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Comment by yters | Hacker News Reader

I see a fair number of people blame the anti-vaxxers for the current outbreak, but is that really the case? It could also be due to immigration or other sources of foreign contact, but I don't see anyone considering that angle.

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Wow you're right, I can't believe no one ever thought to look at who the measles victims are or where they came from. We need to get you on the phone to the CDC right away so that you can tell them all about your novel and important ideas!

An interesting study would be to take the population of unvaccinated and count how many are that way due to antivax ideology and how many due to some other cause.

Furthermore, it'd be interesting to examine the measles cases and see what population they come from.

I see an article castigate the antivaxxers and then say most measles occur among unvaccinated populations. Is the article saying the two populations are the same? No solid link is offered, yet the two groups are mentioned together leading a non-careful reader to conclude the antivaxxers are to blame.

It is, as with many things, a mix of all things. But the decrease in vaccination rates is _definitely_ a huge contributing factor in many of the outbreaks. See, e.g.,

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6122668/

There was, and is, always the chance of encountering someone unvaccinated, or who can't be for some reason. Particularly those travelling - for whatever reason. Transplants and chemo can rob your immune system of protection.

That's why you need enough vaccinations in the general population to achieve herd immunity that gives indirect protection to those exceptions too. A case cannot spread reliably or rapidly enough to become a significant outbreak. The amount you need to vaccinate to achieve it varies depending on disease - measles needs quite a high percentage vaccinated, others less.

It's probably a variety of factors, but people willingly putting themselves and others in danger because of entirely unfounded (and in fact repeatedly debunked) fears around the "dangers" of vaccines certainly ain't helping.

True, but they shouldn't be blamed for the outbreak if they are not responsible.

Assuming this outbreak is a serious matter and we need to identify the true reason, it doesn't help to scapegoat one party that may not be responsible.

And neither should immigrants be blithely blamed.

Indeed! No one should be blithely blamed :)

It's a difficult discussion to have because any mention of any sort of possible negative impact of migration is met with shouts of racism from the liberal left.

You can return to Europe where your ancestors are presumably from and return America back to the Native Americans. Stopping millions of people from travelling is about as ludicrous as that.

Working on increasing vaccination rates is certainly a lot more reasonable.

Vaccination doesn't solve the problem of infected people bringing in measles from outside the country.

So you incentivize legal entry through points of entry where people can be screened.

If more are vaccinated then fewer will get and spread the disease.

Sure it does. If you're vaccinated, it's not a problem.

When did I say I want to stop millions of people from "traveling"? First off, you can't have a country without borders. Secondly, you can have migration but in a modern world you can't just let people flow through. That's why we had Ellis Island, people could be vetted for things such as deadly diseases and possibly be vaccinated before being let into the country.

We have immunization requirements for foreign countries.

I'd be more worried about states like Missouri and Indiana with nearly a sixth of the population who are not vaccinated against measles. Mexico, as a counter example, has a nearly 99% vaccination rate for measles.

So please stop with this nationalistic nonsense.

And how exactly do you enforce those requirements if you allow people to just walk over the border at will?

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