Finneran: Please Pass The Measles

Friday, February 13, 2015

Tom Finneran, GoLocalProv MINDSETTER™

 

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Welcome to the lunatic asylum of America, 2015. Consider that Massachusetts’ public health officials are bracing for an outbreak of a disease—measles—which we had virtually eradicated more than ten years ago. Measles is not just an inconvenient and unsightly little illness which passes after a few days. It’s a potentially fatal and highly contagious disease which kills lots of people—particularly children--all over the world.

Our modern day lunacy can trace its origins to a) American timidity and b) the take-it-for-granted luxury of good health.

Regarding American timidity, it appears that the country would prefer to commit suicide than to “give offense” to any person now breathing on the planet. Given the growing number of crybabies and crackpots who whine their way through life, America has put itself into a state of paralysis. It’s as if we’ve forgotten how to give a robust defense of American ways, thereby ceding the public arena to people and practices which endanger us. Our desperate and juvenile desire to be liked by everyone has lulled us into a passive form of cultural suicide.

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Consider unchecked immigration on our Southern border. Whatever its benefits, whatever your views, there can be little doubt that the introduction of thousands of people whose health history is a complete mystery is not a good thing. We hesitate to establish and enforce strict health protocols on visitors lest we be seen as an unwelcoming society. I have a couple of two-word responses to those who think America must accommodate everyone else’s loose standards—“Too bad”, “tough luck”, “go home”. 

This is hardly xenophobic. America should always show the friendliest face and offer the warmest welcome in the world. Our hugs can happily envelop hordes of visitors to our shores. But we must have standards, standards which protect Americans and visitors alike. Our warm welcome is not diminished when we say that we will not accept Third World standards of health.

Indeed, anyone remotely familiar with the health standards in use during the heyday of immigration to the United States would acknowledge that Ellis Island officials would never hesitate to quarantine entire shiploads of people upon any evidence of contagious disease. Yet that firm application of sensible and necessary standards did not change America into a hostile land. In fact, the public benefits gained by the application of such standards made America, over time, even more attractive to the multitudes of the world. America’s renown stood upon liberty, opportunity, and sensible standards of public health.

Regarding the take-it-for-granted attitude of many Americans today, there seems to be an assumption that our fair continent somehow magically rests outside the realm of universal diseases. Measles, malaria, mumps, rubella, typhoid, dysentery, norovirus, tuberculosis, polio---these were all frightful and deadly diseases, striking indiscriminately and wreaking havoc.

The measles vaccine was approved for use more than fifty years ago. Thus its yearly ravages throughout the population are largely forgotten. Doctors, nurses, and public health officials remain knowledgeable, alert, and aware. And thankfully the statutes of Massachusetts, mandating vaccination for school enrollment, reflect the grim history and foreboding of pre-vaccine days:

That history shows 4 million people infected every year, 400-500 deaths each year, and 48,000 patients hospitalized. Each year! Just short of death, measles can cause deafness, seizures, and brain damage. Ironically, because of vaccines, we’ve been largely spared these horrific yearly attacks. And it is in that sparing that we become lackadaisical, making silly assumptions about our invulnerability. Last year there were more than 600 cases in the United States, more cases than have been recorded in the last twenty years. The country has now seen more than 100 cases just in the last month. And ponder this---in the year 2000, more than 500,000 children worldwide died from measles. While the United States has largely vanquished the disease, children in other countries are still being trucked to their graves.

Is that not a siren’s call, a flashing light, a dire warning? Our children can as easily suffer and succumb as those half-million little ones who lived and died elsewhere.

A final sobering thought---in 1990, ten percent of the world’s children died before reaching age 5. Ten percent! Before age 5!! If the United States should ever start to suffer such shattering losses, there would be a revolution. The rest of the world, with all its heartbreak and tragedy, provides America an appalling set of lessons—don’t take things for granted, learn from your ancestors, and save your children. 

Let’s not pass the measles……….bring on the vaccines.

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Tom Finneran is the former Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, served as the head the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, and was a longstanding radio voice in Boston radio.

 

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