The Scarlet & Black Horoscope: August 30, 2019 Unreliable Notes: Move-in day! By Noa Goldman `22 [email protected] An Unsolicited Opinion: On vaccine exemptions By Katherine Moody [email protected] At 3 p.m. on April 24, 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a media statement reporting 695 cases of measles in 22 states. This is the highest number of cases in the United States since the disease was eliminated from the country in 2000. Measles has no known reservoirs in the United States; outbreaks occur when an infected traveler transmits the disease from abroad. Three large outbreaks – two in New York and one in Washington State – are responsible for the record high. Because measles is a highly-contagious disease, outbreaks typically appear in clusters and occur in population groups with low vaccination levels. Both the New York and Washington State outbreaks are examples of this phenomenon. When individuals refuse to get vaccinated or to vaccinate their children, they jeopardize not only their own safety and health, but also that of their communities. Babies cannot receive the first dose of the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) vaccine until they are 12 months old, nor can they receive the second dose until they are at least four years old. Not everyone can receive the vaccination. Many individuals have health conditions, such as cancer, that suppress their immune systems and prevent them from being vaccinated. In a society with a high vaccination rate, herd immunity protects those who can’t be vaccinated. Herd immunity defends the population because disease cannot spread if enough people are vaccinated. If the vaccination rate drops, those most vulnerable to the disease are left unprotected. In an interview published by Oxford Vaccine Group, Dr. Manish Sadarangani estimates that in the case of measles, at least 90-95% of the population needs to be vaccinated to maintain herd immunity and safeguard the young and the infirm. It’s bad news, then, that the percentage of young children in the United States who don’t receive any vaccinations has quadrupled since 2001. While there is more than one reason for the increase, rising rates of vaccine skepticism are a contributing factor. This increase is likely the result of a vocal group of activists known colloquially as “anti-vaxxers,” who believe that vaccines can cause autism despite all scientific evidence to the contrary. Study after study has shown that vaccines do not cause autism. Most recently, a study published just this month evaluated over 650,000 children over the course of ten years in Denmark and found no increased risk of autism from the MMR vaccine. So why then, in the face of such definitive evidence, do people choose to put themselves, their children, and their communities at risk? And in the face of rising vaccine skepticism and recent outbreaks of vaccine-preventable disease, what action should the government take to protect public health? The answer to the first question is fairly complicated, having to do with the public health apparatus, misinformation in the digital age and the psychology of conspiratorial thinking. The answer to the second question is simple: state governments should end nonmedical exemptions that allow parents to send their kids to school without having been vaccinated. While all 50 states and the District of Columbia have laws that require students to be vaccinated before attending public school (some also require vaccinations to attend private school and day care facilities), the accepted reasons for an exemption to these laws and the ease of obtaining such an exemption differs from state to state. All states have a medical exemption that allows students who cannot receive vaccinations for a medical reason to attend school. In California, West Virginia and Mississippi, this is the only exception that exists. Some states allow for both medical and religious exemptions, and 17 states have even more lenient laws that allow for exemptions on the basis of personal or philosophical concerns. Lenient laws that allow parents to obtain exemptions on the basis of non-medical concern are clearly a public health hazard. State governments should move to protect their communities by passing legislation that prohibits vaccine exemptions for both religious and personal reasons. The federal government should also move to restrict the ability of states to implement or maintain lenient exemption laws. The United States Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of barring religious and personal vaccination exemptions. Lower courts have used the decisions of the Supreme Court in the cases of Jacobson v. Massachusetts and Prince v. Massachusetts to affirm that individual liberty should not contribute to the endangerment of public health. Even those most weary of government power and intervention should acknowledge the rectitude of tougher vaccine exemption laws. Those who don’t receive vaccinations or choose not to vaccinate their children reduce herd immunity and increase the risk of illness and death of those around them. Unless you’re prepared to argue that illness and death don’t constitute harm, it’s difficult to justify government inaction. A call for a better conversation about antisemitism By Dylan Caine [email protected] Having gone to bed numb and speechless, once again, to the news that another Shabbat had passed with American Jews being gunned down in their Synagogue—occurring six months to the day after the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history—I ask my fellow Grinnellians to carefully consider ways that we can work together to improve and elevate our own discourse on antisemitism amid the steepest rise in attacks on Jewish people worldwide in decades. To begin, here are some facts: In 2017, Jews were the targets of 58.1% of “religiously motivated hate crimes” in the United States, according to the FBI. 2017 also saw a 57% increase in antisemitic incidents over the previous year, which included an astonishing 94.1% rise in antisemitic cases reported in K-12 schools. These distressing variables have been trending upwards for years now. Lest one think it is purely an American phenomenon, however, CNN’s recent omnibus survey of European attitudes towards Jews yielded profoundly troubling results for the continent where one out of every three Jews on the face of the Earth was murdered by the Nazis and their local collaborators less than 80 years ago. In countries such as Poland and Hungary, over four in 10 respondents believed that “Jews have too much influence in business and finance around the world,” and over a third said the same in regards to political affairs, echoing long-established antisemitic myths and conspiracies. This parallels the resiliency of arguably the greatest global stronghold of antisemitism, North Africa and the Middle East, where a 2015 Anti-Defamation League Global Survey found that 75% of respondents held antisemitic views. In many ways, even after being targeted by numerous massacres in a matter of months, antisemitism still remains a slightly more distant, though increasingly close, reality in the United States when compared to the experiences encountered by the small Jewish communities in Europe and the almost non-existent ones remaining in North Africa and the Middle East, where daily, street-level hostility and threat has remained a fact of daily life. With this troubling portrait of a global antisemitism in mind, I implore the Grinnell community, which prides itself on advocating for the safety and well-being of marginalized communities, to extend the same level of support to your Jewish peers. Though different in both its history and nature than other bigotries, the effects of antisemitism remain just as deadly. Antisemitism is a complex phenomenon which has existed in some form for over 2,000 years, transforming from a political into a theological, and then biological and racialized phenomenon over such time. It has lived on both the left and right historically, and on each side the Jew has served as a symbol upon which prevailing societal fears and myths are projected. Throughout history, Jews have been framed as both capitalist and Communist, political elites, biological bottom dwellers, and many other harmful stereotypes. If you would like to learn more about antisemitism, and how the Jewish community seeks to confront it, I implore you to discuss, and, most importantly, to listen, to a large swath of Jewish peers, faculty, and institutional leaders, and consult experts on the subject, such as the pre-eminent American writers on antisemitism today: the historian-author Deborah Lipstadt, and journalist Yair Rosenberg of Tablet Magazine. I also encourage you to learn more about the history of antisemitism and the Jewish people, whose roots as an indigenous Middle Eastern people that were forcibly expelled from their homeland into two thousand years of exile, play a critical role in understanding the issues and endless persecution Jews faced throughout the Diaspora and continue to challenge today. But most critically, I ask that you take the easiest initial step to fight antisemitism, which is to merely acknowledge that it exists – that it actively harms and threatens the lives of our friends, families, and selves in 2019. I ask you to acknowledge that it is not made up or manufactured – that instead, it is all too real. This does not preclude bad actors from cynically exploiting antisemitism as a political football, as attempts at manufacturing outrage are often accomplished on both the right and the left. However, the best way to combat this is to center Jewish voices in any conversation on antisemitism. These issues are not political wedges or social media “likes” for us. Antisemitism is a matter of life and death. Any time it is exploited for politics, no side wins.