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Spillover Cards




File Notes for Vaccine DAs


There are two ways this vaccination argument can be run:

  1. Surveillance module: Surveillance functionally solves vaccination. The evidence on this is more specific to disease surveillance and tracking, so it’s questionable whether the plan links or not. I don’t recommend reading the surveillance module as much.

  2. Culture of rights module: In the status quo, the pro-vaccination movement is gaining influence, but the plan reverses it by boosting a “culture of rights” that is used by anti-vaccination proponents to justify their beliefs. There are some decent cards in here that say anti-vaccination activists will use the rhetoric of things like Roe v. Wade and GMOs to anti-vaccination rights of parental “choice” and “freedoms”.

For the aff section, there is not as much evidence, but I think it is fairly easy to win no link and no impact.


1NC Materials

1NC — Privacy Link

The plan builds on the virtuous cycle for privacy to create more reforms.


Ozer 12 Nicole Ozer, the Technology and Civil Liberties Policy Director at the ACLU of Northern California (ACLU-NC), where she developed the organization's Demand Your dotRights online privacy campaign, 2012 (“Putting Online Privacy Above The Fold: Building A Social Movement And Creating Corporate Change” New York University Review of Law & Social Change, Lexis)

As noted in Part I, n226 one of the primary challenges of establishing a privacy social movement is sustainability. While the privacy community has had success in the past in addressing specific incidents, these successes did not initially lead to a coherent and sustainable privacy social movement. n227 More recently, however, advocates have successfully leveraged the environmental changes discussed in Part II to win specific battles to protect individual privacy. The privacy community has also used those victories to reinforce the climate for change and support the discussion necessary to sustain the nascent social movement. This has helped to create a much-needed "virtuous cycle" n228 in which each successful advocacy effort reinforces awareness of the ongoing issues concerning online privacy and makes it easier both to challenge specific practices in the future and to lay the groundwork for broader-reaching change.




1NC — Vaccine Surveillance Module

Bulk surveillance solving disease now – it’s key to efficient medical databases that can predict patterns and detect outbreaks – prefer this in the context of evolving diseases and rapid spread.


Santos and Bernardino 6 – Ricardo Jorge Santos, holds a PhD Information Sciences & Tech, faculty member of the Centre of Informatics and Systems of the University of Coimbra; Jorge Bernardino, faculty member of Engineering Institute of Coimbra at the Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra, 2006 (“Global Epidemiological Outbreak Surveillance System Architecture”, 10th International Database Engineering and Applications Symposium, December 14, Available Online at 10.1109/IDEAS.2006.27 via MSU Library, accessed 7/14/15, KM)
Diseases such as avian influenza, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Creutzfeldt-Jacob syndrome represent a new era of biological threats. Nowadays, these hazards breed, mutate and evolve at tremendous speed. Furthermore, they may spread out at the same speed as which we travel. This reveals an urgent need for an agent capable of dealing with such threats. Data warehouses are databases which provide decision support by on-line analytical processing (OLAP) techniques. We present the architecture for an effective information system infrastructure enabling the prediction and near real-time detection of disease outbreaks, using knowledge extraction algorithms to explore a symptoms/diseases data warehouse in a continuous and active form. To collect such data, we take advantage of the Internet and features existing in today’s common communication devices such as personal computers, portable digital assistants and cellular phones. We present a case-simulation based on a small country, showing the system can detect an outbreak within hours or even minutes after its physical occurrence, alerting health decision makers and providing quick interaction and feedback between all users. The architecture is also functionally independent from its geographical dimension. 1. Introduction A data warehouse (DW) provides information for analytical processing, decision making support and data mining tools. A suitable data model is the core of representing part of the real world in the context of a database. Although many modeling techniques expressed in extended multidimensional data models were proposed in the recent past [5], many major issues such as information system architectures for specific health issues are not properly reflected. Diseases such as avian influenza, SARS and the Creutzfeldt-Jacob syndrome represent a new era of biological threats. New stripes of viruses and bacterias are becoming increasingly aggressive and rapidly adapting to resist vaccines and medication. The speed at which these diseases are mutating and evolving, combined with the fact that they may spreadout at the same rate as people and animals travel, greatens the risk for a major epidemic or pandemic outbreak. It is therefore crucial to detect when a potential outburst might by taking place in order to contain it as quickly as possible and minimize damage it may cause. Our architecture fulfils that need, using knowledge extraction algorithms to explore a symptoms/disease DW, looking for patterns of symptoms to predict the occurrence of a potential outbreak. We also present an experimental evaluation using a case-simulation for a small country. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In section 2, we refer issues and existing solutions in epidemics and health information systems. In sections 3, 4 and 5, we respectively present our architecture, its database and the main algorithms and methods for outbreak prediction and detection. In section 6 a simulation of the system working for a small country such as Portugal is presented and the final section contains concluding remarks and future work. 2. Background and related work Accessing the Internet today, we can find several institutional and enterprise web portals which provide trustworthy health information (including epidemic and pandemic) such as in [1] by the Aberdeen Group, [7] by Great Britain’s NHS, the World Health Organization [10]. We can also use web applications to perform a risk analysis on contagious diseases which can be disseminated through animal contact [9]. The work in [4] refers the importance of mathematical models given historical disease data as a mean of predicting and evaluating forms of action in certain situations. We can also use the Internet for reporting diseases to adequate health services, like what is done by the United States’ Centre for Disease Control in what they refer to as “communicable diseases”. However, with new emerging diseases, using historical data based contention plans will not be an efficient way to handle the problem, as shown in [8]. Innovative solutions have emerged based on telecommunication and informatics technology, such as the EMPHIS Project [2], following the perspective and vision of the future presented in [6] by Great Britain’s NHS. The architecture presented takes the next step, combining database, knowledge extraction and telecommunication technologies to aid global health in rapidly predicting and/or detecting the occurrence of epidemic outbreaks, which is vital for minimizing losses and containing potential hazards.  3. The surveillance system’s architecture The technological evolution in telecommunications and portable computerized devices makes it possible today to have real-time information availability, practically without geographical dependencies. Taking advantage of an agent with the highest level of availability such as the Internet, our architecture provides the infrastructure for collecting data of occurring symptoms and diseases, and points examples on how to effectively and efficiently process this data to discover symptom and disease associations. This is done achieved by inserting patient symptoms and diseases data in a web server database, which collects all information in a given geographical region and ships it to a DW located in a health decision centre. If the number of discovered cases within that region is considered relevant as a possible epidemic indicator, health decision makers and medical staff are immediately alerted. The architecture has 3 bottom-up tiers or levels, as seen in Figure 1. Symptom/disease data is uploaded by medical staff using personal devices with internet access, such as mobile phones, PDAs or common personal computers, getting stored in the second tier web servers. Each web server has the database and software applications needed to support the first tier requested services. The decision making server in the last tier holds a DW processing non- stop knowledge extraction algorithms finding disease record counts and symptoms/disease patterns in a defined geographical area. If a relevant number of suspicious patterns of symptoms or confirmed occurrences of diseases are detected, health decision makers and medical staff are immediately alerted. Figure 1 represents an example of an implementation covering three defined geographical areas. A major advantage in our proposal is that once the disease/symptom data is recorded, the detection process is much faster than bureaucratic processes used today. Nowadays, when a major disease is observed, medical staff fill in paperwork reporting those cases to entities such as the CDC in the United States or the NHS in Great Britain. These entities process and analyze the amount of cases received from each region and decide if that amount should be considered relevant. These processes usually take days, or, at least, many hours. Furthermore, if a “minor” disease is observed, such as a simple flu, for instance, it is not considered as relevant to report. Although it may be a “minor” disease, if it were to occur in a considerable amount of cases within the same region, it could become an important issue. With our system, this would be almost immediately detected and alerted; in the traditional existing processes it would not be detected, or, in the best case, would be noticed only after some time. For each medical staff disease or symptom input, they may not even physically know, see or even be in contact with each other, but their medical records will be matched almost in a real-time manner, detecting the possibility of an epidemic occurrence. Each second tier web server must contain the following components in order to insure the systems interaction and functionality: a) a data mart containing the database structure and all supporting data for the geographical region and population it serves; b) a web interface for first tier users to input data and to promote interaction between third tier users (health decision makers) and first tier users (medical staff); c) a software application available to first tier users for downloading, which allows working offline the Internet and capable of uploading that data to the second tier web servers whenever requested. This would allow medical staff to work at any location without Internet access; d) a software server component responsible for shipping the collected data to update the third tier DW server. 4. The surveillance system’s database Today, most database systems offer features that go beyond management of static data and most information systems are powered by a database. The job of a database is to store data and answer queries. By contrast, the job of an information system is to provide a service, which are semantic entities entailing considerations that span the life cycle of the larger system [3]. Traditionally, database systems have been passive, storing and retrieving data in direct response to user requests without initiating any operations on their own. As the scale and complexity of data management increased, interest has grown in bringing active behaviour into databases, allowing them to respond independently to data-related events. Therefore, given the usage we wish to provide our database, we can look at it as an active database as discussed in [3], for it will be continuously querying and analyzing data and reporting it to the users makers involved in an interactive form. The database holds patient symptoms and disease data records, including both humans and animals. Based upon the characterization of these entities and their attributes, we propose in Figure 2 the partial DW schema supporting human disease outbreak detection. The schema for outbreak prediction is similar and given by adding tables relating to symptom data. The schema for animal disease outbreak detection and prediction are similar to the human schema, linking each animal with the human to which it belongs.

Anti-vaxxers cause outbreaks of dangerous diseases – highly contagious diseases means it will spread quickly.


Sifferlin 14 — Alexandra Sifferlin, Alexandra Sifferlin is a writer for TIME. She covers public health issues including infectious and chronic disease, big ideas in medicine, and breaking news, 3-17-2014 ("Here are some diseases we're seeing thanks to anti-vaxxers," TIME, 3-17-2014, Available Online at http://time.com/27308/4-diseases-making-a-comeback-thanks-to-anti-vaxxers/, Accessed 7-14-2015)

These should be avoidable

New York City isn’t an anomaly, though. Diseases that are and have been avoidable in the U.S. thanks to vaccines, are resurfacing all across the country. Measles, for instance, was considered wiped out in 2000, but there have been several outbreaks in the past few years. This map shows outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases since 2008 (click on “Map” and select which diseases and regions you want to see).

The emergence of these diseases — especially measles — is alarming, and mostly due to parents in the U.S. not vaccinating their kids. “If you are unvaccinated and you come in contact with measles, there’s a 90% chance you will get it,” says Jason McDonald, a spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Though measles outbreaks are primarily linked to unvaccinated people, McDonald notes that some vaccines aren’t foolproof. For example, the whooping-cough vaccine may lose its efficacy over time. And, overall, most people do get their vaccinations. A CDC report looking at children entering kindergarten for the 2012–13 school year in all U.S. states found that more than 90% of these kids had their vaccines.

Still, there are people — including public figures and celebrities — who don’t vaccinate their kids and promote their choices. Most infamously, Jenny McCarthy has espoused her antivaccination position because she believes vaccines are full of toxins and cause autism. When she recently posed a question on Twitter about finding a mate, the vaccination backlash was loud and clear.

Just how harmful are these notions, though? Below are some preventable diseases making a vicious return thanks to people not getting their vaccinations.



Measles

According to the CDC, for every 1,000 children who get the measles, one or two will die. Currently, public-health workers are worried about the situation in New York, but just in the past three months, there have been reported cases of the disease in Massachusetts, Illinois and California. The CDC reports that from Jan. 1 to Feb. 28, 2014, 54 people in the U.S. have reported being infected with measles. On average, there are about 60 cases reported in the U.S. every year. Most people in the U.S. are vaccinated against the measles, but since measles is still around in other countries, those who travel outside of the U.S. can contract it if they are not vaccinated. New York City has not been able to confirm the source of the disease.



Mumps

As recently as Monday, health officials confirmed 23 cases of mumps at Ohio State University. In 2011, there was a mumps outbreak on the University of California at Berkeley campus, with 29 reported cases confirmed by the CDC. The source of the outbreak was thought to be an unvaccinated student who had spent time traveling in Western Europe where there is still a presence of mumps. In 2013, a slightly smaller outbreak of the disease broke out among students at Loyola University in Maryland. The last major occurrence was in 2006, when there was a multistate outbreak of 6,584 reported cases. Less than 20 cases a year was considered usual at the time.



Whooping Cough

Whooping-cough outbreaks are thought to be spurred by waning immunity from the vaccine. However, a 2013 study published in the journal Pediatrics reports that California’s worst whooping-cough outbreak, which infected more than 9,000 people, was also encouraged by a large number of kids who were unvaccinated.



Chicken Pox

In 2012, a county in Indiana experienced a major chicken-pox outbreak of more than 80 cases, which was thought to start from an unvaccinated child. The vaccine is 90% effective, so it’s possible for people who have been vaccinated to contract the disease.

1NC — Vaccine Culture of Rights Module

Thanks to anti-vaccination proponents, measles risk is high now – pro-vaccination public opinion is reversing the trend.


Salzberg 15 – Steven Salzberg, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Computer Science, and Biostatistics at Johns Hopkins University, former researcher at The Institute for Genomic Research with a focus in sequencing the genomes of many bacteria, including those used in the 2001 anthrax attacks, member of the Human Genome Project and the co-founder of the influenza virus sequencing project, 2015 (“Anti-Vaccine Movement Causes Worst Measles Epidemic In 20 Years”, Forbes, February 1, Available Online at http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensalzberg/2015/02/01/anti-vaccine-movement-causes-worst-measles-epidemic-in-20-years/, accessed 7/20/15, KM)
Measles is now spreading outward from Disneyland in California, in the worst outbreak in years. The epidemic is fueled by growing enclaves of unvaccinated people. The CDC reports that in just the past month, 84 people from 14 states contracted measles, a number that is certainly an under-estimate, because the CDC doesn’t record every case. California alone has 59 confirmed cases, most of them linked to an initial exposure in Disneyland. A majority of people who have gotten sick were not vaccinated. For years, scientists (including me) have warned that the anti-vaccination movement was going to cause epidemics of disease. Two years ago I wrote that the anti-vaccine movement had caused the worst whooping cough epidemic in 70 years. And now it’s happening with measles. Finally, though, the public seems to be pushing back. Parents are starting to wake up to the danger that the anti-vax movement represents to their children and themselves. What’s sad about this – tragic, really – is that we eliminated measles from the U.S. in the year 2000, thanks to the measles vaccine. As this CDC graph shows, we’ve had fewer than 100 cases every year since. But we had 644 cases in 27 states in 2014, the most in 20 years. And 2015 is already on track to be worse. Measles may become endemic in the U.S, circulating continually, thanks to the increasing numbers of unvaccinated people. Until now, each outbreak was caused by someone traveling from abroad and bringing measles to us. The anti-vaccine movement has turned this public health victory into defeat. Anti-vaxxers have been relentless in the efforts to spread misinformation. Despite overwhelming scientific evidence that vaccines are beneficial, they endlessly repeat a variety false claims, such as: Vaccines cause autism. They don’t. The preservative thimerosal in vaccines causes autism. It doesn’t. Natural immunity is all you need. It isn’t. Measles infects 90% of people exposed to it unless they are vaccinated. A healthy lifestyle will protect you from measles. It won’t. Now, finally, some parents are pushing back. Parents and schools in California, where the epidemic began, are concerned that their children will be exposed to measles from unvaccinated children in schools. And the schools are starting to do something they should have done long ago: send the unvaccinated kids home. The problem arises from California’s vaccine exemption policy: although public schools require kids to be vaccinated, parents can exempt their kids simply by saying they have a personal objection to vaccination. It’s not just California: only two states, Mississippi and West Virginia, don’t allow parents to claim a philosophical or religious exemption to vaccines And Colorado has the worst rate of vaccination, at just 82%, primarily due to parents claiming a “philosophical” exemption. These parents are the anti-vaxxers. Thanks to them, we now have large pockets of unvaccinated children through whom epidemics can spread further and faster than we’ve seen in decades. The CDC reports that in 2014, 79% of measles cases in the U.S. involving unvaccinated people were the result of personal belief exemptions. Anti-vaxxers don’t recognize the threat their behavior poses to others, especially to children whose immune systems aren’t functioning properly. CNN reported this week on the case of Rhett Krawitt, a 6-year-old California boy who has gone through 4 years of chemotherapy for childhood leukemia. His leukemia is in remission and he’s back in school, but the treatment wiped out his immunity, and he’s still not ready to get vaccinated. If Rhett gets measles, he might not survive. His father Carl wrote to school district officials to ask them to ban unvaccinated children from school. Krawitt expects the schools to deny his request. Meanwhile, the parents who refuse to vaccinate their kids aren’t budging. The New York Times reported on one mother, Crystal McDonald, who refused to vaccinate any of her four children, after “researching the issue” by reading anti-vaccine websites. When their high school sent her daughter home for two weeks, the daughter asked if she could get the measles shot so she could return. As quoted in the Times, McDonald told her daughter “I said ‘No, absolutely not.’ I said I’d rather you miss an entire semester than you get the shot.’” Where does this breathtaking science denialism come from? It’s been building for years, as I and many others have written. The wave began with a 1998 paper published in The Lancet by Andrew Wakefield, claiming that the MMR vaccine was linked to autism. Wakefield’s work was later shown to be fraudulent, and his claims about the vaccine “dishonest and irresponsible.” After lengthy investigations, the paper was retracted and Wakefield lost his medical license. Despite this very public repudiation, Wakefield has stuck to his claims, though, and has spent much of the past 15 years speaking (or perhaps “preaching” would be a better term) to anti-vaccine groups, to whom he is a kind of folk hero. It’s not just Wakefield, though. Anti-vaccine messages have been broadcast aggressively by the group Generation Rescue, led by former Playboy playmate and MTV host Jenny McCarthy, and by Age of Autism, a group dedicated to the proposition that vaccines cause autism. (Age of Autism is doing it again right now.) And just last summer, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. published a new book further promoting the long-discredited claim that thimerosal causes autism. Most of the anti-vax crowd have no scientific training or expertise, which might explain (but doesn’t excuse) their complete ignorance of the science. Over the past 15 years, dozens of studies involving hundreds of thousands of people have shown convincingly that neither vaccines nor any of the ingredients in them are linked to autism. Vaccines are not only safe, but they are perhaps the greatest public health success in the history of civilization. Measles, though, is dangerous. The CDC’s Anne Schuchat had a message for parents this week: “I want to make sure that parents who think that measles is gone and haven’t made sure that they or their children are vaccinated are aware that measles is still around and it can be serious. And that MMR vaccine is safe and effective and highly recommended.” Make no mistake, measles is a very dangerous infection. In the current outbreak, 25% of victims have ended up in the hospital. And it is extremely infectious: the CDC’s Schuchat explained that: “You can catch it [measles] just by being in the same room as a person with measles even if that person left the room because the virus can hang around for a couple of hours.” Perhaps the Disneyland epidemic, which has now spread to 14 states, will finally convince parents, schools, and state legislatures that they need to insist that children get vaccinated before going to school. Perhaps it will also convince parents to stop listening to nonsense, and choose wisely by getting their children vaccinated against measles. We won this battle before, and we can win it again.


Anti-vaccination parents view the debate as a matter of the right to choose – plan gives their views legitimacy.


AP 15 – The Associated Press, 2015 (“Anti-vaccination parents explain their perspectives: 'We are not anti-science'”, AP, February 23, Available Online at http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2015/02/anti-vaccination_parents_expla.html, accessed 7/14/15, KM)

Anti-vaccination parents include a mix of views -- from religious communities to families practicing alternative medicine and libertarians who shun government interference. But many are Americans with college degrees living in liberal communities such as Santa Monica or Marin County in California and Portland, said Gary Freed, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Michigan. Most hesitant parents do not avoid all vaccinations. They typically under-vaccinate, either delaying the shots until their child is older or refusing certain vaccines while continuing with others, Freed said. The parents who spoke to AP recounted spending hundreds of hours reviewing medical studies, books and news stories and networking on social media. They cited cases of children who were supposedly hurt by vaccines and the existence of a government-run vaccine injury-compensation program. And they worried about the oversight of pharmaceutical companies that reap profits from vaccines and are shielded from liability when a vaccine causes harm. Moore said she read a 1998 study published in The Lancet journal by Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who raised the possibility of a link between the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, bowel disease and autism. She said she knows the study was later discredited and retracted. She believes the research was inconclusive. Moore concedes that the vast majority of studies show vaccines are safe, but she says some research points to inconsistencies, unknowns or negative effects that deserve further investigation. And while autism is still a concern, Moore and others also worry about how exposure to chemicals, bad nutrition and stress can affect genes and health. They say large doses of synthetic additives found in vaccines, including aluminum and mercury, can harm the immune and digestive systems and brain. They're believers in living naturally and eating organic food who also question the safety of genetically modified organisms, pesticides and other common substances such as flame retardants and plastics. "There are so many environmental toxins, but anything in my children's world that I can influence I do," Moore said. The CDC has phased out a mercury-containing preservative in vaccines as a precautionary measure, and the agency says vaccines containing aluminum pose extremely low risk to infants. Federal officials also say GMOs in foods are safe, as are pesticides if used according to labels. These parents say they should be able to decide whether their child undergoes a medical procedure -- a decision, they say, that goes to the core of what it means to have freedom of choice. "I have the right to decide what to put into my child's body," said Heather Dillard, a mom in Springfield, Missouri, who is also a registered nurse. "Nobody has the right to put toxic chemicals into my son's bloodstream. That's taking my rights away, and it's very scary to me." Dillard said she decided against vaccinating because her first child was born a preemie and has autism. Dillard does not believe vaccines caused the autism, but the disease led her to do a lot of research about health. She says she now chooses to build her son's immunity naturally, through diet, while avoiding shots or other medication. Dillard and others say they are not worried about measles because their children have strong immune systems. They cite statistics: Out of the 1,000-plus measles cases in the past decade, there was not a single death. "What I'm more nervous about is the hysteria that would result," if her children were to get ill, Moore said. Moore said she does worry about affecting children who are immune-compromised and cannot be vaccinated. Before visiting friends with babies or young children, she said, she always informs them her twins are not vaccinated "so they have the power to make a choice." She also keeps the girls home at any sign of sickness. Researchers say berating parents who oppose vaccines will not persuade anyone and only puts people on the defensive. Educational messages from health officials may also make little difference and could, in fact, be counterproductive, said Brendan Nyhan, assistant professor of government at Dartmouth College. A study conducted by Nyhan and his colleagues last year showed that when parents were presented with evidence that vaccines do not cause autism or that measles cause great harm, some ended up feeling even more ambivalent. "We tend to be skeptical toward information that contradicts our existing views," Nyhan said. If Oregon were to take away the right to a vaccine exemption, Moore said, she would likely home-school her twins. She's keeping an open mind about vaccinating as her children get older, but hopes more studies on the long-term effects of vaccines can help dispel her doubts. "I worry about living in a society that's progressively more intolerant toward any dissent," Moore said. "All scientific advances have come from questioning the status quo."

Anti-vaxxers cause outbreaks of dangerous diseases – highly contagious diseases means it will spread quickly.


Sifferlin 14 — Alexandra Sifferlin, Alexandra Sifferlin is a writer for TIME. She covers public health issues including infectious and chronic disease, big ideas in medicine, and breaking news, 3-17-2014 ("Here are some diseases we're seeing thanks to anti-vaxxers," TIME, 3-17-2014, Available Online at http://time.com/27308/4-diseases-making-a-comeback-thanks-to-anti-vaxxers/, Accessed 7-14-2015)

These should be avoidable

New York City isn’t an anomaly, though. Diseases that are and have been avoidable in the U.S. thanks to vaccines, are resurfacing all across the country. Measles, for instance, was considered wiped out in 2000, but there have been several outbreaks in the past few years. This map shows outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases since 2008 (click on “Map” and select which diseases and regions you want to see).

The emergence of these diseases — especially measles — is alarming, and mostly due to parents in the U.S. not vaccinating their kids. “If you are unvaccinated and you come in contact with measles, there’s a 90% chance you will get it,” says Jason McDonald, a spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Though measles outbreaks are primarily linked to unvaccinated people, McDonald notes that some vaccines aren’t foolproof. For example, the whooping-cough vaccine may lose its efficacy over time. And, overall, most people do get their vaccinations. A CDC report looking at children entering kindergarten for the 2012–13 school year in all U.S. states found that more than 90% of these kids had their vaccines.

Still, there are people — including public figures and celebrities — who don’t vaccinate their kids and promote their choices. Most infamously, Jenny McCarthy has espoused her antivaccination position because she believes vaccines are full of toxins and cause autism. When she recently posed a question on Twitter about finding a mate, the vaccination backlash was loud and clear.

Just how harmful are these notions, though? Below are some preventable diseases making a vicious return thanks to people not getting their vaccinations.



Measles

According to the CDC, for every 1,000 children who get the measles, one or two will die. Currently, public-health workers are worried about the situation in New York, but just in the past three months, there have been reported cases of the disease in Massachusetts, Illinois and California. The CDC reports that from Jan. 1 to Feb. 28, 2014, 54 people in the U.S. have reported being infected with measles. On average, there are about 60 cases reported in the U.S. every year. Most people in the U.S. are vaccinated against the measles, but since measles is still around in other countries, those who travel outside of the U.S. can contract it if they are not vaccinated. New York City has not been able to confirm the source of the disease.



Mumps

As recently as Monday, health officials confirmed 23 cases of mumps at Ohio State University. In 2011, there was a mumps outbreak on the University of California at Berkeley campus, with 29 reported cases confirmed by the CDC. The source of the outbreak was thought to be an unvaccinated student who had spent time traveling in Western Europe where there is still a presence of mumps. In 2013, a slightly smaller outbreak of the disease broke out among students at Loyola University in Maryland. The last major occurrence was in 2006, when there was a multistate outbreak of 6,584 reported cases. Less than 20 cases a year was considered usual at the time.



Whooping Cough

Whooping-cough outbreaks are thought to be spurred by waning immunity from the vaccine. However, a 2013 study published in the journal Pediatrics reports that California’s worst whooping-cough outbreak, which infected more than 9,000 people, was also encouraged by a large number of kids who were unvaccinated.



Chicken Pox

In 2012, a county in Indiana experienced a major chicken-pox outbreak of more than 80 cases, which was thought to start from an unvaccinated child. The vaccine is 90% effective, so it’s possible for people who have been vaccinated to contract the disease.



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