The resurgence of measles among children in Florida has raised concern. Although most professionals agree that this resurgence can be attributed to low vaccination rates, Fox News host Laura Ingraham has suggested instead that new cases are arising due to immigrants entering the country. After an outbreak in a South Florida elementary school, Ingraham controversially stated on her show that the spread of measles and other diseases is linked to border control and immigration.
Numerous right-leaning pundits and politicians have propagated the idea that immigrants are a primary source of disease over the years, despite evidence suggesting otherwise. For instance, Fox News inaccurately reported in 2014 that migrant children were bringing tuberculosis into the U.S. Similarly, in 2015, former President Donald Trump suggested that undocumented individuals were causing major infectious disease outbreaks in the country.
The notion of blaming immigrants for disease outbreaks has been criticized as being a tactic to demonize immigration for political purposes. Advocates such as Alicia Sadowski from the watchdog group Media Matters refers to this as a racist diversionary tactic.
Measles has recently seen an uptick of nine confirmed cases in Broward County, with six initially confirmed at the Manatee Bay Elementary School in the affluent suburb of Weston. Health officials have noted that the main cause is simply a failure to vaccinate children. Infectious disease specialist, Nicole Iovine, starkly warned that this is what transpires when people don’t vaccinate against highly infectious diseases.
Despite this, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, a vaccine skeptic, has given parents the nod to send their unvaccinated children to school, contradicting guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Measles, a preventable disease, can lead to serious health issues such as pneumonia. While the disease had been declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, there has been a recent resurgence primarily due to vaccine skepticism, as per the CDC. In Broward County, the last recorded case was in 2019, during the country’s worst outbreak since 1992, with most infected children being unvaccinated.
While Florida’s public school system requires two doses of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, parents can seek exemptions for religious and medical reasons.