Vaccines: everything you need to know, from the 2019 measles outbreak to how denial spreads

Facebook is changing how users see vaccine content — part of an ongoing effort by social platforms to correct, block, and minimize vaccine misinformation amid a record measles outbreak.

On Wednesday, the social media giant, which owns Instagram, announced a new vaccine information pop-up. Whenever users happen upon a page or profile with vaccine-related content, they’re shown a window that connects them to credible vaccine data (the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for US-based users and the World Health Organization for international users).

More than 1,090 people across the country have been infected by the super contagious measles virus in ongoing outbreaks since January.

In New York, the virus has been spreading since September, mostly among Orthodox Jews, some of whom reject vaccines because of unfounded safety concerns. In Washington, mistrust of health officials and pharmaceutical companies drove parents in one county to opt out there — sparking another large outbreak. All together, measles clusters have sprung up in 28 states.

As measles cases have surged across the US and Europe this year, there’s been a lot of talk about what’s causing the outbreaks. Among the most discussed issues: mistrust of the medical establishment, populist politics fueling vaccine doubt, and the spread of misinformation on social media.

Of course, there’s more to the story — and a major global survey, published Wednesday by the Wellcome Trust, a UK health research nonprofit, helps shed light on what’s going on. Researchers asked 140,000 people ages 15 and older in more than 140 countries about their views on religion, science, and health, including their attitudes toward vaccines.

“You know when you pick your child up from preschool and the teacher tells you he had a really good day? I have never had that day.”

This is how one mother who I’ll call Katie described what it’s like parenting her son, who is now 6 years old. She visited 15 preschools before she found one she thought would work for him, a place where teachers would understand his passion for space but also his difficulties reading social cues or transitioning between activities. She meticulously manages his diet due to his extensive food allergies and eczema. She also rejects vaccines, which she fears could impair his seemingly challenged immune system or worsen his autism spectrum disorder traits.

First there was Jenny McCarthy. Then there was Robert De Niro. Now, actress Jessica Biel has joined the ranks of high-profile celebrities spreading fear about vaccines.

Photographs of Biel alongside the fervent anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared on social media Wednesday. First, reported in Jezebel, the duo were at the California State Assembly in Sacramento, lobbying against an important public health bill that would crack down on dubious medical exemptions for vaccines.

Measles is spreading quickly in several parts of the country, with more than 700 cases reported in 22 states. That’s already more cases than in any other year since 1994 — and it’s only April.

In New York, the state with the largest number of measles cases, the virus has been on the move since last September, mostly among Orthodox Jews, some of whom reject vaccines because of unfounded safety concerns. That outbreak sparked another in Detroit. In Washington state, where another big outbreak just ended, mistrust of health officials and pharmaceutical companies drove parents to opt out. There are also measles clusters in New Jersey, Michigan, Maryland, and California, among other states.

Measles cases in the US have surged to a 25-year high — and the vast majority involve children who weren’t fully immunized.

As of April 26, at least 704 people have been sickened by the virus this year, the highest number since 1994, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Twenty-two states have reported cases, and more than a third involve kids under the age of 5. Nearly 70 children have already been hospitalized because of complications related to the virus.

The measles virus is one of the most infectious diseases known to humans. A person with measles can cough in a room and leave, and hours later, if you’re unvaccinated, you could catch the virus from the droplets in the air the infected person left behind.

No other virus can do that.

Anti-vaccine advocates have swayed parents in New York to refuse immunizations for their kids, sparking two of the largest measles outbreaks in the state’s recent history, according to local health officials.

As of April 10, at least 285 people in New York City — mainly in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg and Borough Park neighborhoods — had fallen ill. In nearby Rockland County, 168 people have caught the virus. The outbreaks have prompted health officials in both areas to declare states of emergency. In the city, officials ordered mandatory immunizations among unvaccinated people on Tuesday, threatening those who opt out with fines. Nearby Rockland took the unusual step of barring anyone under the age of 18 who hadn’t been vaccinated for measles from public places for 30 days in March. That order that was put on hold by a judge ten days later.

When Valerie Kobylnik became pregnant for the first time nine years ago, she was convinced vaccines were toxic. She’d seen and read plenty of material to persuade her — anti-vaccine blogs, YouTube videos featuring the parents of “vaccine-injured” children, and books like Vaccine Epidemic.

So the interior design consultant decided with her Ukrainian-American husband not to vaccinate their son or his brother, now ages 8 and 6.

Two decades ago, an esteemed medical journal published a small study that has become one of the most notorious and damaging pieces of research in medicine.

The study, led by the now discredited physician-researcher Andrew Wakefield, involved 12 children and suggested there’s a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine — which is administered to millions of children around the world each year — and autism.

Since the 1990s, the number of parents seeking vaccine exemptions for their children has been climbing, pitting public health against influential anti-vaxxers in a proxy messaging war.

But it seems the doctors trying to persuade the vaccine-hesitant — still a tiny minority of parents — have mostly been failing: Either their messages are off or the anti-vaccine campaigns, circulating among sources like conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, are too powerful to counter.

An ongoing outbreak of measles — one of the most infectious diseases known to man — in Washington state has prompted the governor to declare a public health emergency.

As of Monday, there were 35 cases in Washington’s Clark County, which borders Portland, Oregon. Most of the cases involved children between 1 and 10 years old who had not been vaccinated. There’s also one adult case in King County, whose largest city is Seattle.

The vast majority of American parents vaccinate their kids. But the latest national data shows that the minority of kids under the age of 2 who aren’t protected by any vaccines has quadrupled over the past two decades, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Of the babies born in 2015, 1.3 percent had received none of the recommended vaccinations by age 2 — up from 0.3 percent in 2001.

In Steven Pinker’s most recent book, Enlightenment Now, the psycholinguist makes an interesting observation about the first line in a Wikipedia entry: “Smallpox was an infectious disease.”

The key word here: “was.”

Health researchers have been convinced the anti-vaccine movement is gaining traction in America. Earlier this year, Minnesota battled its largest measles outbreak in nearly 30 years — an outbreak sparked entirely by vaccine deniers. That scare was followed by a study in the prestigious medical journal JAMA showing large measles outbreaks have been on the rise in America recently, fueled by unvaccinated people.

These developments — along with the election of Donald Trump, who in the past has suggested vaccines hurt children and cause autism — have had the public health community increasingly concerned.

When Paul was waiting for the arrival of his first son, in 2008, he did the things that many expectant parents do. He and his wife stocked up on baby clothes, put a crib together, and re-painted a bedroom. They also started researching the mandatory immunizations their newborn would need.