Four years into a crackdown on high numbers of California students going unvaccinated because of claimed concerns over vaccine risks, new statistics from the 2018-2019 school year show that 10 percent or more of the students in 117 kindergartens and 5 percent or more of those at 1,500 other kindergartens do not have their required shots. But these students are able to attend school because their parents have succeeded in obtaining medical exemptions.

After a new law by Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, was enacted in 2015 that ended personal belief exemptions from vaccinations, the number of vaccinated kindergartners increased to above 95 percent on average. That’s the level seen as creating “herd immunity” from infectious diseases. This was treated as a success story by public health officials who supported Pan’s effort to respond to a Disneyland-based measles outbreak that was California’s worst in years. They expected the vaccination rate to keep going up as public health information campaigns emphasized their importance.

But the overall kindergarten vaccination rate in the state dipped to 94.8 percent in 2018-19, and to much lower at many schools. Aware of the sharp increase in medical exemptions on questionable grounds, this led Pan and Gov. Gavin Newsom to hash out a compromise under which state public health officials would automatically review such exemptions in two circumstances: when doctors issued five or more in a school year and in schools with vaccination rates less than 95 percent.

Senate Bill 276 has passed initial votes and is expected to be enacted by session’s end in September. But authorities in the Bay Area have already begun a crackdown after a San Jose Mercury-News report found that just five doctors issued at least one-third of all vaccine exemptions in eight of the region’s school districts.

Doctors responding to parents’ ‘market demand’

Experts say that these doctors are in effect responding to “market demand.” Thousands of parents – often affluent people who are skeptical about modern medicine and interested in alternative medicine – remain eager believers in discredited theories that vaccines are responsible for autism and other early childhood medical woes. They reject the representations of public health authorities.

Meanwhile, as CalWatchdog recently reported, California is one of the states most at risk of a measles outbreak caused by the combination of both unvaccinated children and the high level of air passengers from nations around the world such as the Philippines and Italy that have had measles epidemics because vaccination rates have dropped.

Public health officials believe it is just a matter of time until California has a measles outbreak as severe as the one based in Disneyland in the winter of 2014-15, in which at least 131 infections were reported.

UCLA warns many exposed to virus at food court

“In 2019, four outbreaks linked to patients with international travel have been reported in California,” the state Department of Public Health announced last week. As of July 10, the state had 58 confirmed measles cases and the U.S. had 1,109 measles cases. The national number is nearly triple the total seen in all of 2018.

This week, officials at UCLA are on edge after confirming that an individual who used the UCLA campus food court on July 2 and July 3 was infected with measles and potentially could have exposed thousands of people. The university says employees who may have been exposed cannot return to work until they prove they’ve been vaccinated.

Measles is one of the most highly infectious viral diseases, public health officials say. Before an effective vaccine became available in 1963, it killed millions of people worldwide each year. That fell to about 110,000 a year earlier this century after vaccines became widely available even in poor nations. 

But the World Health Organization said in April that the number of deaths appears to be steadily increasing worldwide since 2017, the last year for which full statistics were available.

Despite furious opposition from parents who believe vaccinations are dangerous, a measure by state Sen. Richard Pan to tighten up vaccine exemptions passed an initial committee test last week on a 6-2 vote. Senate Bill 276 would make California only the second state – after West Virginia – to mandate that students can only be exempted from vaccinations on medical grounds with the permission of state public health officials.

Pan, a physician, introduced his bill after the Voice of San Diego reported in March that a single doctor had provided nearly one-third of all the medical exemptions granted in San Diego Unified, the state’s second-largest school district, since June 2015. Anti-vaccine activists share lists online of doctors around California that they consider friendly to their cause.

Medical exemptions have more than tripled statewide since the 2014-15 school year. That was the last year before Pan’s bill banning exemptions based on personal beliefs took effect.

Pan and other physicians say there is no conceivable explanation for the surge in medical exemptions outside of concluding that doctors are giving parents what they want without adequate medical justification. The Centers for Disease Control says fewer than 1 in 100 children have problems with impaired immunity or risk of severe allergic reactions that would justify medical exemptions.

Public health officials say at least 95 percent of the general population needs to be immunized against contagious diseases to create “herd immunity” that makes outbreaks unlikely. In the United States, immunization against measles was so common and effective that in 2000, it was declared to have been eradicated in the nation.

400,000 state students could face higher risk

While measles remains common in nations with poor health care – killing an estimated 100,000-plus people in 2017 – it had been rare in developed nations for decades. But over the past 11 years, skepticism about vaccine safety has been fanned online by new-age groups and several celebrities. They tout a discredited study published in 2008 in The Lancet, a British medical journal, that linked one of the most common childhood vaccinations to autism. That vaccination – the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) – can have negative health side effects with a small percentage of children. But there’s never been a study finding its risks came anywhere near its benefits.

Nevertheless, anti-vaccination sentiment led to a tripling of measles cases in Europe from 2017 to 2018. In the United States, 2019 has seen the most cases in a single year this century, according to a CNN report last week. CNN said California was one of 22 states reporting a total of nearly 700 cases of measles.

Problems could get much worse in the Golden State. According to a Los Angeles Times analysis, immunization rates among kindergartners at 105 elementary schools are so low that “herd immunity” might not be intact. A report last week by the Health Officers Association of California said as many as 400,000 of the state’s 6.2 million K-12 students could face heightened risk of measles.

Fears about measles are playing out in dramatic fashion in Los Angeles. At UCLA and Cal State-Los Angeles, more than 1,000 students and staff members were either quarantined in their dorms and offices or sent home late last week. Those affected have been unable to satisfy administrators that they have been properly vaccinated.

At least 325 students and staffers subsequently established they had gotten their shots. But the two colleges’ decisions could be widely copied in coming weeks and months if measles keeps spreading in the U.S.

According to a summary from the health committee, SB277:

“Eliminates non-medical exemptions from the requirement that children receive vaccines for certain infectious diseases prior to being admitted to any public or private elementary or secondary school, or day care center. Specifically, this bill:

1. “Deletes the exemption based on personal beliefs from the existing immunization requirement for children in child care and public and private schools. Deletes related law requiring a form to accompany a personal belief exemption (PBE).
2. “Exempts students enrolled in home-based private schools or in an independent study program from the existing immunization requirement.
3. “Permits the California Department of Public Health (DPH) to add diseases to the immunization requirements only if exemptions are allowed for both medical reasons and personal beliefs.”

Assemblyman Devon Mathis, who has been a vocal critic of SB277, said in a prepared statement, “This bill, and my opposition, is not about vaccines, it is about combating an overreaching government from infringing on our Constitutional Rights, Parental Rights, Religious Freedoms and protect the relationship between the patient and their chosen medical professional.”

Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, who voted yes on SB277 in the health committee vote, tweeted on Tuesday:

“#SB277 passes the Assembly Health Committee, 12-6. Proud to have voted AYE for science and children’s health. Next stop, Assembly floor.”

The bill now goes to the Assembly for consideration.