Bleeding-heart liberals will have to deal with it.
A Ramsey County child is among 32 confirmed cases of the measles this month as unfounded fears of a link to autism have contributed to stubbornly low vaccination rates among Somali-Americans.
The Minnesota Department of Health says at least 28 of the outbreak’s victims are Somali-American. Just one is known to have received the MMR vaccine, which protects against measles, mumps and rubella.
Somali-Americans in Minnesota once had higher vaccination rates than the general population. But that changed following news reports in 2008 about high rates of autism among Somali-American students in Minneapolis Public Schools.
Kris Ehresmann, infectious disease division director at the Health Department, said anti-vaccine activists seized on the 2008 news “almost immediately,” spreading fears about a debunked link between the MMR vaccine and autism.
Those fears have stuck. As of 2014, just 42 percent of Somali-Minnesotan 2-year-olds had received the MMR vaccine, compared with 89 percent of all other 2-year-olds.
“Basically, they’re a tinderbox for an outbreak,” Ehresmann said.
This year’s outbreak, the state’s first since 2011, began about March 30 and spread through a Hennepin County day care. Hennepin County has seen 30 cases overall and Stearns and Ramsey counties one each. All of the victims are under age 6.
HT: Rufus