It's Official: Anti-Vaxxers Caused Disneyland's Recent Measles Outbreak Tara Culp-Ressler - ThinkProgress
go to original March 18, 2015

Measles Outbreak: Everything You Need to Know in 90 Seconds (Bloomberg Business)

At the beginning of year, as measles rapidly spread among people who had recently visited Disneyland, health officials suspected the outbreak may have been linked to pockets of people who refuse vaccinations. Now, a new study provides some evidence to back up that theory.

Measles is highly contagious. Since it can spread so easily, moving through the air when an infected person coughs or sneezes, one person who has it can potentially put thousands of other people at risk. In order for a population to achieve “herd immunity,” which means it’s considered to be well-protected against measles, more than 95 percent of people need to receive the MMR vaccine that prevents them from contracting the infectious disease.

But, according to the new research published in JAMA Pediatrics, the people who were infected in the recent measles outbreak have vaccination rates that fall well below that recommended threshold. The researchers estimated that the rate could not have been higher than about 86 percent, and may have been as low as 50 percent.

“Clearly, MMR vaccination rates in many of the communities that have been affected by this outbreak fall well below the necessary threshold to sustain herd immunity, thus placing the greater population at risk as well,” the researchers concluded.

The “patient zero” in the Disneyland measles outbreak, which led to nearly 200 infections over the past three months, has not yet been confirmed. Federal officials suspect that a foreign visitor to the theme park brought the disease from overseas. Then, measles was able to spread quickly among clusters of families who have rejected the government’s immunization schedule for their children.

“The Disneyland outbreak is quite possibly a direct consequence of the growing anti-vaccination movement in the United States,” Maimuna Majumder, a research fellow at Boston Children’s Hospital and one of the authors of the new JAMA study, told HealthDay. She added that if that movement continues to grow, “the likelihood of outbreaks will increase — as will their scale and scope.”

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