The Daily - How the Measles Outbreak Started

Episode Date: April 26, 2019

The number of measles cases in the United States has risen to nearly 700 — the highest annual number recorded since 2000, when the disease was declared eliminated in the country. Many of those cases can be traced to ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in New York. Guest: Sarah Maslin Nir, who covers New York City for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.Background reading:Officials in New York have taken extraordinary measures to fight the measles outbreak, including $1,000 fines and bans on unvaccinated children in public.The outbreak has Orthodox Jewish communities fearing a rise in anti-Semitism.How is measles transmitted? How safe is the vaccine? Here are answers to some questions about the disease.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, the number of measles cases in the U.S. has now risen to nearly 700, the highest annual number since the disease was declared eliminated in this country in 2000. Many of those cases can be traced to two Orthodox Jewish communities in New York.

It's Friday, April 26th. I'm in the heart of New York City's religious Jewish enclave, Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Around me are men with black hats, the side locks, the traditional peyote religious garments, and about a block away there's yeshivas, religious schools, synagogues. School buses keep passing with Hebrew lettering on the side. Hi, my name's Sarah. I'm a reporter for the New York Times. My colleague, Jonathan. We are here doing a story on measles. What else? Everyone's talking about it.

So what's your opinion? You've got kids you've vaccinated? I definitely do. And I feel like besides for the safety of my children, it's for the safety of the ones with compromised health. The anti-vaccine community is very loud. They're trying to be very loud. They're trying to have a very strong voice. And it's okay. You know what? Everybody can do whatever they want. But don't put us into a bad light. Don't represent the entire community. And by community, do you mean the Hasidic Jews?

Absolutely. Yes. You know, I went to Rocklin. I had a very interesting conversation. A woman said, a non-Jewish woman, she said, I don't want to do this, but I would cross the other side of the street when I'm with my baby and I see a person in the... So isn't this embarrassing for us? My sister was on the train today and there were a bunch of school kids. I said, let's not sit next to the Jews because they don't vaccinate.

She was so disturbed. She was extremely disturbed. She felt very hurt by her fellow community members that made her look bad in the eyes of others. It was very sad, actually. Sarah Maslin-Neer writes about New York for The Times. Lynn Neer writes about New York for The Times. Sarah, where did all of this start? How did measles get to Williamsburg? This epidemic started more than 5,000 miles away from New York City in Israel.

So Israeli Jews tend to go for the high holidays to Ukraine. And Ukraine is in the middle of a serious measles outbreak. So some unvaccinated people went to Ukraine, picked up measles there, brought it back to Israel. Now you have Brooklyn Jews traveling overseas to visit family and friends to Israel, where everyone goes for holidays to see grandma and grandpa. And those children mostly took ill over there, brought it back. Health officials in New Jersey are warning people who were at Newark Liberty Airport last Friday that they may have been exposed to measles. Also learning about measles cases in Brooklyn. Officials confirmed a fourth case this morning.

The number of children contracting the disease continues to grow. Just in the last week, health officials have confirmed 90 new cases. The CDC says there are about 107 reported cases so far. We're up to 155 cases that we've confirmed as of early this afternoon. And the thing to know about measles is it's insanely contagious. In fact, measles is so contagious that if one person has it, up to 90% of people close to that person who are not immune will get measles. Now, measles symptoms are usually mild at first, a runny nose, cough, watery eyes and low fever.

Then the fever worsens and a rash starts on the face and spreads. Most people can recover fully, but it can lead to pneumonia, even brain damage. Which is why the U.S. has worked for decades to get this under control and actually won the battle. In 2000, the United States declared measles eradicated from the country. Well, given that, why was there a measles outbreak in Williamsburg versus just a couple people coming back from Israel? So to understand why this spread like wildfire in this particular community,

you have to understand the unique nature of the Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn. It's a very communal religion. To pray as a Jew, you need a minimum of 10 people to get together. So at baseline, it really centers around community. Families have a large number of kids, centers around community. Families have a large number of kids, I think on average six compared to the national average of about two, and sometimes many more. People babysit each other's kids. They spend a tremendous amount of time together. And within this already combustible situation, a number of parents just don't vaccinate their children. And why is that? Since the invention of vaccines, there has always been resistance to them.

People just didn't understand them initially. And you kind of get it, right? They're administered to a little baby. They require a needle. Vaccines contain a version of the germ that they're trying to prevent. But I think you can trace the modern root of this anti-vax movement to about the 70s.

One schoolgirl in three misses the vaccination, sometimes because of absenteeism, sometimes because parents object. That's when a study came out linking actually the whooping cough vaccine, we're not talking about measles here, whooping cough, to serious childhood side effects like seizures. I believe that the risk of damage from the vaccine is now greater than the risk of damage from the disease. And it was eventually debunked, but nevertheless, it sent whooping cough vaccination rates, particularly in the UK, where that study was plummeting, from about 80% to 30%. But I've decided I don't want it. And why is that?

Well, I just think that she could be that one in a million that something might happen to. So I just decided to leave it out. Then a number of documentaries came out also peddling wrong information. What we have found are serious questions about the safety and effectiveness of the shot. That really created a resistance among some parents to vaccinate their kids, of the shot. That really created a resistance among some parents to vaccinate their kids, really particularly

in these ultra-liberal enclaves, Berkeley or Washington State. And why there? There is already among that group at that time, a skepticism of big pharma, of drug companies pumping things into our environments and bodies

that we don't need just to make a profit. Can an employee of a pharmaceutical company that manufactures a vaccine be objective in designing experiments to show fault in a product that generates close to a billion dollars in sales for his company?

These communities pushed for what's called a philosophical exemption, that you can send your kid to school without being vaccinated based on a philosophical belief. And by the 90s, that spread really across the United States. So now you can send a child to school without having them vaccinated as long as you have this exemption. What should parents do after a report linking the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines with autism?

So then, in 1998, this ratchets up exponentially. These are viruses that are live. A researcher named Andrew Wakefield publishes a study in a British medical journal called The Lancet. They are capable of establishing long-term infection, and they are capable of producing long-term adverse events. And it claims to find that measles vaccine causes autism in children. It's a very small study. It just included 12 children.

Nevertheless, wildfire. So you ask any mother in the autism community if we'll take the flu, the measles, over autism any freaking day of the week. Do you remember Jenny McCarthy? She was the host of Singled Out. I used to love that show. I watched it when I was a kid. Well, she picks this up.

She has a child with autism, and she goes on the anti-vaccination rampage. Today, I am a mom of a child who had autism, who has a voice that is willing to shake the ground of those responsible until all of our children are safe. She even publishes a book. Jenny McCarthy is here to tell us about her latest book, Healing and Preventing Autism, A Complete Guide. And she becomes really the poster child mom for the anti-vaccination movement. So I think they need to wake up and stop hurting our kids. Meanwhile.

Yesterday, a respected British medical journal retracted a study that said the MMR vaccine may trigger autism. That study I told you about that set this all off? Debunked. This publication, which was wrong, was scientifically implausible, which should never have been published to start with. The researcher, Andrew Wakefield, turns out he'd accepted money from entities that wanted him to reach a certain conclusion, that vaccines were harmful. The charges were he'd paid children at his son's birthday party to give blood samples and that he'd had a financial interest in discrediting the MMR vaccine. And a journalist found he'd fabricated a tremendous amount of data. But even the fact that this study gets totally trashed doesn't stop the idea that vaccines cause autism. If you happen to be a

parent and you say, you know, I'm sorry, God gave me a brain. God gave me personal choice. I'm going to say no to those vaccines because I've done my homework. It gets picked up by the Tea Party. Where is anybody saying, my gosh, we're living in the days of Galileo? Because it sort of plays into that government don't tell me what to do kind of thing. They take a third round of shots. They have convulsions within hours. Alex Jones, the founder of Infowars, this known conspiracy theorist, gets behind it. So jig is up and we're working on getting Jenny McCarthy on.

And then it comes from the future leader of the free world himself, Donald Trump. Dr. Carson, Donald Trump has publicly and repeatedly linked vaccines, childhood vaccines, to autism, which, as you know, the medical community adamantly disputes. You're a pediatric neurosurgeon. Should Mr. Trump stop saying this? Well, let me put it this way. There have been numerous studies and they have not demonstrated that there's any correlation between vaccinations and autism.

In a Republican presidential primary debate in 2015, Donald Trump, who'd been tweeting and speaking about the subject of vaccines and autism for many years, is asked a question. Mr. Trump, as president, you would be in charge of the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health, both of which say you are wrong. How would you handle this as president? Autism has become an epidemic. And his answer?

I am totally in favor of vaccines, but I want smaller doses over a longer period of time. He seems to link vaccines and autism. Because you take a baby in and I've seen it and I've seen it. And I had my children taking care of over a long period of time, over a two or three year period of time, same exact amount. care of over a long period of time, over a two or three year period of time, same exact amount. But you take this little beautiful baby and you pump. I mean, it looks just like it's meant for a horse, not for a child. And we've had so many instances, people that work for me just the other day, two years old, two and a half years old, a child, a beautiful child went to have the vaccine and came back and a week later got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is

autistic. And now we have groups that won't let go of this discredited science. They're actually dedicated to spreading it, almost evangelists for the cause of anti-vaccines. There's a group called PEACH. It's an anti-vax group. And in 2017, we start to see a really targeted push by this group and others to bring the Orthodox community in Williamsburg, in New York, into the anti-vax fold. Why target Orthodox Jews? What makes the anti-vax people think that this community is going to be open to their message? Anti-vaxxers target this community not because they want to get their message specifically out to Hasidic Jews, but because they think they're protecting children and they want to protect everyone's children. That's what they think they're doing here. They flyered their doors with pamphlets that are in Hebrew and Yiddish. They've set up hotlines and robocalled them to spread this

information. These facts are not meant to persuade you in any direction. Rather, these facts are to create an intelligent discussion about what we are putting into our children, what the purpose of these vaccines were, and why we don't know more about them. I listened to one of these calls and I was stunned by the misinformation being peddled as fact. This community is particularly vulnerable to this kind of misinformation, really because of how it's structured. You're not really permitted to dig into the secular world for outside sources. That's why it's been so effective for these groups to really use the tools that speak to this community. Those hotlines, for example, people are already listening to them. So when one robo calls you in your kitchen with all of this false information about vaccines,

you're already primed to listen up. Hello, Dr. Larry Flep, you sell big three. Hey, Dale, how are you? Good to talk to you. Good to talk to you, too. There's no proof that unvaccinated children carry the measles virus and that vaccinated children don't. And there's this other thing happening here, which is a cultural trauma that's been handed down through the generations from the Holocaust, where Jews were experimented on. And so it makes sense that there's this skepticism of government and medical intervention by the government.

So this is not a religious belief among Hasidic Jews that they shouldn't get a measles vaccine? No, not at all. Actually, quite the opposite. And a number of the people I interviewed were really keen to express that. they shouldn't get a measles vaccine? No, not at all. Actually, quite the opposite. And a number of the people I interviewed were really keen to express that. There's this phrase from the Torah, v'nashmarta me'od l'nafshosechem. It means you have to take care of your body in order to do God's work.

They actually believe you have to keep your health. But like any community, you're going to have people who do their own thing. And for whatever reason, a number of them chose not to vaccinate. And given the insularity of this community, you're going to have people who do their own thing. And for whatever reason, a number of them chose not to vaccinate. And given the insularity of this community, that individual decision became everyone's problem. It set off a medical crisis. Measles is spreading this month throughout the Orthodox Jewish community in Williamsburg.

And by March, in both Rockland, that's a little bit north of New York City, and in Brooklyn, it's reaching hundreds of kids and adults. Now, later today, the city's health department coming together with elected officials and rabbis to hold a meeting right here in this community. They want to make sure families here and across the city understand the importance of getting vaccinated. And officials do something extreme. Health officials have asked parents at three schools to keep their kids home if they have not been vaccinated. If you're unvaccinated, fine, you do you. Don't come to school. Then they up it even more. Yesterday's executive order called for nearly 6,000

unvaccinated children to be removed from schools. Children under the age of 18 who are not vaccinated are now banned from going to public places in Rockland County, New York. Public officials in Rockland County make an order that children without vaccination can't go into public places. Two weeks later. We're here in Williamsburg today to deal with a very serious situation. In Brooklyn, the mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio. Today we are declaring a public health emergency effective immediately. This will mandate vaccines for people living in the affected area. Said everyone in certain zip codes, these hot spots, had to be vaccinated.

Department of Health will issue violations and fines to people who remain unvaccinated. We cannot allow this dangerous disease to make a comeback here in New York City. We have to stop it now. Can the government force somebody to get vaccinated when they don't want to be vaccinated, especially on religious grounds, if that's what they choose to say? So in 1905, the Supreme Court ruled that a state can mandate vaccines and that there can be criminal fines for people who don't comply. Actually, there's a great quote I came across of a judge throwing out a case by people who didn't want to vaccinate in Brooklyn. And he said the following. He said, a fireman need not obtain the informed consent of the owner before extinguishing a house fire. Vaccination is known

to extinguish the fire of contagion. And that's what's happening here. You have a city that views this as dangerous as a fire, and it's going to do everything it can to protect its citizens, whether some people like it or not. However, while it can burst into a house to put out a fire, it cannot force anyone to get a vaccine. It can find them afterwards, but it can't stop people from making these complex individual choices that endanger everybody else.

It can't, but it can find them and find them and find them and keep them in their homes and keep them out of public spaces and make it very worth their while to get on board. And what has been the response from the Hasidic community to the government attempts to end the outbreak? There's been a lot of fear and a lot of anger. They feel that they're under attack. And it's actually not a Hasidic Jewish problem, right? It's an anti-vax problem that happens to be in this community. There are anti-vaxxers all over the world and across the United States, but they aren't usually visually identifiable. The Jewish community has a real visual signifier. So they say that by being targeted by these different interventions that have cropped up, it's creating a stigma about them.

That stigma is feeding into anti-Semitic tropes that are already there. That stigma is feeding into anti-Semitic tropes that are already there. I heard some very upsetting things as I interviewed people on the streets of Rockland about people wiping bus seats when they see a Hasidic person has sat there, about crossing the street and covering their baby when a person with a black hat walks by. Those really call to mind uncomfortable things that have happened in the past for the Jewish community. mind uncomfortable things that have happened in the past for the Jewish community. At the end of the day, it feels like we are all kind of powerless to stop individuals and groups from not getting vaccines or from not getting vaccines and stepping out of their house as inevitably it feels like they will. So that means that as a society, we have to convince these people

that it's in both their interest and in ours to get vaccinated. Yeah, and when I was in Williamsburg, I met a Hasidic man who was pretty staunchly anti-vax. Actually, I have some relatives who have a child with autism, and she says that her child was okay until she gave the shots. Since he gave the shots, he was weak and always had complications. Since then, he's not feeling well.

And then he pulled out his phone, and he showed me a picture of his brother-in-law. And his lips, if you see his lips, his whole, like, with blisters, swallowed. And his whole body. And the young man was covered in pustules. He had measles. The way when I spoke to him, he was, like, complaining to himself, I'm not feeling good, and I feel nauseous,

and I can't eat, and I'm feeling, like, horrible. And hugely ill, a fever. He had exposed his children to it. Wow. And this changed something for him. When you start to see your own community get sick, when he had seen his brother so unwell, he started to rethink his position.

And did this change your perspective about this vaccine situation when it came so close to home? My opinion is I'm vaccinating my children. You are? Yeah. For the good of his community. I think the Hasidic Jews in New York are having that experience.

And I think this epidemic is going to change a lot of minds about the validity of vaccination. epidemic is going to change a lot of minds about the validity of vaccination. Sarah, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you for having me. On Wednesday, federal health officials announced that the measles virus has now been detected in 22 states, with most cases linked to the outbreak in the Orthodox Jewish communities in New York and to another outbreak that began in Washington state.

In a statement, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention said, quote, The longer these outbreaks continue, the greater the chance measles will again get a sustained foothold in the United States. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Thursday morning, FBI agents raided the office and home of Baltimore's mayor, Catherine Pugh, escalating a criminal investigation into her conduct. Pugh has been dogged by questions about lucrative financial deals, in which local businesses paid her unusually large sums of money for copies of

a series of children's books that she wrote and self-published, called Healthy Holly. So it was in September of 2010 that I began publishing my first children's book. I was trying to figure out a way to create a character that could talk to young people about how they could improve their health. The deals amounted to more than $700,000 in payments, many by businesses that rely on Pew's administration for funding, raising the possibility that the book purchases were a form of bribery. I never intended to do anything that could not stand up to scrutiny. Pew has denied any wrongdoing. But hours after the raid, Maryland's governor, Larry Hogan, called for her to resign, saying she had lost the ability to govern.

And the Times reports that in the weeks leading up to his announcement that he would run for president, former Vice President Joe Biden privately apologized to Anita Hill for what she endured during the 1991 confirmation hearings of Justice Clarence Thomas. As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden oversaw those hearings, which involved aggressive and skeptical questioning of Hill as she testified that Thomas had sexually harassed her. After her conversation with Biden, Hill told the Times she was unsatisfied with his apology and could not support his candidacy.

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