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Measles, the Public Health Crisis that . . . Wasn’t
While doing research for an upcoming blog on the changing representation of “anti-vaxxers” in the media, I revisited some of last year’s media coverage of the recent measles outbreak at Disneyland. In the wake of that outbreak, the media turned on vaccine-hesitant parents with an unprecedented wave of vicious stories, frequently pitting more the more fearful parents against their neighbors. These articles blamed the then-current outbreak on a rising tide of vaccine exemptions and vaccine hesitancy in today’s parents, frequently referred to as the “anti-vaccine movement.”