Low vaccination rates linked to rapidly spreading California Disneyland measles outbreak

Most people have heard by now that two dozen individuals who visited Disneyland between Dec. 15 and Dec. 20, 2014, have fallen ill with measles, which means they were almost certainly exposed to someone at the theme park with the disease.

But it’s not just those who visited Disneyland that week who should be concerned. Advocates against vaccines scoff at the oft-repeated warning that “polio [or any other vaccine-preventable disease] is just a plane ride away,” but it’s harder to scoff when such a textbook example presents itself. The news broke about the Disneyland outbreak on January 7 with seven cases, and the number has more than tripled in less than a week. More importantly, however, it’s been exported to three other states: Utah, Colorado and Washington.

Among the 16 California cases where vaccination status is known, 12 individuals (75 percent) were unvaccinated, despite the fact that measles vaccination involves extremely low risk, far below the risk posed by measles itself.

“This happened exactly where you would expect to see this happen – in a place where people from different parts of the country congregate in one spot,” said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center and an attending physician with the Division of Infectious Diseases at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “It’s not surprising that it happened in a southern California theme park because southern California over the past few years has had pretty woeful rates of vaccination.”

Read full, original story: Disneyland Measles Outbreak: It Is Indeed a Small World After All

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