With the threat of a deadly whooping cough epidemic descending on Los Angeles, the chinks in our post-industrial herd immunity are starting to show – among America’s most affluent.
The anti-vaxxer movement has a growing stronghold among Hollywood parents – vaccination rates in the region’s schools are in free fall. Indeed, the situation’s “leaving some schools’ immunization rates on par with South Sudan,” according to a in-depth, data-filled and thoughtful piece in – wait for it – The Hollywood Reporter. The story, called Hollywood’s Vaccine Wars: LA’s “Entitled” Westsiders Behind City’s Epidemic, begins:
The kids aren’t all right. Across California, thousands of children and babies are coughing so violently that their bodies convulse, uncontrollably wheezing and fighting to breathe for weeks. Nearly 8,000 pertussis cases have been reported in 2014 to the state’s Department of Public Health as of Sept. 2, and 267 of those patients have been hospitalized, including 58 requiring intensive care.
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Children’s Hospital Los Angeles has seen 72 pertussis patients this year. “A number of them have been in the ICU and very, very sick,” CHLA infectious disease specialist Dr. Jeffrey Bender told the Reporter. “They cough so hard, it turns into vomiting and broken ribs; they end up intubated, to ventilate their lungs.
Embedded in the story is a telling interactive map that pinpoints the locations around Los Angeles that pose particular risk for disease outbreak — schools in which larger percentiles of parents have filed a Personal Belief Exemption Form, which discloses that a child hasn’t received every vaccine recommended by a certain age. And, according to the Reporter, “the number of PBEs being filed is scary.” A more affluent region that encompasses Santa Monica, West Hollywood and Malibu has shown a 26 percent increase in PBEs filed in the past two years. Here’s a screenshot of some of the more threatened schools in the region, but it’s worth heading back to the Hollywood Reporter piece to examine the map more closely:
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And we’re certainly in epidemic territory here: “It’s a smoldering fire that has started and it could be a complete wildfire if vaccination rates continue to fall,” Dr. Deborah Lehman, associate director of pediatric infectious diseases at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, told the Reporter. See below:
The story discusses the entitlement among Hollywood’s elite that’s endangering their children’s health:
Many irked local pediatricians, however, describe a parent profile defined by ignorance that’s sheathed in arrogance. They say these misguided guardians are seduced by anecdotes about “vaccine-damaged children” and are prone to confirmation bias (the impulse to favor information that affirms pre-existing beliefs). In addition, assert some doctors, these parents tend to believe hours accrued researching on the Internet and engaging in urgent conversations within their social circle give them the authority to debate the legitimacy of immunization with their child’s health care provider.
“It’s a sense of entitlement and it comes out of a customer mentality since they are often choosing their doctor and paying cash,” says Dr. Nina Shapiro, the director of pediatric otolaryngology (ear, nose and throat conditions) at UCLA’s Geffen School of Medicine and a vocal critic of anti-vaccine sentiment.
