Jimmy Kimmel On Anti-Vaxxers: Talk Show Host Sets The Record Straight On Anti-Vaccination Movement
It’s easy to write off the anti-vaccination movement and say all anti-vaxxers are entitled to their opinion, but when unvaccinated children are mingling with other children, especially those who may be too young to receive a vaccination, things get a little trickier (and a little dangerous). If anti-vaxxers would rather rely on findings from a debunked study and choose to ignore the recommendations from almost every doctor with a medical license, then maybe talk show host Jimmy Kimmel can convince them. And if not, maybe more doctors.
“Jimmy feels that all of this anti-vaccination silliness is starting to snowball, so he invited some real doctors to address it,” the video description reads. “These are actual medical professionals so hear them out and then decide for yourself.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a total of 154 people from 17 states and Washington D.C. contracted measles between January 1 and February 20, 2015 following an outbreak at Disneyland in California. Kimmel points out that around 20 percent of students in the same state where the outbreak began are not vaccinated because “parent’s here are more scared of gluten then they are of smallpox.”
Rates of parents deciding not to vaccinate their children have more than doubled since 2007. Anti-vaccination rates continuing to rise is even more perplexing considering a pertussis, also known as whooping cough, outbreak in 2012 that affected more than 9,000 people and killed 10 infants. The majority of hospitalized patients were infants under 3 months old who had not been vaccinated.