The Super Bowl Measles Epidemic That Wasn't: Reason #4,362 to Get Your Kids Vaccinated

Officials in Indiana have identified 14 cases of measles linked to the Super Bowl, apparently tracable back to two infected pre-game visitors to the Super Bowl village. The Washington Post's On Parenting blog offers a terrifying only-slightly-alternate-reality scenario:

The most disturbing element of the mini outbreak is the potential for might have been. Measles has an incubation period of more than a week, so hundreds of thousands of fans might have been exposed. If the measles vaccine were not as widely used as it is now, this story would not be on a parenting blog. It would be front and center on every news outlet in the country.

In fact, the reason there was an outbreak at all was apparently because of the small but persistent group of people who refuse to vaccinate their children. According to the official quoted by PBS, 13 of those who have been diagnosed with measles in Indiana have said they had previously declined the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine.

For God's sake people. Stab your kids with needles. Lots of them. Do it now.

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