The return to school and a potential public health disaster last week in Pennsylvania underscore why Colorado must end its perilous philosophical exemption to mandatory immunization.
Two unvaccinated Pennsylvania “residents” died after being infected with measles, the first U.S. deaths this year related to the contagious virus, the Associated Press reported this week.
The state so far has released no details about the victims or how they contracted measles.
“Because measles was largely eliminated in the Commonwealth for more than three decades, people are not familiar with this disease and don’t fully understand the potential severity of the illness,” state Health Secretary Dr. Debra Bogen told the media.
As Colorado public school students return to school and what almost any parent knows is a few weeks of mixing up all kinds of contagions among kids in closed quarters, the threat right here in Aurora, and across Colorado is real.
There have been five measles-associated deaths in the last two years across the country, more than the combined total of reported deaths over the previous three decades, according to national records.
With 2,777 reported cases as of Thursday — 24 here in Colorado — this year already has surpassed the 2025 measles count.
It’s an astounding number and the tragedy that speaks to the damage ignorant and irresponsible parents are causing in communities across the nation — including Colorado.
Shockingly, Colorado ranks near the bottom of states for rates of child immunization compliance. It’s unnerving because the state has one of the highest proportions of highly educated parents in the nation.
But a large number of parents, and previous state lawmakers, have fallen victim to a pervasive ruse undermining immunization rates and public health.
That ruse is a regularly discredited study run by a discredited doctor who fallaciously tied autism to childhood vaccinations. The U.S. media irresponsibly published the claims despite experts exposing the author’s poor science, helping to legitimize them.
More worrisome, President Donald Trump not only appointed one of the chief vaccine deniers and conspiracy theorists to run U.S. health administration agencies, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., both leaders continue to promote their lethal quackery, most recently working to undermine U.S. research-approved childhood vaccine schedules and protocols.
And both Trump and Kenney continue to pursue their repeatedly debunked autism hoax.
There is not one reputable pediatrician, pediatric organization, hospital, clinic or researcher that does not vehemently work to debunk the autism lie and beg parents to vaccinate their children.
Now, huge swaths of the public are at dire risk across the nation, especially as school resumes.
Measles is not an inconvenience. It can easily be deadly to children and adults with compromised immune systems who depend on “the herd” to remain disease free through mass immunization.
It can be deadly to healthy children, too.
But states like Colorado have succumbed to ignorant parent pressure and continue to allow anyone to keep from vaccinating their child and attend public schools without a valid medical reason.
In Colorado, it’s easy to say that you don’t want to vaccinate and cumbersome to prove that your child has their shots.
In 2020, Senate Bill 163 made it only slightly less easy for parents to ditch critical vaccines by taking an extra step by getting a non-medical exemption signed by a physician.
Easier? Parents can, instead, take an online “education module link” that tries to inform the parent to pay heed to vaccine science, and that’s it.
That’s not good public health policy. It’s unjustified and indefensible quackery.
Public health officials need to intervene and push vaccination messages to children in public schools and their families until more sober and cogent legislators return and make rightfully mandatory vaccines mandatory again.
