Saad Omer writes at STAT:
My colleagues and I assessed the risk of large measles outbreaks in the US. In a paper published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, we reported that approximately 12.5 percent of US children and adolescents are susceptible to measles. Moreover, we found that even a modest drop in the vaccination rate could result in the breach of the “herd immunity threshold” — that could result in breakdown of community level protection against measles.
When such outbreaks happen, it is often minority groups that get blamed for bringing disease into the country. For example during the so-called Disneyland outbreak of 2014-2015, multiple politicians expressed unfounded concerns about illegal immigrants bringing measles into the US. Then there is the not so proud history of blaming infectious disease importation and spread on ethnic and sexual minorities.
It is in this context that many of us in public health, who also believe in civil and human rights, worry about the Minnesota Somali-American community being blamed for something bigger than the current outbreak — even though the community itself has been a victim of an onslaught of propaganda and misinformation disguised as empathy.
