The Panic Virus

This leaves us with two choices: We can either take it upon ourselves to do a systematic analysis of all the available information—which becomes ever less feasible as the world grows more complex—or we can trust experts and the media to be responsible about the information and advice they provide. When they're not, whether it's because they're naive or underresourced or lazy or because they've become true believers themselves, the consequences can be severe indeed. 

In an Iv-B economy the media become less reliable, they can hide and mislead for profit. If then being against vaccines can be profitable for some pundits then some might do it, those with more scruples get driven out of the market in a gresham's Dynamic. Iv pundits then might concentrate on a B audience like Oy predators on R prey. 

A recent Hib outbreak in Minnesota resulted in the deaths of several children—including one whose parents said they do not "believe" in vaccination. In 2009, there were more than 13,000 cases of pertussis (more commonly known as whooping cough) in Australia, which is the highest number ever recorded. Among those infected was Dana McCaffery, whose parents do believe in vaccination, but who was too young to get the pertussis vaccine. She died when she was thirty-two days old. Six months later, Dana's mother got an e-mail from a woman in Dallas, Texas, named Helen Bailey. Bailey was looking for someone who might understand her grief: Her son, Stetson, died of pertussis when he was just eleven weeks old. If anything, the situation is getting even worse: In 2010, a yearlong pertussis outbreak in California was so severe that in September some foreign governments began warning their citizens of the dangers of traveling to the region.

Iv-B contagion in the media can then lead to Oy-R contagion with diseases.

Then there's measles, which is the most infectious microbe known to man and has killed more children than any other disease in history. A decade after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the virus effectively eradicated everywhere in the Americas save for the Dominican Republic and Haiti, declining vaccination rates have led to an explosion of outbreaks around the world. In Great Britain, there's been more than a thousandfold increase in measles cases since 2000. In the United States, there have been outbreaks in many of the country's most populous states, including Illinois, New York, and Wisconsin. A recent outbreak in California began when a grade-schooler whose doctor supports "selective vaccination" was infected while on a family vacation in Europe. In an anonymously published article in Timemagazine, that child's mother said she "felt safe in making the choice to vaccinate selectively" because she lives in "a relatively healthy first-world country" with a well-functioning health care system. "Looking at the diseases mumps, measles and rubella in a country like the US . . . it doesn't tend to be a problem," she said. "Children will do fine with these diseases in a developed country that has good nutrition. And because I live in a country where the norm is vaccine, I can delay my vaccines."

That statement could not be more false. Measles remains deadly regardless of whether you live in the United States or in Uganda. (Before the MMR vaccine was introduced, its annual death toll in the United States reached into the hundreds, and each year rubella infections resulted in more than twenty thousand infants who were born blind, deaf, or developmentally disabled.) This mother's conviction also perfectly encapsulates one of the most vexing paradoxes about vaccines: The more effective they are, the less necessary they seem.