Epidemic

It is insane that California has a whooping cough epidemic in 2014

By Ezra Klein

California just declared whooping cough an epidemic, with 800 newly reported cases in the last two weeks alone. It gets worse: "The number of actual cases may be even higher, because past studies have shown that for every case of whooping cough that is reported, there are 10 more that are not officially counted," CNN reports.

Those sentences should only exist in musty newspapers from decades long past. They shouldn't need to be written in 2014. Whooping cough is a solved problem in medicine. But this is a case where the danger isn't the disease. It's us, and the anti-vaccine pseudoscience too many Americans have begun to believe in. Some research shows a correlation between bigger disease outbreaks and geographical areas where more parents seek non-medical vaccine exemptions.

In California, for instance, one study found areas with higher concentrations of nonmedical exemptions were 1.73 times more likely to experience a cluster of whooping cough activity after controlling for demographic variables. A similar study found even higher rates in Michigan, where areas with more exemptions were 2.7 times more likely to experience high whooping cough activity after demographic controls.

In contrast, a study in Connecticut found an increase in flu vaccination rates among children, after the state introduced new mandates for child care, correlated with a decline in flu-related hospitalization rates.