Outbreak Shines Light on Michigan’s Opt-Out Vaccination Rules
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In one county that’s now facing a major measles and whooping cough health threat, 17% of kindergarten students were exempted from vaccinations last year.
Tip O’Neill’s famous utterance that “all politics is local” is once again proving true but in an unexpected way that relates directly to children’s health.
When it comes to stories about health concerns in Michigan, you might expect the focus to be on a lower-income part of Detroit or another economically challenged area in the state.
However, a new outbreak of whooping cough and measles has affected school children in Grand Traverse County in the northwestern Lower Peninsula, a scenic area familiar to many tourists and retirees where the vast majority of residents live above the poverty line.
And the culprit in this case is apparently not a lack of available health care options but the voluntary choice of parents to not have their children vaccinated.
MLive.com reports that Grand Traverse County has one of the state’s highest opt-out rates for vaccinations, with 17 percent of kindergarten parents signing waivers last year to exempt their children—twice the state average and more than six times the national average for children the same age, according to the news site.
If that story sounds familiar it’s because in Los Angeles, similar reports have shown that around 8 percent of parents with children in kindergarten were choosing to exempt their children from vaccinations, sparking concerns that a breakout of measles or other illnesses could happen there as well.
For the past decade, a number of Hollywood celebrities have spoken out against childhood vaccinations, creating a national anti-vaccination trend that doctors have warned could have dire consequences in communities across the country.
An investigation by the Los Angeles Times found that over the past seven years, vaccination exemptions have been on the rise, particularly in private schools.
Similarly, the MLive report says the breakout of whooping cough has been heavily concentrated in more affluent areas and private schools.
According to U.S. Census Bureau data, Grand Traverse County is more than 96 percent white with a little more than 5 percent of the population living below the poverty line. The national poverty rate was 14.5 percent in 2013, according to Census information.
A September report by The Hollywood Reporter found that vaccination rates in Los Angeles County private schools were as low as those in the African nations of Chad and South Sudan.
In L.A. County, parents are only required to submit a “Personal Belief Exemption” in order to avoid childhood vaccination requirements.
As THR notes, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that cases of measles are at a 20-year high and that more than half of the cases in California involve unvaccinated children.
A separate MLive report says its also very easy to obtain a vaccination exemption in Michigan. Forty-five percent of all state residents are now living in counties that are “at risk of disease outbreaks.”
Some anti-vaccination parents in Michigan tell MLive they believe the increased rates of whooping cough and other illnesses are in fact evidence that vaccinations don’t work, an assertion the vast majority of doctors and other trained healthcare officials refute.
"Our vaccination rates in the state are going in the wrong direction," Matthew Davis, chief medical executive for the Michigan Department of Community Health, told the site. "And if we are going in the wrong direction, we are in trouble."
After years of anti-vaccination activists being on the offensive, some pro-vaccination groups beginning a push back of their own.
In November, a group calling itself “Airhead Celebs,” and founded by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, purchased billboard space around LosAngeles encouraging parents to the get their children vaccinated and mocking anti-vaccination celebrities such as Jenny McCarthy and Alicia Silverstone.
“Vaccination rates have plummeted, and diseases that were once nearly eradicated are making a comeback—sadly maiming and even killing some children and adults as a result,” AIDS Healthcare Foundation President Michael Weinstein said in a release announcing the campaign. “Why would anyone listen to a Hollywood celebrity—most of whom have no public health or medical training, education or experience—on such a critical issue?”
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