their first dose of the MMR vaccine,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Dallas.
In places where infants have a high risk of measles exposure, health authorities sometimes recommend an early dose of the vaccine for babies starting at 6 months old. That was the case during an outbreak in Texas last year, when two unvaccinated girls died of the disease.
Other people have immunological issues. They too can catch the measles. Some people, like me, lived before the measles vaccine was available and may never have caught the disease. Sure, they're likely to be old, so maybe anti-vaxxers don't care if they die. They didn't care during COVID, when "only" old people and people with immunological problems were likely to die of the virus. (Like my father, who was in his 80s, and had dementia. Who cares if he dies, right?)
These people have shrugged off the bonds of community. They aren't part of the community, they are declaring. Often they have their own insular (and whackaloon) community they have decided to belong to instead. That's their right, here in America.
But they're despicable all the same.
*12-15 months for the first shot, and a booster at ages 4-6
