Measles in Massachusetts: The hatred of the present and our medieval future

Megan McArdle picks up on a report of a measles outbreak in Massachusetts. Officials don't know where it came from, though it may have spread from the French consulate: "France reported 10,000 cases — and six deaths — during the first four months of the year, most likely due to low vaccination rates."

This has been in the making for years. British health officials were warning over a decade ago that immunization rates were dropping dangerously low and that the "herd immunity" was going to disappear. It is tempting to blame it all on the criminal Andrew Wakefield, but his sort of panic-mongering only gets traction in a public that is already widely disposed to despise the present, and fear the future. 

Indeed, as McCardle points out, "It's hard to believe, but we're sliding backwards on two of the three public health achievements of the 20th century: vaccination, antibiotics, and clean water." And she doesn't mention that while our water might be clean (well, for most of us anyway, unless you happen to live on a native reserve in Canada), some of our largest cities have decided that another great public health achievement -- control of tooth decay through water fluoridation -- is some black-helicopter plot. 

We are on what is looking like an inexorable slide into magical thinking, turning our backs on the technologies, the medicines, and the markets that are the basis of our civilization. McCardle suggests that we make a guy like Wakefield "spend the rest of his life explaining himself to the parents of children who have died from diseases that could have been prevented through timely vaccination" but that misses the essence of the madness. Wakefield's victims will go to their graves singing his praises. 

(Via Tyler Cowen)