Mumps and Pertussis Outbreaks because of Anti-Vaccination Myths and Disinformation

Last month, I posted about an outbreak of measles in both Western Europe and the States of the American Union in Foreign Digest: Macedonia, Ukraine, Italy, the Measles Outbreak and Venezuela, https://williamcinfici.blogspot.com/2019/01/foreign-digest-updates-macedonia-italy.html.  On United States soil, there have also recently been outbreaks not only of mumps, which is usually vaccinated against together with measles, but also pertussis.  Meanwhile, a definitive study this week completely disproved the theory that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine causes autism, a theory that had long been retracted from a medical journal because of a lack of proof. 

Populist opposition to vaccination, or at least to mandatory vaccination, from both the far left, extreme libertarians and the far-right has left Americans vulnerable to infection.  Cynicism about the effectiveness and safety of vaccines, socialist bias against the free market and the concomitant suspicion against pharmaceutical companies, or an overly minimalist view of the role of government to regulate health and morals have combined to make the “anti-vax” movement significant enough to cause a decrease in immunizations and, thus, the outbreaks of contagious diseases that had heretofore nearly been eradicated in Western Europe and America.  Russian Federation tyrant Vladimir Putin takes advantage of the extreme left-right convergence through disinformation, targeted to Europeans and Americans.