U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams visited Vancouver on Wednesday for a briefing on a measles outbreak that has clocked 70 confirmed cases, and cost the state more than $1.2 million to fight since January.
There have been 71 cases in Washington, and four more in Oregon linked to Clark County’s outbreak. Two more Oregon cases aren’t linked to Clark County.
Adams toured Clark County Public Health’s office in Vancouver, and met with Public Health employees and county councilors.
Adams focused his message Wednesday on the need for the medical community to have respectful and accurate conversations with parents about vaccination.
“There’s a social contract that exists in this community,” Adams said. “We all have to look out for one another, and unfortunately some people can’t get vaccinated, so it’s important that the ones who can, do — not just to protect themselves, but to protect everyone else. And if we don’t, then this whole social contract begins to fall apart, and our society, quite frankly, starts to fall apart.”
Adams also visited Evergreen Pediatric Clinic on Northeast 87th Avenue in Vancouver, and met Vancouver mother Cerisse Wilson, 31, the mother of Everett Banse-Fay, 15 months, who was vaccinated earlier this year. Wilson’s mother is state Sen. Lynda Wilson, R-Vancouver, who opposes two bills in the Legislature that would tighten exemptions in the state.
Cerisse Wilson said she was hesitant about vaccines initially after the birth of her son, but changed her mind through conversations with Everett’s pediatrician. Wilson said having a doctor tell her to “vaccinate or get out” wasn’t going to change her mind.
“He allowed me to explain my fears and apprehensions toward it,” Wilson said of Everett’s pediatrician.
Wilson said she decided to get Everett on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommended vaccination schedule because she “had more anxiety about him not being protected by the vaccines, than by him being fearful of what the vaccines could potentially do to him.”
“It takes health care providers having these honest conversations with their parents,” added Washington Secretary of Health John Wiesman, who was joined by Lillian Shirley, director for Oregon Public Health divisions.
Adams said educating people is an important tool to improving vaccination, though he noted that states with fewer routes to immunization exemptions had better vaccination rates.
“I can’t get involved with state legislation, but what I can say is the science is clear,” Adams said. “States that limit the number of exemptions they give have higher vaccination rates and are less at risk for vaccine preventable disease outbreaks. … I personally think there’s a lot we can do to better educate folks so they can make better decisions on their own, but the science shows us that if you have more than just medical exemptions, that your vaccination rates drop and you are at risk.”
Wilson said social media and misinformation can play a role in vaccination decisions for young parents. She said it’s easy to find what you’re looking for to validate your concerns on the internet, joking that “a worried mom does better research than the FBI.”
Adams mentioned he’s working with Facebook and Google to fight the spread of vaccine misinformation, and that Facebook should have a more specific announcement on those efforts later this week.
“When someone is looking for something, and the first three pages they get are all misinformation vs. if the first three pages are all accurate information and it’s not until you get to the fourth page where you start to see the misinformation, then it does start to change how people process that misinformation and rank it in terms of influence,” Adams explained.
Wiesman said tech companies should take some responsibility, but that vaccination is a community effort.
“We can do a better job of how we get information out,” Wiesman said. “But we also need social media companies to be responsible. We need them to take a look at their algorithms and other things that are driving people toward misinformation. So there is a whole collective responsibility here.”
