In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism. This bogus idea can hurt people by allowing diseases to spread. Examples include measles, COVID, flu, and polio. The measles outlook for 2024 is not good.
Recent measles outbreaks in several northeastern states in the U.S., as well as across the U.K., have caused some alarm among health officials and renewed controversy over the level of vaccination rates.
In Europe, cases have risen drastically in the last year. The World Health Organization (WHO) reportedTrusted Source that cases have spiked in Europe last year. The WHO found that cases rose to over 42,000 in the continent in 2023 compared to just 921 in all of 2022, reported the BBC.
Cases of measles have been reported in Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, with other reports of infected individuals in Washington state; another person with measles reportedly traveled through Dulles International Airport and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Jan. 3 and 4.
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The combination of reduced vaccine rates from the early pandemic years and a backlash against vaccines in general by some parents are likely contributors to this uptick in measles, which had been essentially eliminated from the general U.S. population for years. In Mississippi, for example, nearly 99% of kindergartners received both MMR in 2021-22 — the highest rate in the nation. But a U.S. District Court judge in 2023 allowed parents there to file for religious exemptions to state-mandated vaccines, and it appears that similar trends have occurred in other states
