Measles in Texas

Texans can’t afford to ignore the warning signs of a public health calamity that doesn’t have to happen. 

Measles is 97 percent preventable with vaccine

Measles information on the Mayo Clinic website.

An echo editorial published in the Houston Chronicle newspaper

We should all be alarmed that five measles cases were reported last week; three in Harris County and one each in Galveston and Montgomery Counties. 

Texans need to remember that six measles cases were also reported in January 2018 in Ellis County, south of Dallas.

Measles supposedly was eradicated in the United States years ago, but it’s still around. The disease kills more than 100,000 people a year worldwide; most of them children who were not immunized.

Keep that in mind when you consider that any one of the tens of thousands of Texas schoolchildren who received waivers not to take the shots your child had to take could one day become a walking infection factory.

If that happens, blame the Texas Legislature for bowing down to a misinformed anti-vaccine group by passing a 2003 law that made it easier to exempt children from getting school shots.

Texas had allowed medical and religious waivers since 1972, but the 2003 law allowed exemptions for “reasons of conscience.” Anyone can get an exemption. All you have to do is fill out a form, get it notarized, and send it back to the state. 

Consequently, the number of waivers in Texas has soared from 2,314 in the 2003-04 school year to 56,738 in 2017-18 — and that number is expected to grow.

Too many parents are listening to anti-vaccine activists preaching the falsehood that childhood immunizations may cause autism or other disorders. Researchers have debunked that theory. 

Yet, it has become the credo of a group called Texans for Vaccine Choice, whose members insist they are only standing up for parental rights.

That message resonates among devoutly independent Texans (but they are terribly wrong!). With that in mind, conservative legislators coveting the TVC’s backing have prevented any bill from passing that would make it harder to get an immunization waiver. “It’s become a litmus test for conservatives,” said State Rep. Sarah Davis, R-West University Place, who supported four immunization bills that died in the 2017 legislative session. She said vaccine proponents this session may need to play defense to prevent waivers from being extended to child care centers.

Davis pointed out that it took a meningitis outbreak that caused a Texas A&M student’s death and the amputation of a University of Texas at Austin student’s fingers and legs before the Legislature passed a 2011 law making it mandatory for college students to have a meningitis vaccination. “I hope it doesn’t take that now,” Davis said.

It could if members of the Legislature’s Freedom Caucus continue cozying up to TVC, which has become a powerful political force despite making meager campaign donations. The group makes up for its lack of cash by mobilizing grassroots support to block-walk, man phone banks and leave online messages on behalf of favored candidates like state Rep. Jonathan Stickland, R-Bedford.

“The state of Texas doesn’t own our kids,” said Stickland at a TVC rally. “They should be looking for ways to protect parents because we know what’s best for our kids.” What Bedford and other TVC-endorsed legislators ignore is that childhood immunization laws protect the public’s health overall, which must at times be regarded as a higher priority.

If the politicians are genuinely concerned about parental rights, what about the rights of parents of vulnerable children who cannot be fully vaccinated, including newborns and children with certain medical conditions?

What about a parent’s right to know the percentage of immunization waivers at her child’s school? Doesn’t that parent have a right to know which schools pose a greater risk of her child contracting measles? Unfortunately, common-sense legislation that would have required schools to report their percentage of students with waivers, though not their identities, didn’t pass in 2017.

All 50 states require some childhood vaccinations and most allow medical and religious waivers, but Texas is one of only 17 states that hand out philosophical waivers. California, Mississippi and West Virginia only allow medical exemptions. 

Washington state may join them after a measles outbreak in January that saw more than 50 confirmed cases.

Parents who mistakenly believe their unvaccinated children can rely on the immunity of vaccinated peers are learning the hard way that’s not true. 

Unvaccinated children tend to cluster and if that cluster grows large enough, the school and the community can lose the protective effect of “herd immunity.”

California stopped granting waivers for philosophical or personal reasons in 2015 after a measles outbreak that began at Disneyland infected 125 people. It shouldn’t take an emergency on that scale to get the Texas Legislature to act.

It won’t if Texans tell their legislators so stop listening to the small number people in TVC and start listening to the millions of parents who want to send their children to school without worrying about them coming home with a communicable disease. It’s time for the politicians to put public health before self-interest.