Parents have plenty of tough choices to make on behalf of their little ones, but when it comes to keeping them safe, the choices ought to be obvious. Unfortunately, there's a ton of bad information out there that claims to put kids' protection first.
It doesn't, but because it's persuasive, it has made far too many parents make bad choices. And once they've made those choices, parents are often reaching increasingly far to justify those choices.
There have been 323 more measles cases in America in 2019 than in all of 2018 — and the year's not even halfway over yet. In fact, as Popular Science reported, there hasn't been a year so bad for measles in the U.S. since 1994.
Naturally, the outbreaks have sparked some heated debates and some controversial measures, including one school in New York state banning unvaccinated kids from attending.
And it's not just America grappling with a outbreak of a disease once declared eliminated in modern, industrialized countries.
The U.K. is also battling its own outbreaks — despite having a fifth of the U.S.'s population, the U.K. reported more measles cases in 2018.
Needless to say, that proposal has sparked quite the outbreak of debates. As The Independent reported, about half a million kids in the U.K. aren't fully vaccinated against the measles.
The crux of her argument: that it's against their human rights.
"It is against the Nuremberg Code. It is against the UNICEF human rights bill for children to deny them an education and also to inject them or medicate them without their consent or without parental consent," she said. "I think that the majority of moms start vaccinating, they only stop when something goes wrong."
Rather than relenting to misinformation on the internet or spread by celebrities, she said that she came to her views about vaccination after one of her kids had a negative reaction to the MMR vaccine.
In her appearance, Daley also cited stats that show only 10 kids died from the measles in the U.K. between 2003 and 2016.
So kids were better protected than they are now. In areas where vaccination rates are lower, the number of deaths rises.
Worldwide, measles claimed the lives of 110,000 people in 2017, according to the WHO, mostly kids under the age of 5 — and that's down from 545,000 in 2000, because of the increased availability of vaccines around the globe.
And her youngest daughter was born with a rare genetic disorder that means she can't get the MMR vaccine and relies on herd immunity to keep her safe.
"She was therefore at risk of contracting measles, mumps, rubella and dying very painfully of those because she had a weakened immune system," Nimmo said. "I am contacted daily by friends whose children had treatment for cancer whose immune systems are wiped out and therefore they cannot have a vaccination."
Obviously that one community in New York state made its choice, going with public health, and a judge sided with the county when the ban on unvaccinated kids attending school was challenged.
"While no one enjoys the fact that these kids are out of school, these orders have worked," said Rockland County Attorney Thomas Humbach. "They have helped prevent the measles outbreak from spreading to this school population."
Check out the debate from This Morning below.
