I’ve written about the central conspiracy theory of the vaccine movement, but there is also an idea held by many antivaxxers that I now like to call their central delusion. (Well, one of several delusions, but this is arguably the most prominent.) Specifically, it is the idea that immunity after surviving an infection (often referred to as “natural immunity”) is somehow inherently superior to immunity acquired through vaccination. While it is true that for some vaccines postinfection immunity is longer lasting than vaccine-induced immunity, the price of postinfection immunity is suffering through the infection and being at risk for the serious complications that the infection can cause. The main conclusion that flows from this assumption is that “natural herd immunity” is inherently superior to herd immunity acquired through mass vaccination. Although antivaxxers have long made this claim for measles, the most recent and famous statement of this principle was the Great Barrington Declaration, the pre-vaccine October 2020 “declaration” claiming that if governments would just let COVID-19 rip through their “low risk” population, “natural herd immunity” could be achieved in six months. True, the GBD did also call for “focused protection” of the those at high risk for hospitalization and death due to COVID but proposed no actual concrete suggestions for policy initiatives that would accomplish this end. As we’ve written multiple times before, the GBD was a eugenicist (or at least social Darwinist) document that was a disaster as policy (it never would have worked) and was a major force decimating public health during the pandemic, given how many governments were seduced by its claims.
Our very own Dr. Jonathan Howard even wrote a book that documented this fervent belief in “natural immunity,” We Want Them Infected: How the Failed Quest for Herd Immunity Led Doctors to Embrace the Anti-Vaccine Movement and Blinded Americans to the Threat of COVID. Unfortunately, as we came to know for certain after suspecting it, “natural herd immunity” was never going to be on the table for COVID-19, given that postinfection immunity is relatively short-lived and SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, easily mutated under selection pressure to produce successive variants that could evade the “natural” immunity caused by infection with previous variants, leading to the Delta and Omicron waves, for instance. However, the idea that “natural herd immunity” is superior is not new, and it is manifesting itself in other ways during the current ongoing measles outbreak that is on track to cause the US to lose its measles elimination status later this year. Just an hour’s drive south of me, in Ohio, antivaxxers are kicking up a fuss about a surprisingly rational policy (given the state and its politics) designed to help control school outbreaks of measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases. Over at Children’s Health Defense, the antivax org founded by our current Secretary of Health and Human Services and longtime antivax activist, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Michael Nevradakis is in fine fettle complaining that Ohio Schools Can Send Unvaccinated Kids Home for 25 Days — Even If They’re Not Sick.
First, he describes the policy:
Ohio’s new policy forcing healthy, unvaccinated children out of school for 21 to 25 days after a confirmed case of measles or rubella is drawing fire from parents, lawyers and scientists.
Critics say the policy isn’t needed to protect public health, it could harm children and it may be illegal.
Ohio’s new policy forcing healthy, unvaccinated children out of school for 21 to 25 days after a confirmed case of measles or rubella is drawing fire from parents, lawyers and scientists.
The policy, part of a public health order signed in February by Ohio Department of Public Health (ODH) Director Bruce Vanderhoff, is enforceable even if the unvaccinated student shows no signs of illness or infection.
The policy also applies whenever a mumps or chickenpox outbreak occurs — and it extends to sports and extracurricular activities, not just classroom attendance.
The 21-to-25-day quarantine resets every time a new case or outbreak is reported at the student’s school.
“Critics say”? You really mean, “Antivax activists say.” “Scientists”? Say instead the antivax cranks and quacks aligned with the vaccine movement, which is what you really mean. In any case, kudos to the Ohio Director of Health Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff for having the testicular fortitude to use his power to protect unvaccinated children. Given the political landscape in Ohio, he must have known he would face a lot of blowback and even possibly personal danger.
This is, of course, Epidemiology 101. In order to slow an outbreak of an infectious disease like measles, keep as many individuals most susceptible to the disease (e.g., the unvaccinated) away from places where they are likely to come into contact with the disease (e.g., schools in which a case of measles has been observed). In addition, such a policy protects the the individuals most vulnerable to the disease, namely the unvaccinated. (I’ll explain more about why this policy is science-based a little later.) In public health, this sort of policy is science-based and unobjectionable, so much so that it’s difficult to believe that anyone would argue otherwise, but Nevradakis is an antivax activist with an antivax organization; so he continues:
Naturally, CHD frames this policy as an assault on liberty, because of course they do:
Jeffrey Tucker, president and founder of the Brownstone Institute, called the policy “cruel and discriminatory” and a violation of the rights of children and their parents or guardians.
“If the policy is to protect the unvaccinated children, the parents should be the ones to decide,” Tucker said.
Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), said the “contrast between medical freedom and medical tyranny is blatant” in the policy, which he said “discriminates against people based on medical choice … with zero evidence that they pose a risk.”
Citing the neo-Confederate hack conspiracy theorist Jeffrey Tucker, who arguably is the one most responsible for the GBD, given that he brought together the three malleable libertarian-leaning scientists who wrote and signed the Declaration, one of whom, far from being “persecuted” is now the Director of the National Institutes of Health, is certainly a…choice. It’s not a good choice, but it’s definitely a choice. Before I discuss this more, though, I want to push back on the idea that there is “zero evidence” that they pose a risk.
The scientific rationale for excluding unvaccinated children from school during an outbreak
Let’s recap what the Ohio policy states. I do want to mention one thing about it that antivaxxers should like, specifically this:
A child who had measles disease and presents a signed statement from their parent, guardian, or physician to that effect, is not required to be vaccinated against measles. However, in an outbreak situation, a written statement of previous measles disease is acceptable in lieu of vaccination only if it is signed by a physician and gives the month and year of infection.
Surprise! It turns out that, contrary to claims otherwise by antivaxxers, those nasty public health officials do recognize postinfection immunity as being important, although, understandably, in an outbreak situation the health department wants more evidence than just the parents’ say-so.
But why do public health officials recommend excluding unvaccinated students from school when a measles case is reported at their school? It all boils down to a science-based knowledge of the measles virus and the behavior of measles as a disease.
First, we know that measles is highly transmissible. Indeed, it has one of the highest reproductive numbers (R0) of any known virus that infects humans, generally estimated to be around 12–18 in susceptible populations; i.e., one case can infect 12–18 others in a fully susceptible group. (This estimate comes from decades of outbreak-investigation studies and is summarized in systematic reviews of measles transmission dynamics, such as this highly cited one from 2017. This very high R0 is why the herd immunity threshold for vaccine coverage is so high for measles (~95%).
Second, measles is spread by respiratory droplets and aerosols and can persist in a room for up to two hours after the infected person leaves, meaning that face-to-face contact is not necessary to transmit measles. Add to that the fact that infected people are contagious up to four days before the characteristic measles rash appears, although respiratory symptoms tend to appear slightly earlier. It turns out that the incubation period for measles is generally around 10 days from exposure to onset of illness and 14 days to appearance of the rash. This lag is why exclusion policies tend to emphasize the date of exposure rather than the date of symptom onset. A susceptible child can shed virus for over a week with no visible signs.
Third, among people with no pre-existing immunity, the infection rate is estimated to be approximately 90%, which means that 90% of people who are not immune will develop disease after exposure. This is one of the highest attack rates documented for any vaccine-preventable disease.
All of this leads to the generally accepted guidance from public health institutions (e.g., the CDC and most state health departments) that unvaccinated or otherwise nonimmune children be excluded from school for 21 days after the date of possible exposure or until they show evidence of immunity. The 21 day window to be excluded is not at all arbitrary; rather, it covers the outer bound of the incubation period so that an infected but asymptomatic child does not return to school and start a new chain of transmission. Similar estimates for incubation periods used to guide school exclusion policies can be found in this systematic review of several vaccine-preventable diseases from 2018. These sorts of considerations are behind the CDC’s recommendations for a 21 day exclusion period for unvaccinated children when a case of measles is detected at a school or day care facility. (I’m surprised RFK Jr.s antivax goons haven’t gotten around to deleting that webpage yet.) The science-based rationale behind such policies can be summed up simply: Measles spreads too efficiently and too early (before symptoms) to rely on anything other than excluding the non-immune during the incubation window.
I would also point out that this policy has the primary purpose of protecting the unvaccinated child from measles, in addition to its purpose of preventing the creation of a secondary chain of transmission from the unvaccinated child who’s been exposed and shedding virus but is not yet symptomatic. Not that this consideration seems to enter into antivaxxers’ consideration. After all, to them, measles is a “harmless” childhood disease. Never mind that it is not, and that a significant proportion of children who get the measles develop secondary pneumonia, that there is roughly a 1 in 1,000 risk of serious neurological sequelae, and a 1:1,000 risk of death. I also like to point out that antivaxxers not infrequently advocate quarantine to control outbreaks of infectious disease. Exclusion from school is a step considerably less drastic than quarantine, and here they are, losing their minds over it.
Vaccine injury?
After laying down the appeal to “personal freedom” to spread disease and let their children catch measles, Nevradakis immediately pivots to fear mongering about “vaccine injury” from the MMR vaccine:
Earlier this month, Ohio school districts sent letters to parents warning that children who haven’t received two doses of the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine will be “excluded from school” for 21 days whenever the school confirms a measles case.
According to the policy, any vaccine doses children received five or more days before the minimum interval or age are “invalid” — so those students are classified as unvaccinated and required to be re-vaccinated.
That could put those children “at serious risk of vaccine injury,” according to Ohio Advocates for Medical Freedom, which called for the “immediate repeal” of the policy.
In a letter to leaders and members of the Ohio Senate and House of Representatives, the group said Ohio’s policy amounts to a “coercion tactic to bully parents into submitting to vaccination against their conscience out of desperation.”
Most families will be unable to find solutions to keep their unvaccinated children at home for several weeks or months, the letter noted.
Leslie Manookian, president of the Health Freedom Defense Fund, agreed that the policy appears deliberately designed to “coerce busy parents into vaccinating their children so they won’t be excluded from attending school and any school-related activities.”
Does anyone remember Leslie Manookian? I do. I first encountered her in 2011 when I encountered her movie The Greater Good, one of the first antivax propaganda films masquerading as a documentary that I ever deconstructed. I encountered her again a year later, this time in person, when while attending that year’s The Amazing Meeting, I was invited to witness a debate about vaccines at FreedomFest in Las Vegas between our fearless leader Dr. Steven Novella and antivax “wellness” crank Dr. Julian Whitaker. (Dr. Novella wiped the floor with Dr. Whitaker, leading to a hilariously pathetic response from him.)
As for Ohio AMF, they really turn up the hysteria to 11 in their objection:
Also included in Vanderhoff’s “Approved Means of Immunization” 2/4/26 document, he has set a dangerous requirement for parents to RE-VACCINATE their child if ANY DOSE they received did not occur within 4 DAYS before the “minimum age requirement” and labels 5-day-late doses “INVALID.” This requirement puts children at serious risk of vaccine injury due to over-vaccination and places extreme time-constraint burdens on parents. This tyrannical, unfounded requirement is another grave abuse of power on behalf of the Health Director and it demands immediate attention, reprimand, and REPEAL of the order by the legislature.
Hysterical much. Let’s look at what the order actually says:
Vaccine doses administered four (4) days or less before the minimum interval or age are considered valid. Doses of any vaccine administered five (5) or more days earlier than the minimum interval or minimum age should not be counted as valid doses and should be repeated as age appropriate. The repeat dose should be spaced after the invalid dose by the recommended minimum interval. Any live virus vaccines (measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella vaccines) not administered on the same day must be separated by at least four (4) weeks (28 days).
This is a whole lot less “draconian” than Ohio AMF tries to make you believe. Note that the order says “repeated as age-appropriate” and not mentioned by Ohio AMF is this part of the order:
A student who presents laboratory evidence of immunity shall be exempt from the second dose requirement.
If measles antibody titers are drawn and shown to be sufficiently high to indicate immunity to measles, then extra doses are not required in this policy. As for “risk of vaccine injury,” that is standard antivax nonsense. I realize that antivaxxers don’t believe it, but there are mountains of evidence that vaccines are effective and incredibly safe. Are they absolutely, perfectly safe? No. Nothing in medicine (or life, for that matter) is. Compared to remaining susceptible to the diseases they prevent, however, vaccines are far safer.
Meanwhile, as antivaxxers are wont to do, Ohio AMF is portraying the unvaccinated as victims, this time of…segregation:
Ohio Advocates for Medical Freedom is asking House and Senate members to call for the immediate repeal of ORC Section 3701.13 Department of Health – Powers (B)(4). This section, which is supposed to “encourage vaccination,” is instead being abused by the Department of Health to implement state-sanctioned segregation of healthy Ohio children and the coercion and punishment of parents who lawfully exercise their right to vaccine exemptions for school attendance.
I always find it gross when antivaxxers don the mantle of victimhood for their choices, but it’s even grosser when they co-opt the language of civil rights to liken themselves to historically disadvantaged and oppressed minorities by invoking terms like “segregation.” They love to do this all the time too, even going so far as to declare themselves the “new civil rights movement.” I guess that their likening themselves to victims of segregation in marginally less offensive than past examples of this sort of rhetoric; for example, when they liken themselves to victims of “othering” of the sort that led to the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, and the like or when they liken vaccines and vaccine mandates to slavery (even likening pre-pandemic laws on vaccine mandates to the Fugitive Slave Act), rape, segregation and Jim Crow, human trafficking and sex slavery, and child grooming. At least this time, they haven’t tried to co-opt holidays commemorating the end of oppression (e.g., Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery) or symbols of oppression (e.g., the Yellow Star of David used by Nazis to identify Jews in Germany and their conquered territories) and declared themselves to be like abolitionists.
They do love their language of victimhood, though, and this time it’s now different. Consistent with longstanding antivax rhetoric, they are also, apparently, the victims of “bullying”:
Health Director Vanderhoff is setting school EXCLUSION policy for timeframes and infections that are NOT listed in ORC to exclude totally healthy unvaccinated children from school and activities, as a COERCION tactic to BULLY parents into submitting to vaccination against their conscience out of desperation.
And:
Vanderhoff knows exactly what he is doing. The average Ohio parent can NOT manage having their child doing school from home remotely for WEEKS to MONTHS. How many students will lose out on sports or other college scholarships because they were obstructed from sports and in-person learning? Did we not learn our lesson during COVID as to the level of damage this caused our children in the name of “public health”?
Actions. Consequences. Learn the relationship, antivaxxers. Your “choice” for your child has consequences.
But, but, but…the measles vaccine doesn’t work?
A bit later in the CHD post, Nevradakis lays down a masterclass in spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about the measles vaccine by trying to claim that the MMR vaccine doesn’t work. Of course, it is more than 90% effective when children receive the two recommended doses, but it isn’t 100% effective, which means—to antivaxxers at least—that it’s crap. Key to Nevradakis’ Gish gallop of deception is the claim that the vaccinated can still catch and transmit measles:
According to a systematic review published last month in the peer-reviewed Expert Review of Vaccines, people who were vaccinated against measles can still contract and transmit the virus to others, and in some instances initiate substantial chains of transmission, which can “contribute to outbreaks.”
In 2011, a fully vaccinated person in New York also infected others. In measles outbreaks in Italy between 2017 and 2021, many vaccinated people became infected. The same was true for a 2025 outbreak in Colorado.
“Even if every single child in a school, community or state were vaccinated, that would not stop cases of measles, because the measles vaccine suffers from both primary and secondary vaccine failure,” Manookian said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that the primary failure rate of the MMR vaccine is as high as 7%.
Tell me you don’t understand herd immunity without telling me you don’t understand herd immunity.
Yes, some people vaccinated with MMR can still catch the measles. However, the above quote is a misreading of all the studies cited. For example, the article in Expert Review of Vaccines cited concludes:
Measles transmissions from vaccinated cases, although relatively uncommon, must be considered in public health investigations, as such transmissions can contribute to outbreaks.
That’s the point that Nevradakis fails to mention. Yes, vaccinated people can catch and transmit measles. They just have a far lower chance of catching and transmitting measles than unvaccinated people do. That’s the function of vaccines, to decrease the risk as much as possible; vaccines can’t eliminate it entirely. Again, this is a typical antivax fallacy of black-and-white thinking. If a vaccine doesn’t prevent disease and transmission 100% of the time, it’s useless. Let’s put it this way. According to this review, 7.9% of vaccinated people who got measles transmitted it to other people. In the unvaccinated, that number would be closer to 100%. The article also estimates an R0 for these people of around 4. Remember, the R0 for unvaccinated people in a susceptible population is 12-16. Seriously, Nevardakis’ argument is so stupid that it insults my intelligence to read it.
As for that 2011, case, the article concluded:
This is the first report of measles transmission from a twice-vaccinated individual with documented secondary vaccine failure. The clinical presentation and laboratory data of the index patient were typical of measles in a naive individual. Secondary patients had robust anamnestic antibody responses. No tertiary cases occurred despite numerous contacts. This outbreak underscores the need for thorough epidemiologic and laboratory investigation of suspected cases of measles regardless of vaccination status.
The first report. Again, what Nevradakis is fear mongering about, vaccinated individuals catching and transmitting measles, is very uncommon. Again, the issue is not that some vaccinated people become infected with measles and transmitting during an outbreak. The issue is the risk of becoming infected with measles and transmitting it during an outbreak, and that risk is a lot lower if you’ve been vaccinated and have never had measles before than it is if you’re immunologically naive; i.e., unvaccinated and have never had measles before.
It’s the same game antivaxxers play every time there’s a measles outbreak. They point to a number of cases of measles in vaccinated children as evidence that the “vaccine doesn’t work,” neglecting to divide by the denominator to determine the percentage risk (or attack rate) of measles in the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations. When that is done, inevitably it is found that the risk of getting measles is much lower if you’ve been vaccinated. I’ve seen them play this game every time there is a measles outbreak, dating back to my earliest days as a blogger.
Nevradakis’ final ploy involves—you guessed it!—waning immunity:
A 2007 CDC study concluded that the immunity provided by the MMR vaccine wanes over time. The study found that 35% of vaccinated 7-year-olds, 60% of vaccinated 15-year-olds and approximately 66% of vaccinated adults can carry measles and infect others even if they don’t have symptoms.
Ohio Advocates for Medical Freedom addressed the MMR vaccine’s waning protection in its letter, stating that it’s “absurd to discriminate against healthy unvaccinated children when more than 60% of the teachers are able to carry and spread measles to students.”
The study cited above showed nothing of the sort. (Read it for yourself if you don’t believe me. I wondered if someone had inserted the wrong link when I read the study.) It was strictly a seroprevalence study that looked at waning antibody levels over time after vaccination, using a cohort of children who received the second measles vaccine dose at kindergarten (aged 4-6 years) or middle school (aged 10-12 years) in 1994 or 1995. Serum samples were collected periodically during a 10-year period for the kindergarten group and a 5-year period for the middle school group. The authors did note that low measles antibody titers (<120 mIU/mL) did represent a “threshold of potential susceptibility used in our study has been used in previous studies modeling projections of vaccine-induced immunity in the absence of wild-type measles boosting.” However, they did not look at whether these levels indicated that vaccinees could have asymptomatic cases that infect others. The “waning immunity” examined during the study was no more than waning antibody levels, and the investigators noted:
A rise in the proportion of persons with low antibody levels suggests an increase in potential susceptibility, but low titers are unlikely to represent the same risk of illness or viral transmission as absent antibodies.28,37–39 In our study, none of the children with low titers had positive or even indeterminate IgM responses to MMR2, in contrast to the majority of those with negative titers, suggesting that those with low titers may generate an anamnestic response to wild-type virus, consistent with previous studies.37–39 If ongoing viral transmission requires that a substantial portion of the population be antibody-negative, our data suggest that such a situation may be several decades away. Furthermore, as demonstrated by Ward et al37 and Gans et al,40,41 cell-mediated immunity plays an important role in resistance to measles infection, an issue we did not address. This is an area in which large-scale prospective studies are needed to provide reliable and quantifiable population-based indicators of cell-mediated protection from measles disease. Such studies would assist clinicians and public health policymakers to determine the relative importance of measles-specific T cells to protection as they encounter an expanding number of persons with low, indeterminate, or undetectable measles antibody levels.
In other words, low antibody titers alone might not indicate susceptibility, due to cell-mediated “memory” immune responses. It is known that antibody titer decline doesn’t map cleanly onto loss of clinical protection against measles infection, because immunity to measles involves memory B- and T-cells that can still mount a rapid anamnestic response even after circulating antibody levels fall, possibly even to below levels that are considered protective. Not that that stops CHD and Ohio AMF from citing this study as slam-dunk evidence that 60% of teachers are susceptible to asymptomatic cases of measles. Of course, if that were the case, one would expect a lot of teachers to become infected and even clinically ill during outbreaks, and we just don’t see that happening.
But won’t you think of the children?
Thus far, the antivax complaints about the Ohio policy boil down to false claims that the vaccine doesn’t work, that it causes vaccine “injury,” and that excluding unvaccinated children from school during outbreaks is tyrannical and fascistic. As if that weren’t bad enough, won’t someone think of the children excluded from school for a whopping three weeks?
Enter Nevradakis again:
According to CHD Advocacy Director Michael Kane, evidence shows that excluding children from school can lead to their being “branded and scarred as being different and being removed.”
School districts and state health boards haven’t conducted studies on the potential harms of their exclusion policies. However, statistics suggest such policies may be connected to an increased rate of youth suicides in the U.S. in recent years.
Data from the Washington State Department of Children, Youth & Families show a sharp increase in youth suicides during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Nevada, the Clark County School District, which includes Las Vegas and is the fifth largest district in the U.S., reopened schools to in-person learning in January 2021, after 18 students had committed suicide since the beginning of the pandemic. That was double the number recorded in the district for all of 2019.
Can you say “apples and oranges”? Sure, I knew you could. There’s a difference between a short term exclusion from school and switch to remote learning and what happened during the pandemic, when schools were closed for months on end before finally reopening. I have relatives who had school age children at the time who experienced this firsthand, and it was not easy. It was also very different from what CHD and Ohio AMF are ranting about in that it applied to all children and nothing the parents did could change that. In contrast, in this case, parents who decide not to vaccinate their children should be aware that there are potentially consequences if there are outbreaks of vaccine-preventable disease.
Everything old is new again…or is it?
Those who haven’t followed the vagaries of antivax rhetoric and politics might be shocked to have encountered an example of antivaxxers opposing a rather common sense science-based policy to help to control outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases by excluding unvaccinated children from school after a case of measles is identified at their school. I thought I’d conclude by pointing out that there is nothing new here. Unfortunately, Michigan antivaxxers tried to pave the way, starting over a decade ago. For example, in 2015, antivaxxers in Michigan tried to pass HB 5126 and 5127, bills that would have stripped local health departments of their power to exclude unvaccinated children from school during outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases. Hell, it would also have stripped local health authorities of the power to exclude children with vaccine-preventable diseases from attending school and rescinded the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services rule that requires parents seeking nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates to attend an educational session at their county health department. I kid you not. Fortunately, it did not pass. Not that Michigan antivaxxers aren’t persistent. After the election of Donald Trump, in 2017 they tried once more to make measles great again.
Before I conclude, I can’t resist revisiting an experience I had in 2018 during the primary election season when I attended a “vaccine choice roundtable” hosted by the local district Republican Party. I went incognito, of course, because I was fairly well known—by name, at least—among the local antivax community. Fortunately, not many of them knew what I looked like, which allowed me to observe the proceedings as the proverbial “fly on the wall.” There were, of course, many lamentations and complaints about vaccines expressed by the panelists, but one of the complaints by antivaxxers that riled the crowd up the most was the complaint about the power of state and county public health departments to exclude unvaccinated children from school during the outbreak of vaccine-preventable disease. Multiple times, antivaxxers expressed outrage how unvaccinated children are excluded from school if there’s even a single case of measles there, while children with hepatitis B and HIV are not. There was a real sense of misunderstanding of the rationale why unvaccinated children are excluded from school, namely because they are susceptible to the disease, while children with HIV and hepatitis B generally do not pose a danger to other children. There was also a serious sense of entitlement and a view that the health of other people’s children is none of their concern.
Unfortunately, these attitudes are nothing new. I’ve been dealing with them for many years now. Consequently, nothing that is being done in Ohio or other states to eliminate the power of public health officials to exclude susceptible children from school during an outbreak of vaccine-preventable disease is new. It’s just that the antivaxxers are emboldened to push for policies that, in Michigan at least, were always rejected, even by Republican administrations. It’s also, unfortunately, a time when politics are such that antivaxxers might succeed in a number of states.