How Denial Caused One Major Health Catastrophe, and How It May Trigger More Crises
http://www.alternet.org/how-denialism-caused-one-health-catastrophe-and-how-it-can-cause-others
An infant being treated for severe whooping cough.
Photo Credit: Centers of Disease Control and Prevention
Contagion in the United States
While there is no direct institutional denialism of conventional medicine here in the U.S., the denialist movement is active and spreading nonetheless. Vaccine denialism—especially in states with lax public-health laws—has already shown to have a negative effect on public health in some regional pockets, and it’s leaving those communities open to outbreaks of diseases that had been all but eradicated, including measles, polio, whooping cough (pertussis), and even smallpox.
In 2013, researchers confirmed that a 2010 whooping cough outbreak in California—the worst in the U.S. in more than 50 years—was spread primarily by the children of parents who received non-medical exemptions for school vaccinations from the state. The study showed that the outbreak was found exclusively in clusters where children were not vaccinated. There were more than 9,000 incidences of the disease in California in 2010 and 10 deaths. In San Diego County, where there were about 5,000 immunization exemptions, there were 980 cases of whooping cough.
Meanwhile, some states were slashing programs for children's vaccinations. In 2011, the year after the whooping cough outbreak in California, Florida Republican Gov. Rick Scott cut a state program that provided whooping couch vaccines for poor mothers of babies too young to get their first whooping cough vaccines. There has since been a whooping cough outbreak in Florida with a six-week-old boy dying from the disease.
These whooping cough outbreaks have been followed by a measles outbreak that began in Texas this year, which is now spreading throughout the U.S. Measles had also been declared eliminated, but in recent years it has appeared in areas with low-vaccination rates. The original Texas outbreak affected 21 children who attended the Eagle Mountain International Church in northern Texas, a congregation skeptical of vaccines. The outbreak began after an unimmunized man visited Indonesia and then the church, which is part of the Kenneth Copeland ministries. None of the children affected had been vaccinated.
= new reply since forum marked as read
is that you *can* contract more than one of these diseases at one time. One of my siblings had the mumps and measles at the time. Very serioudly ill. 
My kids couldn't go to school unless their vaccinations were up to date on the first day of school every year. That picture of the baby is heartbreaking. 
with whooping cough breaks my heart. 
Q = Isn't there now herd-immunity from this outbreak? Doesn't that have the same effect as is they were vaccinated? Isn't the outcome the same? Or is it a case that each child *has* to get sick in order to generate a herd-immunity?
The reason I ask is it seemed when measles went around, less kids got sick in each go round, maybe being exposed to measles from their older sib's but not getting it, but possibly getting measles at a later date, or do they? I remember it going around up to the 4th grade then kinda fell off from there.
I would never advocate someone *not* vaccinating their child, I am just wondering at the statistics of outcomes from each and/or both. Am I asking the question in the correct way, or do I need to reword it? Public Health can be a fascinating subject but I am not well versed in the sciences to understand what I am reading. Too many big words - lol 
FYI - Parents: if they ever start mass vaccinations for smallpox, get the vax in the child's leg not the arm! They leave gnarly scars and there is more fat tissue in the upper thighs (above the granny panty line) than in arms. Look at your grandparent's arms and the scars that still exist today. I am grateful that my grandmother insisted on this for us kids - upper thighs and not upper arms.
(Do y'all remember those "protection" things that were put over the scars to keep from spreading the smallpox? They looked like a half dome with slits for air circulation? I remember the scar itching like hell, that protection thing falling off and my parents have a screaming hissy fit over it falling off. What are they called?)
