Donald Trump and maga Republicans must not put innocent immigrants in warehouses like Nazi concentration camps

Echo opinion published in the Los Angeles Times by Paul R. Reyes, attorney.

Across the country, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (aka "evil ICE") is acquiring industrial warehouses to be converted into detention facilities for people swept up in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. 

ICE has bought at least seven facilities so far, some of which are projected to hold thousands of people. One warehouse in an Arizona town is the size of seven football fields. The new facilities are slated to be up and running by November.

These plans amount to a lose-lose proposition. Warehouses crammed full of people will not be good for local communities, nor for the detainees housed inside the facilities. Literally warehousing people is a terrible idea❗ (They are modeled after Nazi concentration camps.)

According to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, in February there were about 68,000 people in immigration detention. Three-quarters of these folks have no criminal convictions. Now the administration plans to spend $38 billion to boost detention capacity to 92,000 beds.

ICE will be opening its new detention centers in Socorro, Texas, and Social Circle, Georgia., among other sites. These facilities will likely generate more problems than benefits. 

When the federal government takes over a property, it is removed from the tax rolls, so communities will lose potential tax revenue. Large detention facilities will strain local infrastructure, including water supply, sewage and emergency services. The sites may attract protests, diverting law enforcement resources away from protecting area residents.

It’s no wonder that there has been bipartisan pushback against ICE warehouses, with some sellers backing out of deals in response to public opposition.

ICE’s website states that “detention is non-punitive,” and that it is for holding people while they await court dates or deportation. 

Yet, placing people in vast buildings designed for packages will put men, women and children in danger of disease and abuse. 

Warehouses are often drafty, poorly ventilated structures with hard floors. It’s difficult to see how they can be rapidly retrofitted into safe living spaces for detainees who, the government estimates, could be held for an average of 60 days there.

The scope of ICE’s planned detention network is staggering. The agency has already bought two warehouses with capacity for 8,500 people each; by comparison, the country’s largest federal prison holds roughly 4,000 inmates.

The U.S. has not imprisoned people on such a large scale since World War II, when camps were set up to detain Japanese citizens and Japanese Americans.

Buying so many warehouses poses the risk that such facilities could be kept filled to meet quotas in an attempt to justify the huge waste of taxpayer money — a maneuver that would waste even more money. And the multimillion-dollar prices that the government is paying for these spaces don’t include the costs of equipping the buildings with restrooms, showers, kitchens, medical facilities and recreation areas. Our government is pursuing these expensive plans while many Americans struggle to pay for groceries and healthcare.

ICE is defending its decision to ramp up detention capacity. “These will not be warehouses,” an ICE spokesperson told USA Today. “They will be very well-structured detention facilities meeting our regular detention standards.”

However, ICE has shown that it already struggles to meet its own “regular detention standards.” 

Detention centers are known for overcrowding, physical and sexual abuse, unsanitary conditions, and inadequate medical care. ICE is not taking proper care of the people it currently has in custody, and scaling up detention will only scale up its human costs.

Both of the country’s largest detention facilities, Alligator Alcatraz in Florida and Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas, are plagued with health and safety issues. In February, there were reports of cases of COVID-19, measles and TB (tuberculosis) in immigration detention. Last year 32 people died in ICE custody, making it the agency’s deadliest year in more than two decades.

If the administration’s goal is to remove as many undocumented people from the country as possible, why is it investing in a national gulag of warehouses to house them? The gulag strategy underscores that expanding ICE detention is not about public safety or going after “the worst of the worst.” This is an overreaching government forcing its unpopular agenda on the public and wasting taxpayer money simply because it was allotted a ridiculous $75 billion in last summer’s reckless spending bill. A January Reuters poll found that 58% of Americans say ICE crackdowns have gone too far. Only 39% approve of Trump’s immigration policies.

Concerned citizens must continue to fight the placement of ICE detention warehouses in their backyards. As a political standoff drags on a shutdown of some Homeland Security functions, lawmakers should exert pressure on ICE to redirect taxpayer money away from warehouse projects — and toward more productive efforts, such as improving existing detention conditions or financing immigration courts adequately so that individuals can get their day in court rather than languishing in a warehouse.

ICE’s planned detention expansion will be cruel, costly and harmful. Human beings do not belong in warehouses.

Raul A. Reyes is an immigration attorney and television commentator in New York City. X: @RaulAReyes; Instagram: @raulareyes1

Donald Trump and maga Republicans including Senator Susan Collins must stand up for American health care!

Trump’s Harmful Policies Are Endangering Your Health

Editorial opinion published in The New York Times

Donald Trump turned Make America Healthy Again into one of his administration’s signature promises. It is a laudable goal, too. By several measures, the United States is the world’s least healthy high-income country.

Nevertheless, as is so often the case with Trump, he both identified a real problem and enacted a set of policies that will worsen that problem. With public health, the damage could be vast. His administration is rejecting basic medical knowledge and turning back the clock to an era when people were sicker and died sooner.

The administration’s hostility to lifesaving vaccines, led by the incompetent Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, has already contributed to a rise in measles.  Trump’s cuts to scientific research will forestall future treatments of cancer, heart disease and childhood illnesses. His cuts to Medicaid, which pay for tax breaks for the wealthy, will leave millions of Americans without health insurance and, by extension, health care. His rollback of environmental regulations has allowed corporations to pump more pollution into the air and water, which will contribute to lung diseases and other ailments.

As disappointing as the pre-Trump trends in public health were, Americans remain far healthier than in previous generations. Life expectancy today is almost 80, up from less than 60 a century ago. In that century, we have conquered smallpox and polio. We have cleaned our cities of the smog that was once normal. We have made progress against cancers and cardiovascular diseases that once were death sentences. Trump and Kennedy are dismantling the eight decades of work that made that progress possible. There is a great deal to lose.

Here’s what they are doing to harm our health:

1. Exposing Americans to preventable diseases: The taming of infectious diseases, including polio, smallpox, measles, mumps, tetanus, influenza and, most recently, Covid-19, has been one of humankind’s greatest achievements. These diseases have all been made far less deadly, and in some cases virtually nonexistent, thanks to vaccines. Mr. Trump himself recently said that vaccines work, “pure and simple.”

Yet as his top health official he has appointed a conspiracist, Mr. Kennedy, who exaggerates or outright lies about the risks that come with these vaccines. Mr. Kennedy has filled an important federal panel, which shapes which vaccines are covered by insurers, with other conspiracists. Republican-led states are following the administration’s lead; Florida is trying to repeal vaccine mandates for schoolchildren.

These misguided changes are already having an effect. The Covid vaccine has become harder to get, even for some vulnerable people. Childhood vaccination rates, which were falling before Mr. Trump returned to office, seem likely to fall further as Mr. Kennedy fans parents’ fears. Already, measles outbreaks have occurred in Texas and elsewhere, and the effects may be far worse in the coming years as society risks losing the herd immunity that it had achieved.

We know about the consequences from these diseases because humanity has lived them. Before vaccines, illnesses like smallpox, measles and polio left people scarred, paralyzed, blind or dead. Many of the victims were children. The Trump administration is condemning more people to suffer and die from diseases that we know how to prevent.

2. Making a future pandemic more deadly: Nobody knows when the next pandemic will arrive. Whenever it does, the United States may be even less prepared than it was for Covid.


With Elon Musk’s help, Trump this year dismantled the United States Agency for International Development. He also withdrew from the World Health Organization, the global hub for tracking health emergencies, and emptied the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response. These moves may have their biggest effects on poor citizens of other countries who previously benefited from American aid, but they put Americans at risk, too.

Trump fired the experts and community health workers who once monitored the world for outbreaks and helped restrain those outbreaks before they spread. In the past few decades alone, these workers led the fight against SARS, Zika, Ebola, bird flu and other illnesses, and Americans were largely spared from their effects.

Perhaps the strangest part of Trump’s health policy is his turn against mRNA vaccines. In his first term, his administration helped make possible the stunningly rapid development of mRNA vaccines for Covid. Trump could claim mRNA as his greatest accomplishment. Instead, he caved to vaccine skeptics within the MAGA movement and canceled $500 million in contracts to develop future mRNA vaccines.😓😨😥 That will slow the development of treatments for a future pandemic, when every week without a vaccine can lead to thousands of additional deaths.

3. Eliminating future cures:  In addition to cutting mRNA funding, the administration has sharply cut medical research funding. Mr. Trump and his aides have justified these cuts by citing government efficiency and the “wokeness” of the universities that conduct much of the research. But science funding represents just 0.6 percent of federal spending, and most medical researchers have little to do with the wokeness wars. Their goal is to find effective treatments.

Without federal funding, much of this research — into cancer, cardiovascular disease, dementia, addiction, diabetes and more — will not happen. It involves basic science that tends to be unprofitable for any one company but can have enormous returns for society. In all, basic research may lose one-third of its federal funding.

Consider the work that a team of researchers at the University of Mississippi and Ohio State University is doing into glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer that is usually deadly within 18 months of diagnosis. The Trump administration cut the team’s funding without a good explanation, forcing the project to pause. After the funding was cut, Eden Tanner, a chemist on the project, received a flood of emails from people affected by the disease. “It’s really heartbreaking to tell them,” she said.

4. Dirtying the air and water:  One public-health success story of the past half-century has been the sharp reduction of air and water pollution. As a result of regulations and clean energy breakthroughs, we breathe and drink many fewer toxins than Americans did decades ago. Pollution-related illnesses, like severe asthma, have declined as a result.

This trend may now be over. The Trump administration is hollowing out the Environmental Protection Agency, rolling back regulations, withdrawing support for clean energy and promoting dirty energy that causes illnesses. One example: The administration has given hundreds of industrial facilities a two-year pass on pollution rules. Another example: The J.H. Campbell coal-fired power plant in West Olive, Michigan, was on the verge of closing until the Trump administration issued an emergency order, forcing it to stay open — even though the power company had not asked to keep it open. The plant continues to operate today, producing fine particle pollution that is associated with cardiac problems, asthma and other lung diseases.

The effects will be largest in red states, which tend to have more industrial facilities and lighter regulation. In Texas, coal plants are now allowed to release more than twice as much wastewater pollution as they were at the beginning of this year, as well as more than five times as much sulfur dioxide and more than six times as much carbon dioxide, according to the Sierra Club. These changes are also likely to aggravate climate change.
5. Taking away medical care

Trump’s recently passed domestic policy law will leave 10 million Americans without health insurance, experts estimate. Another 4.2 million could lose health insurance if Republicans in Congress refuse to extend expanded tax credits under the Affordable Care Act. Together, these changes would undo about one-third of the coverage gains from that law.

Without health insurance, millions of Americans will not be able to get crucial medical care. A large recent study concluded that poor adults who received Medicaid were 21 percent less likely to die than those who were not enrolled. People with insurance are also more likely to be healthy enough to lead happy, productive lives than people without it. Among the biggest victims of the Medicaid cuts, as we recently explained, will be people addicted to opioids — a group Mr. Trump repeatedly promised to help.

The Medicaid cuts exist largely to finance tax cuts for affluent Americans. That same recent law also includes cuts to food stamps, which will leave poor Americans less able to feed their families and almost certainly less healthy. Wealthy Americans who do not need the money nonetheless receive more of it, while lower-income Americans lose food stamps and health coverage.

In each of these areas, it is easy to name ways that our health system has failed many Americans over the past few decades. Insurance is too expensive. Pollution is concentrated in lower-income communities. Cutting-edge medical treatments are sometimes available only to the affluent. Preventive care and chronic diseases receive too little attention from insurers, doctors, scientific researchers and government agencies. Ultraprocessed foods and “overmedicalization” have hurt children, as RFKjr (Kennedy) has noted.

All of which shows the need for a true Make America Healthy Again movement. Trump is not leading that movement, though. He is instead taking the country backward to a time when many health threats were much more ominous than they are today. Trump is surrendering America to curable diseases.

Measles Misinformation To File: You cannot make this shit up! Anti-Vaxxers are lunatics

Anti-Vaxxers Say 'Bioweapon' Started Measles Outbreak

By Rachel Robertson

Anti-vaxxers 😕are now saying whaaaaa❓

As a registered nurse, I spent many a long day and night studying about diseases and caring for people who acquired infectious illnesses. Tuberculosis continues to be a very stubborn disease because the bacterium becomes drug resistant over time. At one time, we actually believed the Measles virus had been conquered, until RFKjr 😱and his anti-vaxxer roaches started their dangerous anti-vaxxer campaign.

 

But this misinformaiton reported by MedPage Today is like out of a science fiction 👽horror movie:

Anti-vaccine activists have been profiting from ongoing measles outbreaks by selling bogus treatments, and some claim the West Texas outbreak was a bioweapon targeting the Mennonite community there, according to reporting in Wired.

Many of them have close ties to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., like Mikki Willis, the conspiracy filmmaker known for the misinformation-filled "Plandemic" pseudo-documentaries, which were partially funded by Children's Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group founded by RFKjr- Kennedy.

"I'm not going to be careful by calling it a virus," Willis said in a recent webinar. "I'm going to call it what it is, and that is a bioweapon, and my belief after interviewing these families is that this has been manipulated and targeted towards a community that is a threat because of their natural way of living."

The webinar was hosted by the supplement company Willis cofounded, which, for hundreds of dollars, sells a "measles treatment and prevention protocol" that he recommended during the webinar. Richard Bartlett, MD, one of the doctors Kennedy commendedopens in a new tab or window for giving measles patients unproven treatments, also participated in the webinar.

Pierre Kory, MD, known for promoting (snake oil❗) ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19, has also claimed the measles crisis was a targeted attack and that the deaths of two children in Texas were not caused by measles.

"This is the standard radical anti-vaccine extremist playbook," Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, told Wired. "You can see RFK Jr. has translated his anti-vaccine lies into political power. You can see others have converted it into economic power."

Truth: Measles spreads primarily through the air when an infected person coughs, sneezes, or talks, releasing droplets containing the virus. These droplets can remain airborne for up to two hours. Additionally, measles can spread by touching contaminated surfaces and then touching one's eyes, nose, or mouth.

Measles outbreak in Texas finally disclosed due to low vaccination rates but numbers of infected are likely higher than reported

Measles outbreak erupts in one of Texas’ least vaccinated counties
Echo report published in ARS Technica by Beth Mole (Texas).

9 cases are confirmed and 3 are probable. Officials says more are very likely to come.

Health officials in Texas are battling a growing measles outbreak in an area that has some of the state's lowest vaccination rates and highest non-medical exemptions.

On January 30, officials reported two measles cases in unvaccinated, school-aged children in Gaines County, which sits at the border of New Mexico and is around 90 miles southwest of Lubbock, Texas. Both children were hospitalized in Lubbock and had been discharged.

As of mid-day February 7, the outbreak total reached nine confirmed measles cases in the South Plains Public Health District (SPPHD) that includes Gaines, according to Zach Holbrooks, Executive Director for SSPHD. In an interview with Ars, Holbrooks reported that there were three additional probable cases that are linked to the confirmed cases. These are cases in the same household or family—maybe a cousin or sibling—that are showing measles symptoms but haven't been tested yet or gotten their test results back yet, Holbrooks said. So far, there have been no other reports of hospitalizations besides those in the first two cases (that we know of.....❓).

Holbrooks said he expected the number of confirmed cases to rise by the end of the day or tomorrow morning.
Vulnerable community

Gaines County has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the state of Texas and has among the highest rates of children with "conscientious exemptions" to school vaccination requirements.

According to state data for the 2023–2024, school year, only about 82 percent of kindergarteners in public schools in Gaines County were up to date on their vaccinations, including doses of Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) vaccine. The public health target for vaccination coverage is 95 percent, which is the level that can prevent community spread of vaccine-preventable diseases and shield vulnerable members, including children too young to vaccinate and people with compromised immune systems.

With 82 percent vaccinated, Gaines County ranks in the bottom ten counties with the lowest coverage among those reporting data (four counties out of over 250 did not report). Nearly 18 percent of kindergarteners in Gaines have conscientious exemptions, which is an exemption from school vaccination requirements based on reasons of conscience, including a religious belief.

Still, the county-wide number obscures pockets of yet lower vaccination rates. That includes the independent public school district in Loop, in the northeast corner of Gaines, which had a vaccination rate of 46 percent in the 2023–2024 school year❗

Holbrooks noted that the county has a large religious community with private religious schools. These may have yet lower vaccination rates. Holbrooks said that, so far, the measles cases being seen and traced in the outbreak are linked to those private schools.
Public health response

To try to prevent disease transmission, Holbrooks and other state and local officials are getting the word out about the outbreak and running vaccination clinics. About 30 children were vaccinated in a mobile vaccination drive yesterday, he reported.

"We're trying to get out the message about how important vaccination is," he said.

He's also emphasizing that, while children with measles symptoms—very high fever, cough, runny nose, red/watery eyes, and of course, the tell-tale rash—should see a health care provider, parents need to call the office in advance so a child potentially infected with measles doesn't end up sitting in a waiting room among other potentially vulnerable children.

"Measles is highly communicable," he notes. The viral illness is one of the most highly infectious diseases on the planet, and about 90 percent of unvaccinated people who are exposed to it will end up falling ill. The virus spreads through the air and can linger in the airspace of a room for up to two hours after an infected person has left.

In addition to a generally miserable illness, measles can cause complications: 1 in 5 unvaccinated people with measles in the US end up hospitalized. About 1 in 10 develop ear infections and/or diarrhea, and 1 in 20 develop pneumonia. Between 1 to 3 in 1,000 die of the infection. In rare cases, it can cause a fatal disease of the central nervous system called Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, which typically develops 7 to 10 years after an infection. Measles can also devastate immune responses to other infections (immune amnesia), making people who recover from the illness vulnerable to other infectious diseases.

Health officials have generally raised concerns about outbreaks of measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases as vaccination rates have slipped nationwide and vaccine exemptions have hit record highs. Anxiety over the risks has only heightened as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is poised to become the country's top health official. Kennedy is a prominent anti-vaccine advocate who has spent decades spreading misinformation about vaccines.

RFKjr is the wrong person to lead Health and Human Services. His crazy vaccines theories will make America sick again

Echo opnion with appreciation published in the Houston Chronicle, by Joy Sewing:

When the world was running scared about the monkey-pox virus in 2022, I asked the University of Houston college students I was teaching if they had heard of chickenpox.

They stared at me blankly. None of them knew of the highly contagious disease that causes a rash of itchy blisters all over the body, and that was my point.

The chickenpox vaccine, which was introduced in 1995, has significantly dropped the number of cases in the U.S. 

And thanks to other vaccines, childhood diseases such as diphtheria, rubella, polio and measles, have been contained for years.

Now, as President-elect Donald Trump takes office with anti-vaccination advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Trump's nominee for the secretary of the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, we could see those childhood illnesses make an unfortunate comeback.

The anti-Covid-19 vaccination fervor has helped escalate the issue. Some claimed the Covid-19 vaccine was developed too quickly, questioed its side effects and decided to take their chances by not getting the vaccine.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the rate of kindergartners with complete records for the measles vaccine declined from around 95 percent before the pandemic to under 93 percent in the 2023-2024, school year. The center also has reported a “staggering” 20-percent rise in measles cases globally in 2023, after a decline in vaccination rates. Immunization rates against polio, whooping cough and chickenpox also have fallen.

Measles resurgence shows the risk of RFK, Jr. as top health official (electron microscope image of a measles virus)

I won't debate anti-vaccine proponents on why I believe vaccines work. I know they do.

Contracting chickenpox was a rite of passage during my childhood. The virus would start with a rash of itchy, open sores that quickly spread to nearly every crevice of your body. I got sores inside my ears, mouth, and nose. My brother had sores between his toes and on his scalp, and a fever so intense he was hospitalized for days.

The sores would ooze with fluid and then scab over in about a week. In the meantime, our parents would drench us with the pink Calamine lotion to ease the itch. We were also quarantined in our bedrooms to prevent anyone else from catching it, but it didn't always work. 

A colleague told me that she contracted chickenpox twice.

The decline in vaccination rates means we could lose our herd immunity, which is the point at which a large portion of the community is immune. Herd immunity can stop an outbreak and keep children safe. According to a 2024, study led by the World Health Organization, global immunization efforts have saved an estimated 154 million lives — the equivalent of 6 lives every minute — over the past 50 years. The vast majority of lives saved were those of infants.

Curiously, some of the loudest voices advocating against vaccinations don't seem enraged by the chemicals and other toxins in our food supply. Forever chemicals are now in every part of our lives from nonstick cookware to our clothing, and in some cases, they are making us sick.

This week, the Food and Drug Administration announced it is banning the use of red dye No. 3 more than two years after advocates pushed for the FDA to do so. A 1980s study found that synthetic dye, which is in food, candy and some beverages and is made from petroleum, was possibly carcinogenic after tumors were found in male rats who were exposed to it in high doses. Studies also show the dye is associated with hyperactivity in children.

Before the chickenpox vaccine, three to four million people in the U.S. contracted the virus every year.

If Kennedy's post is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, he would be in charge of key health agencies, including the CDC, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Kennedy debunks claims that he's an anti-vaccination advocate, but has blamed the rise in autism cases on vaccinations and has suggested that HIV does not cause AIDS.

Vaccines are one of the most effective medical advancements in our history, but too many people are persuaded by the noise of misinformation.

They should do their homework, and then make educated decisions. The last thing we need is to make America sick again.

The vaccination debate has become political. In November 2023, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law banning COVID-19 vaccine mandates by private employers.

While Texas school-age children must receive up to seven immunizations for various illnesses, including measles, polio and tetanus, the state is one of 16 states that allow parents to request an exemption for medical health reasons, being in the military or for personal beliefs, like religion.

Curiously, some of the loudest voices advocating against vaccinations don't seem enraged by the chemicals and other toxins in our food supply. Forever chemicals are now in every part of our lives from nonstick cookware to our clothing, and in some cases, they are making us sick.

This week, the Food and Drug Administration announced it is banning the use of red dye No. 3 more than two years after advocates pushed for the FDA to do so. A 1980s study found that synthetic dye, which is in food, candy and some beverages and is made from petroleum, was possibly carcinogenic after tumors were found in male rats who were exposed to it in high doses. Studies also show the dye is associated with hyperactivity in children.

Before the chickenpox vaccine, three to four million people in the U.S. contracted the virus every year.

If Kennedy's post is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, he would be in charge of key health agencies, including the CDC, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Kennedy debunks claims that he's an anti-vaccination advocate, but has blamed the rise in autism cases on vaccinations and has suggested that HIV does not cause AIDS.

Vaccines are one of the most effective medical advancements in our history, but too many people are persuaded by the noise of misinformation.

They should do their homework, and then make educated decisions. The last thing we need is to make America sick again.

An award-winning news columnist for the Houston Chronicle, Joy Sewing is reporting and opining on issues, including social justice, politics, race, education, health care and inequity. She can be reached at joy.sewing@houstonchronicle.com. 

Vaccines save lives echo

Echo opinion published in NJPenn.com a newsletter published by the Camden New Jersey Haddonfield Friends School:

I was shocked as an educator, mother, and elected official to hear about the bogus debate in regard to vaccines on the heels of the measles outbreak in California.  

(Also, measles in Maine- U.S. measles outbreak spreads to Maine, 25th state to report case. Reuters Reports - Maine became the 25th U.S. state to confirm a case of measles amid the country's worst outbreak of the disease in a quarter century, as state medical officials on Wednesday reported that a child was infected but is now fully recovered.)

Let’s be clear–first, there is no debate. Vaccines save lives!

Second, the science is strong and indisputable: there is absolutely no link to the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism or brain damage.

Furthermore, you can make no mistake about it: the public’s health is compromised every time someone opts to not vaccinate their child.

Measles itself is one of the most contagious airborne diseases on the planet. In fact, according to the Center for Disease Control, if one person has it, 90 percent of the people close to that person who are not immune will also become infected. Measles is a disease that can reap horrific consequences on children and anyone else that is infected by it.

Taking a step back into history, prior to the creation of a vaccine, measles would kill 6,000 people a year. Even after the vaccine was developed, the disease still was responsible for hospitalizing 48,000 a year and killing 400 to 500 individuals on an annual basis.

This was until the federal government made a push to completely eradicate the disease through nationwide inoculation. This was achieved 15-years-ago in 2000, but fast-forward to 2013, and, according to the World Health Organization, our MMR vaccination rate has fallen to 91 percent.

To put this in perspective: there are several third-world nations with a better rate of vaccination than our country, which is striking, and should be reversed.

Did you know that 59 percent of the patients with measles in California are adults? I say this to stress that you are never too old to get vaccinated; in fact, the federal government did not start requiring two doses of MMR until 1989, so if you only had one shot, you should consult with your doctor to see if another dose of the vaccine is necessary.

In addition, as a nation, we have access to a safe alternative to stop devastating diseases, unlike other countries where healthcare workers are killed for vaccinating members of their society–my point being that the luxury of keeping yourself healthy and safe from diseases like measles is not afforded to all global citizens.

As a society, we are dependent on herd immunity because there are segments of our population that are unable to be vaccinated. These are individuals who cannot be immunized, including infants; individuals who have medical conditions making them immunocompromised; and a small number of people who are allergic to the vaccine.

In the state of New Jersey we have had one reported case of the measles, but I believe, as a public health official, we need to have a constant dialogue about this issue to thoroughly discredit anyone who undermines our herd.

Here at the Camden County Health Department, we carry the MMR vaccine at our health clinics that are open to the public every day during the work week. Appointments can be made by going to our website at www.camdencounty.com/health or calling (856) 931-2700.

Please know this is not a debate and the science is clear in regards to vaccines. They are pertinent to our public health and critical to the health of our children.

Carmen Rodriguez is a Camden County freeholder and liaison to the Camden Department of Health & Human Services, Board of Social Services and Department of Children’s Services. She also serves as supervisor of Bilingual Education for the Camden City School District.

Vaccinations opinions from a physician, a nurse and a legislator - protecting the public health

Vaccinations are cost effective preventive health care. 

Opinions published in The Times Record a newspaper published in Brunswick Maine.

My opinion letter in The Times Record a newspaper in Brunswick Maine and a guest editorial from a pediatrician Dr. Larry Losey and the Maine State Senator Brownie Carson

Parents should be proud to have our children protected from infectious diseases by taking them to physicians or public health clinics to receive immunizations. My parents were relieved to know that there were vaccines available to protect our family from smallpox, polio and other infectious illnesses. In the year 2000, the measles infections had been eradicated in the United States, because of the effective immunization available in the Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccine. In fact, we know how vaccines are safe because they have saved millions of children from suffering with preventable infectious diseases, including measles and polio. Therefore, as a registered nurse, I am proud to be one of many who will testify in favor of LD 798 in Augusta, “An Act To Protect Maine Children and Students from Preventable Diseases by Repealing Certain Exemptions from the Laws Governing Immunization Requirements”, when the bill is heard at a public legislative hearing. This is important legislation and passing the bill will protect the health of Maine citizens, and visitors to our state, by strengthening the requirements for compliance with vaccines administration. I encourage all Maine people to support vaccine protections against infectious diseases. 

Measles, chicken pox and polio are preventable with vaccines. I encourage legislators to support LD 798. 

Juliana L’Heureux, R.N.,
Topsham

Guest editorial By Dr. Larry Losey and State Senator Brownie Carson published in The Times Record:

As a pediatrician and a state legislator, the health of our youngest community members is of paramount importance. The current and future success of our state depends on children getting a healthy start in life.

A bill currently before the Maine Legislature, LD 798, would require all children to be adequately immunized before entering public school, with exceptions only for certain medical conditions. At a recent public hearing for this bill, hundreds of people — experts, advocates and everyday Mainers — came to the State House to share their insight and opinions. One of the greatest takeaways from the testimony shared was that we need to make sure our understanding of what qualifies patients for a medical exemption is up-to-date with the latest, best science available. This is something that can and should be explored further as we go through the legislative process.

But for now, we thought it would be best to address concerns around the safety and efficacy of immunizations.

To protect a community from spread of highly infectious diseases such as pertussis (also known as whooping cough) and measles, a community-wide immunization rate of more than 95 percent is needed. Of Maine’s 16 counties, five are below that threshold for kindergarten students and eight are below that threshold for seventh-graders. For the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, seven Maine counties are below the critical 95 percent threshold.

The World Health Organization recently listed immunization hesitancy as one of the 10 leading threats to global health. Maine’s immunization rate has fallen over the last 25 years from being one of the best in the nation to middling or worse. Maine is one of only 17 states that allows children to enter school even if parents decline to immunize children because of personal choice. This results in pockets where there are many children, particularly entering kindergarten, who are not immunized or under-immunized. With these pockets comes a significant increase the the likelihood of disease outbreaks. In 2017, Maine saw its first case of measles in more than 20 years. So far this year, there are more than 200 confirmed measles cases in three separate outbreaks; just a few years ago, there were well under 75 cases annually in the whole U.S. 

Vaccine hesitancy has a long history, going back to the late 1700s when the smallpox vaccine was first introduced. In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin reflects on how he did not allow his son to be immunized because he worried about the procedure’s safety. When his son died of the disease, Franklin was devastated and reproached himself for not having his son immunized. 

In the last 50 years, there have been unsubstantiated concerns about vaccines — most recently, fears that autism is caused by thimersol, a mercury-based preservative, and by the MMR vaccine. 

Both of these claims have been extensively studied and found to be unsupported. Additionally, mercury has been removed from all children’s recommended immunizations except for multiple-dose vials of the flu vaccine. The concern about the MMR vaccine has a long, sad tale. It all started with an article published in England in 1998 linking the vaccine to autism. Multiple studies tried to replicate the author’s findings, but all failed to do so. Even worse: the author lost his medical license because of many problems in how the study was conducted, and the medical journal ultimately retracted the article. Still, this concern based on bad science persists.

There is also concern about immunization ingredients that aid in stability and enhance effectiveness. These are added in small quantities to assure that the vaccine is effective, safe, and can be reliably stored until administration.

Why do we belabor these points? Immunizations are safe, and they work. There has been a dramatic decline in life-threatening childhood diseases because of immunizations. 

With the introduction of immunizations for the most common types of meningitis, cases of this life-threatening illness have dropped by more than 90 percent. We have not seen anyone in our community with acute polio since we were toddlers; there have been no transmitted cases in the U.S. since 1979. And no chickenpox-related infant deaths have been reported in our community in some 20 years thanks to that immunization.

This is why we strongly support LD 798. If this bill is passed, Maine would be able to surpass the 95 percent level of community immunity needed to control the spread of highly infectious preventable disease such as measles, chickenpox and pertussis. There is no reason for our children or their parents to worry about contracting the same life-threatening, serious illnesses we faced decades ago when there is a proven, safe method of prevention.

Senator Brownie Carson represents the good people of Senate District 24, which includes the communities of Brunswick, Freeport, North Yarmouth, Pownal and his hometown of Harpswell. 

Dr. Larry Losey is a pediatrician who has practiced in Brunswick since 1979.

Echo opinion in support of vaccines from Mount Desert Island Maine

An echo opinion published in the Maine "Mount Desert Islander" newspaper, by former State Senator Jill Goldthwait, in support of vaccines and the Maine Session 129, legislation LD 798, to remove philosophical exemptions that allows people to opt out without a medical reason for doing so.

Anti-vaxxers who oppose this public health bill are spreading outrageous lies about vaccines via Facebook. Outrageously, they are negatively impacting on the health of Maine people by spreading lies.  Read the story here.  "....spread of misinformation about immunizations has potentially fatal repercussions"

A bill before the Maine Legislature is embroiled in two classic arguments. How do we use science to support political decisions, and how do we balance our individual rights versus those of society? 

The preponderance of evidence supports protecting the public's health.

(MaineWriter - yes and I was among them....) 

AUGUSTA- Hundreds of Mainers showed up in Augusta last week to testify on LD 798, An Act to Protect Maine Children from Preventable Diseases by Repealing Certain Exemptions from the Laws Governing Immunization Requirements. The exemptions the bill would repeal are those based on “religious or philosophical beliefs.” The bill does continue to provide exemptions for those with medical conditions that make vaccination contraindicated.

The impetus behind the bill is outbreaks of childhood diseases thought to be eradicated, or nearly so, in the United States.

In 2000, measles was considered eliminated in the United States, but in 2019 in Washington state, more than 60 cases of measles were identified, more than the average number of cases reported in the entire country in a year. Fifty-four of those affected had not been immunized.

At one time, fewer than 20 cases of mumps were reported each year in the United States. In 2006, more than 6,000 cases were reported. A chicken pox outbreak occurred in 2012 in Indiana, sourced to an unvaccinated child. Here in Maine, we have the dubious distinction of the worst pertussis (whooping cough) rate in the nation. Reported cases more than doubled in month-to-month comparisons from last year to this. The greatest number of cases so far this year were in Hancock County.

An article in 1998 linked vaccinations to autism. Even though later discredited, it is still cited as the rationale for significant numbers of parents to opt out of vaccinations for their children, despite a study through the National Institute of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health finding no “causal association between MMR vaccine, or any other vaccine or vaccine constituent, and autism.”

The link between vaccinations and autism, particularly with the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine, is labeled “critically flawed” by Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania (CHOP).

In a vaccine safety publication, CHOP distinguishes between the terms “safe” and “harmless.” The latter, taken literally, is a test few life activities could pass. “Having been preserved from a real danger” is the safety definition CHOP finds most applicable, in that “a vaccine’s benefits must clearly and definitively outweigh its risks.”

Vaccines cannot be called 100 percent harmless, as there are certainly documented, untoward effects for some of those vaccinated. However, most are mild and innocuous, especially as compared to the effects of the diseases they prevent. Risks inherent in those diseases are far greater.

The other part of the vaccination debate is whether government has a right to intervene in a parent’s decision not to vaccinate his child. Parental rights are among the most protected in our society, but what about the rights of the rest of our kids to attend a school where the students are least likely to transmit childhood diseases by virtue of having been vaccinated?

Does a child with a known communicable disease have the “right” to go to school, putting all the other students at risk? Most often, symptoms become obvious only after a child has actually contracted the disease. They are exposing their friends, babysitters and schoolmates in the early days, already contagious but without the cough, fever or spots to make it apparent.

For the public hearing last week, 527 items were filed in testimony. All the testimony is posted online. There were pleas to require broad vaccination to protect those who, for medical reasons, cannot receive certain vaccines, as well as parents who felt that vaccination would adversely affect their children and opposed the bill.

Most Maine medical leaders were fully supportive. They are worth naming: The Maine Hospital Association, the public health director for the city of Portland, the Maine Children’s Alliance, the pediatric hospitalist at Maine Medical Center, the Maine Nurse Practitioner Association, the Maine Primary Care Association, the American Nurses Association, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Maine Medical Association and other medical, educational and civic organizations.

Several health care providers, including a few physicians, did oppose the bill. Some opined that it is the pharmaceutical companies and the health care industry that promote vaccinations to enhance their bottom lines. The Maine Pharmacy Association was among those testifying in support.

It is difficult, if not impossible, for the average citizen to follow the detailed arguments and statistics presented by both sides. Most parents want nothing but what is best for their children, and most have decided that the benefits of immunization outweigh the risks. Unvaccinated children are also protected by those children who are vaccinated. The weight of the argument is in favor of vaccinating our kids for a healthier society.

jillgold@gwi.net  

Former Maine State Senator Jill Goldthwait is a registered nurse.

Educating anti-vaxers: Science isn't working but teaching moral values could be effective

https://www.vox.com/2017/12/5/16733744/vaccines-parents-anti-vax
What makes some parents fall for the anti-vaccine messaging

By Julia Belluz 

Public health officials may not be hitting on the right morals in their quest to get all children vaccinated.

Since the 1990s, the number of parents seeking vaccine exemptions for their children has been climbing, pitting public health against influential anti-vaxxers, in a proxy messaging war.

But it seems the doctors trying to persuade the vaccine-hesitant — still a tiny minority of parents — have mostly been failing: Either their messages are off or the anti-vaccine campaigns, circulating among sources like conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, are too powerful to counter.

The latest evidence of that failure has come in a large measles outbreak in Washington state. As of Friday, there were 41 cases in Washington’s Clark County, which borders Portland, Oregon. Most all of the cases involve children between 1 and 10 years old who had not been vaccinated.

Now researchers are borrowing a theory from social psychology (one that also coincidentally helps explain the rise of Donald Trump) to understand where doctors’ pro-vaccine campaigns may be going wrong. And they’ve discovered that they’re probably emphasizing the wrong things in their messages, as they describe in a study published in the journal Nature Human Behavior.

The paper, led by researchers at Emory University in Atlanta, was designed to tease out which morals parents who were hesitant about vaccines held most dear when making personal decisions, including about vaccinating their kids. The researchers turned to Moral Foundations Theory, an effort by social and cultural psychologists to chart the moral values that are common across cultures in guiding decision-making.

Moral Foundations Theory was widely cited in the aftermath of the election, when the facts alone had trouble explaining the rise of Trump. The theory involves six moral foundations, or “moral taste receptors”: 

• care/harm
• authority/subversion
• loyalty/betrayal
• liberty/oppression
• purity/degradation; and 
• fairness/cheating. 

For different people, different morals resonate more effectively. Conservatives are more likely to respond to appeals to authority and loyalty, for example, while liberals prize fairness.

The Emory authors behind the paper used a standard Moral Foundations Theory questionnaire to survey more than 1,000 parents of children under age 13 who were living in the US, asking them questions about whether something was right or wrong to suss out their values and then determine how important those values were in decision-making. They also asked the parents about their vaccine beliefs. An independent group of researchers, based at Loyola University in Chicago, repeated the survey on another group of American parents.

Together, they found the morals of purity and liberty were most associated with vaccine hesitancy, shedding light on what people who refuse vaccines care about — and what may be holding them back.
Parents who are concerned about vaccines prize liberty and purity

People who value liberty are concerned with individual freedom and resent others’ dominance over them, while those who value purity disapprove “of acts that are deemed ‘disgusting’ or ‘unnatural,’” the researchers wrote. (That squares with the findings of sociologist Jennifer Reich, who studies the anti-vaccine movement. She’s found vaccine-hesitant parents tend to favor natural and organic food, for example.)

“This is important because many of our go-to arguments about herd immunity and keeping your children safe are themed around values of harm and fairness,” said the Emory study’s lead author, epidemiologist Avnika Amin.

Public health campaigns typically seek primarily to educate on potential harms, reminding parents that getting immunized helps prevent outbreaks, and protects those who can’t be vaccinated, like people with allergies to vaccines or very young children.

But those may not be the values that resonate with vaccine-hesitant parents. The researchers found that parents who were concerned about vaccinating their children scored similarly to parents who weren’t when it came to the morals of harm and fairness.

Anti-vaccine messaging has emphasized purity and liberty, while public health campaigners have been focused on harm and fairness

On the flip side, the paper also helps explain why anti-vaxxers’ messages may appeal to this group of parents. As the researchers wrote, “Anti-vaccination websites also often claim that vaccines contain ‘contaminants’. These concerns may be rooted in the purity moral foundation, with its emphasis on avoiding anything disgusting or unnatural. Another frequent message on anti-vaccine websites is that mandatory vaccination policies violate parental civil liberties.”

The results suggest that pro-vaccine communications could be strengthened by taking a page from the anti-vax book — and presenting messages that better align with purity and liberty.

“You could increase the salience of disgust associated with certain diseases, and say vaccines fight those,” said the Emory study’s senior author, Dr. Saad Omer. “Or you could frame purity positively — saying vaccines are a very natural product, they work with a natural system. Messages that talk about liberty, that the freedom to choose for your child is being taken away if other others don’t vaccinate, might work.”

This finding is extremely important, considering that over the past three decades, the number of parents who opt out of vaccines for their kids has grown. In one 2009 New England Journal of Medicine paper, researchers looked at the state-level rates of nonmedical exemptions and found that between 1991 and 2004, those rates increased from less than 0.98 percent to about 1.5 percent. According to a recent study, we’re now hovering above the 2 percent exemption rate, which translates to thousands more unvaccinated children than just a decade ago.

As I’ve explained, vaccine refusers are a politically diverse group, but they do have some things in common. Parents who reject some or all vaccines are more likely to be white, college-educated, and married, with higher family income.

Both Omer and Amin emphasized that the moral messages they’ve identified will need to be tested, and that’s what they’re hoping to work on next. So keep an eye out to see if they’ve truly found the elusive key to effective vaccine communications.