Californians soften stance against measles vaccine

As the mother of a new baby, Tanya Remer Altmann would love to show him off to the world.

But right now, she's afraid to take him outside the house.

Altmann lives in southern California, the epicenter of a nationwide measles outbreak that got its start at Disneyland before Christmas. The measles virus found fertile ground in which to spread in southern California, which has long been known as ground zero in the anti-vaccine movement.

But now that more than 100 people nationwide have been diagnosed with the measles in January alone, it's forcing the state with large pockets of unvaccinated children to change. At least 99 measles cases since December were in California, state health officials say.

Parents whose children have been quarantined after they were exposed to measles are scrambling for child care or taking weeks off from work. Many who have long resisted vaccinations have a newfound fear of the virus and are flooding pediatrician offices looking for the shots. Some pediatricians are running low of vaccine and others are calling parents to ask them to vaccinate their babies. Some are warning families not to bring contagious kids into crowded waiting rooms.

Altmann, a Los Angeles pediatrician, firmly believes in the importance of vaccines, but like all newborns, her 3-week-old son, Maxton, is too young to have received any. That makes him particularly vulnerable not just to measles but to whooping cough, mumps and a slew of other diseases that can put babies like him in the hospital.

In the past week, babies in day care centers across the country, including California and Illinois, have been diagnosed with measles, causing health officials to worry that other infants at the centers will become sick.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that babies get their first measles shot at 12 to 15 months of age. They suggest vaccinating babies at 6 months if they will be traveling abroad.

"It's a scary time for parents of babies under 1 year," says Altmann, whose older sons are 7 and 9. "He hasn't left the house except to go to the pediatrician for his checkups. I'm rearranging how I handle everything. I'm having to call in a lot more help from the nanny and the grandparents to help haul the big boys around so they don't miss baseball."

Parents across the country are being forced to hire sitters or take time off from work or school to stay home with children quarantined because of measles exposure. In Santa Monica, Calif, measles temporarily shut down a high school day care center for teen mothers. Fourteen infants were told to stay home for three weeks, the incubation period for measles. That could leave their teen mothers out of school for three weeks as well.

Just taking her baby to the pediatrician makes Altmann nervous. Measles patients have exposed hundreds of people at hospitals, clinics and urgent-care centers. Sitting in a crowded pediatric office, Altmann says she thought to herself, "I don't even want to think what germs are in this waiting room."

Receptionists at Kaiser Permanente now ask families about measles symptoms when they make appointments, says physician Nam Lam, assistant chief of pediatrics at Kaiser Permanente Orange County.

At the Westchester Medical Center in Los Angeles, receptionists tell patients with measles symptoms to meet staff at the office's back entrance, to avoid infecting others, pediatrician Amy Shapiro says.

While less than 1% of babies get no vaccines at all, studies have found that up to 40% of parents skip or delay vaccines, often due to myths about vaccines causing autism. Numerous studies have failed to find any link between vaccines and autism or other developmental conditions.

In the past, Shapiro had to work to persuade some parents to vaccinate their children on time. Now, so many parents are asking for the measles vaccine that she nearly ran out of shots.

Some parents continue to delay vaccinations. To reach them, Kaiser Permanente is sending automated messages to families with unvaccinated children, reminding them to come in for measles shots, Lam says.

Many families with doubts about vaccines seek out Santa Monica pediatrician Jay Gordon, a well-known author, because he shares some of their concerns about vaccine safety and the standard vaccination schedule. In spite of the outbreak, Gordon still recommends waiting until age 3 to vaccinate kids against measles, to reduce the risk that the vaccine could affect a child's development.

Gordon, who says he's "busier than I've ever been," is now vaccinating 25 children a day from families that had hesitated about vaccines in the past.

"I'm inundated with people who want vaccine consultations," Gordon says. "I'm getting phone calls by the dozens."

The measles outbreaks has changed public opinion, Gordon says. "People are viewing the vaccine differently. The people in the pharmaceutical industry must be thrilled."

Gordon says the change in public opinion is being driven by a media frenzy that is unfairly stigmatizing families who question vaccines.

"This is not the outbreak the media is making it out to be," Gordon says. "Whenever anybody says what needs to be said, which is that this is a small outbreak and we need calm discussion, the conversation becomes the most vituperative it's ever been."

Medical offices are struggling to find the best way to safely treat potential measles patients without letting them infect other patients.

Los Angeles mother Jennifer Charness has hesitated to vaccinate her sons, age 5 and almost 3, partly because of books by actress Jenny McCarthy, who charged that her son developed autism because of a vaccine.

"I was a young mom, reading all of her books, and she claimed her son had autism," says Charness, 34. "I thought, 'No, I'm not vaccinating.' It was a big deal at the time."

Charness waited until her son was 5 before vaccinating him against measles. With measles spreading so close to home, she decided it was time to vaccinate her younger child, as well.

"I heard about the outbreak, and took him to the doctor the next day," Charness says.

Kaiser Permanente physician Lam says he's relieved to see more families accepting vaccines.

"I sit down with them," he says, "and thank them for making that choice."