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Stop Delaying Your Babies' Vaccinations

Rebecca Fishbein

Published Feb 10, 2015

Modified Feb 10, 2015

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Rebecca Fishbein

Published Feb 10, 2015

Modified Feb 10, 2015

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The country is in the midst of a massive measles outbreak, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirming 121 cases in 17 states as of Monday. The proliferation of a disease once believed to be eradicated is in no small part due to a number of parents who erroneously believe they do not need to vaccinate their children, an arrogant subset of individuals who put unvaccinated infants, the immunocompromised, and the greater population at risk of contracting perilous illnesses. And doctors say it's not just virulent anti-vaxxers who can get people sick; medical professionals say people who delay vaccinating their children are dangerous, too.

As reported in the Wall Street Journal, about 10 percent to 20 percent of American parents fail to vaccinate their children within the recommended timeframe, choosing instead to delay them until the child is ready to start school, if not later. Doctors recommend children under the age of 6 get vaccinated for 14 different diseases on a specific schedule, which you can peruse on the CDC's website; the mumps, measles and rubella (MMR) vaccine is recommended for children ages 12 to 15 months, with a booster between ages 4 and 6.

But some parents reportedly believe that too many vaccines at once will overload a young child's immune system, a belief unsupported by scientific studies and described as "ludicrous" by one pediatrician. "Some parents don’t understand the immune system," Orange County, Calif. doctor Eric Ball told the WSJ. "Basically they’re afraid that if you inject your child with three shots in one visit it’s more than the immune system can handle."

It is not, and doctors say these parents are contributing to the rising ranks of anti-vaxxers, even though they do eventually vaccinate their children. "Our data show that once you start missing opportunities to vaccinate there’s a likelihood that you’ll never catch up, even with the best of intentions,” Paul Cieslak, medical director of communicable diseases and immunization for the Oregon Health Authority, said. Studies have shown that parents who delay vaccinations increase their child's chances of contracting dangerous diseases like pertussis or whooping cough. And again, since the population relies on herd immunity for protection, even an unvaccinated 3-year-old is bad news.

The good news is, this recent outbreak is so serious it has some vaccine-delaying parents scared. Measles cases rose 18.6 percent last week, with numbers including six infants who contracted measles in an Illinois daycare facility and a 4 month old in Pasadena. "Now that there’s a real clear threat of disease, people are making a different choice," one Orange County physician told WSJ, noting that 120 doses of the MMR vaccine were administered in his office last week.

Last week, the NYC Department of Health told us there have been two confirmed cases of measles in 2015 thus far, though neither are outbreak-related. New Jersey has had one confirmed case, that of an infant who was too young to be vaccinated. Before the advent of the measles vaccine, 4 million people in the U.S. contracted it annually, 400 to 500 people died of the disease, and thousands were hospitalized for complications. Vaccinate your children, and do it on time.

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anti-vaxxers

measles

vaccinations

vaccines

Rebecca Fishbein

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