The United States is seeing its largest measles outbreak in 33 years. As of late last week, there were nearly 1,300 cases spread across 38 states. West Virginia isn't one of them.Â
That could change, if Gov. Patrick Morrisey continues his crusade to loosen the state's law that allows vaccine exemptions only on medical grounds for children entering public schools. Most other states allow for religious or even "philosophical" exemptions. Morrisey, mainly for political purposes, issued an executive order allowing for religious exemptions earlier this year, his main argument boiling down to West Virginia should be more like other states.
Yet, because of that law, West Virginia has one of the highest immunization rates in the country and has dodged the bullet of resurgences of previously eradicated and serious diseases, such as the measles and polio. States hit by outbreaks have loose regulations and dipping immunization rates, thanks in part to the anti-vaxxer movement fueled by junk science and conspiracy theories.Â
Bills to loosen vaccine exemptions have been introduced annually in the West Virginia Legislature, and such a proposal seemed primed to pass this year, given Morrisey's lobbying of the cause and a Republican supermajority in the House of Delegates and Senate. After all of the amendments and back-and-forth between chambers, the House seemed poised to send a bill to Morrisey's desk.
Over the weekend before the vote, though, the United States recorded its first measles death in more than 10 years. The disease killed an unvaccinated child in a Mennonite community in Texas. The West Virginia House subsequently voted the bill down. Two other deaths have since been attributed to measles.Â
After the bill died, Morrisey has contended his executive order holds and has even taken to nakedly political grandstanding, inserting his support into a lawsuit filed by a Raleigh County parent against the West Virginia Board of Education, the Raleigh County board and others over vaccine exemptions based on religious beliefs.Â
As national trends are showing, this is a really bad time for West Virginia to undo one of the few things at which the state excels. Among these nearly 1,300 measles cases, 92% of the people were not vaccinated, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While the majority of the cases are in Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma, measles has hit each of the six states that border West Virginia.
