Tag: Measles

The Story: Though there exists a safe, proven, and inexpensive vaccine for measles, it is a disease that is spreading in much of the world....

In a recent hearing on vaccines, Senator Rand Paul, R-Ky., admitted the medical value of vaccines but added, "I still do not favor giving up on liberty for a false sense of security." What Paul — a part-time ophthalmologist but full-time libertarian crank — calls "a false sense of security" is technically known as herd immunity. Achieving that level — 93 to 95 percent for measles — not only protects the health of a community, it protects those who really can't be vaccinated for medical reasons such as immune system problems or infants to whom the measles vaccine is not given until later. He is applying standards of political philosophy to a scientific field. Paul is making a category error in the other direction. And public health is the application of this discipline to a community of human beings. Given the nature of the measles virus, 93 to 95 percent of a human population needs to be covered for a community to be protected. Politics does make a huge difference to public health in one way. When politicians give legitimacy to dangerous and disproven scientific theories — as both Paul and President Trump have done on vaccinations — they are encouraging a lower level of coverage, which makes a higher level of compulsion necessary. So it is the vaccination skeptics who are making intrusive public health methods more likely.