Another avoidable public health disaster

There is a measles outbreak is south wales and northern England.  This is the result of a large number of people choosing not to be immunised.  Why would anyone in their right mind not want their child immunised against measles?  It is a horrible disease, and can cause some nasty side effects - blindness and even death (although this is only 0.3% in the USA, that will be similar here in the UK). 

The reason is simple.  The perception of the vaccine was that its effects were worse, much worse than the disease itself.  This is the time that the MMR vaccine was thought to cause autism.  The separate vaccines were still available, but the stubborn government refused to let people have a choice.  Most would have chosen three vaccines and received the same immunity, but the government had decided that it was better to only allow the combined vaccine.  Those who could afford to get the separate jabs privately went and did just that.  The MMR vaccine is better because it reduced the chance of babies catching the disease as they could receive the vaccine earlier.

The threat of actively damaging your child, and giving him autism meant that people voted with their feet and stayed away from clinics. As a result, there are large populations of children now in their teenage years who have no immunity.  It was predictable, even expected, but it seems nothing has been done to follow up these children.  Now there is an epidemic.  That is also entirely predictable.  Now there are expensive emergency vaccination programs, but for some it will be too late - they will catch measles and suffer side-effects that will blight their lives.

People make their decisions on the best data they have available - scare stories are all too easily available, but the issue here is not really people fearing a side effect. The issue here is 'pig headed' government that will not give people what they want.  A democracy is supposed to do just that, and in this case it would have been sensible just to continue with the old vaccines and wait until the fuss died down.  Then there would (most likely) not be an epidemic.

We see this sort of approach from government time after time, but how do we finally do something about it?