 Okay, Community Matters here at a given Tuesday at the 12 o'clock block, I'm Jay Fidel of Think Tech and to my left is Craig Wagner, he's a lawyer, and he's also a concerned citizen. Am I right Craig? You're right on both accounts, and I'm allowed to be both, I believe. You can if you wish, you should actually, but I believe lawyers have special duties to our society. Well, you know, we certainly have some education that allows us as concerned citizens to hopefully, you know, both objectively and subjectively look at the issues in the public and problems and, you know, step out and make our voice heard. Well spoken. Very important point. Anyway, today's measles in Washington end around the world, and it's a very, it's so unpleasant to see this phenomenon happening even in the face of all the ignorance we have on other issues in the country. But there are states, a number of states where people don't want anti-vaccination, they don't want vaccinations, and they don't want laws that require vaccinations about measles. And as a result, because people take this position, don't vaccinate their kids, their kids get sick, and the kids next to them in school get sick, and we have epidemics in several states. Can you talk about it? Well, I mean, let's talk about what's happening now, because this is not a small issue. And yet at the same time, it's an interesting issue from, you know, just from almost a scientific standpoint. In 2000, measles was a non-issue, it basically had been eradicated for the United States. So how is it that we're seeing right now in our society pockets of measles showing up? And not just small pockets, but large numbers. Washington, in the last number of months, has had over 70 cases of measles. And these strike primarily to the young kids and such. How can this happen when we have the vaccines and such available to keep kids from even getting this? The MMR vaccine's been around a long time. What's keeping kids from taking that? And the answer is the parents. Why would they do that knowing that this is a solid protection against it? I mean, we'd eradicated measles. And the MMR vaccine is measles, mumps, and rubella. It's obvious some kids are taking it here in Hawaii. We had mumps a while back, and we had cases of mumps showing up. But it's not just children, it's adults and such as well. The elderly, other people with immune conditions and such that affect their immune systems can also be affected and such by it. Where we have a lot of people coming in from other countries, immigrating and such, we have more of a danger because they haven't necessarily had access to this as children at other times. And nowadays, if you're born here in the United States, the MMR vaccine is a standard protocol and really should be taken. Well, there was a time where measles was wiped out. There were. No, there were or was. No measles. That's right. Right? The vaccine worked all over town in every city and state around the world. But somehow, we, that is the species, has regressed. And the reason is that people don't want to take the vaccines. Is there a rational reason for that? Why do people make up their minds? They don't want their kids to take the vaccine. Okay. Well, that's a good question and a fair question. And one of the most difficult parts of that one is there are rational reasons for not taking it. But they're really rare. The rational reason for not taking it would be my child has an immune condition and such and the doctor says there'd be dangers in taking this. So within any community. That's a legitimate reason. And it is. That's an objective, factual, scientific reason. Yes, it is. There are very few children with an immune compromised condition that would prevent them from being able to take it. And quite frankly, within any community, there's a certain percentage that could not take it and we still have non-viability for measles as a contagious disease. It's when it gets below that number and that number can be 90-something percent. A tipping point kind of number. That's exactly right. And with different diseases, that's different. But for the most part with measles, we'd certainly gotten to the point within the United States, as you pointed out, not within the world, but not within the world because it hasn't been available and it hasn't been available because it costs money, because those societies don't have a distribution network or a government that support them. So if you, you know, in other places, they don't have it. So this issue doesn't come up about their, you know, the reasons why they don't do it is because they don't have it. They don't have the resources. They don't have the medicine. But in the United States, I think it's fair to say that every state of the union, every community in every state, measles vaccine is available. Absolutely true. And yet there are an increasing, this is very troubling, an increasing number of parents who don't want their kids to be vaccinated. This is incredible. And okay, let's put aside the ones who have, the children who have immune deficiencies, let's talk about the others. What kind of mental process are we talking about there? Well, the challenge here is in an information society where we have an internet and social media and all this going on, we have an abundance of information, but we don't have a good way of sorting and understanding that information. And so misinformation- That's why we have think-tech, by the way. There you go. But that's the problem, is that the challenge of sorting and understanding and being able to both value and place the appropriate weight on information is one of the biggest challenges of this generation. My son, the first thing he does, anything comes up, go to YouTube, figure it out. Okay, or go to the social media and other things. And I understand that. But this is a society right for someone like Andrew Wakefield. So Andrew Wakefield years back, he was at the time, Dr. Andrew Wakefield published a study saying that there was a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Turns out this study was done, didn't follow the scientific method, had a small, a very small group of people, and it was debunked. It was absolutely debunked. Okay, to the point that the magazine had to print a retraction, the one that printed his report, and he lost his medical license. All this happens, but notwithstanding that, the anti-vaccine movement still points to that as a basis for science, and it wasn't science, but as a basis for science that supports a concern that there's a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Is there anything else in the firmament here, aside from Wakefield, that has made this statement that they can rely on? My understanding is there is no science to support this argument, no science to support this movement. Well, the biggest challenge is that there are antidotal, and I hate to call it evidence, because I don't think it's evidence. It's antidotal occurrences that happen. So let me give you an example. You know, your child has autism, and the child had the MMR vaccine, and so they're looking, and you understand why parents do this, but they're desperately looking for some reason why their child has this condition of autism and such, and so the end result of that is, well, they have this MMR vaccine, I saw something on it, and so then they, through social media and other things, start to proffer the fact that there's a causal link between it. And the danger is this antidotal evidence is not evidence at all that there is actually a link between those two. You might as well say, well, my child ate a lot of Oreo cookies, or they wrote on the polar pony at the fair, and as a result, they got autism. So it's not a scientific, but it's an emotional. It is. And that's the challenge. I mean, overcoming that, because it tugs at the heart, it tugs at the emotions of people that are dealing with a challenging condition or looking for answers or reasons. So, you know, like, is somebody pushing this message? I mean, is there a leader, for example, to this movement who keeps on pumping out information and, you know, misinformation to support this, quote, scientific claim that there are bad medical effects from taking the vaccine? Or is this something else, a new phenomenon in our world, a phenomenon we've seen emerging on other issues, a phenomenon created which lives in social media, which lives in irresponsible reporting on social media, and irresponsible reading of social media, which one? Or both? I was gonna say, I don't know that it's as simple as to say it's one or the other. From everything I can tell, I mean, there are some leaders. There are groups and anti-vaccination groups, and there are leaders of those groups. But I think alone they wouldn't be able to create the kind of, you know, pull the kind of traction that they've been able to do in this particular area if it weren't for the fact that the social media and other things are falling behind it. So yes, there's an engine going on there. But on top of that, we've seen some very famous people jump into the fray and start giving their voice. And one of the dumbest reasons I've ever heard of for not vaccinating a child is, well, Jim Carrey says that there's a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. And you know, for all the great movies, Ace Ventura, Dumb and Dumber, Dumb and Dumber II, Lyra Lyra Lyra Lyra This is the dumbest consistent with Dumb and Dumber. All these great movies, and I like Jim Carrey as an actor, and so this isn't a comment necessarily against his ability to act, but just because you can act well, just because you're a great singer, just because you can play sports particularly well does not mean that you hold any better credence. In fact, you hold any credence at all that we should be listening to, relating to whether or not we should be vaccinating our children. Yeah, and how dare he go public on that? He's not qualified in any way, shape, or form to make a public statement about a technical subject. Incredible. Well, but he's only following in the lines of Jenny McCarthy and numerous others who have done the same thing. And for as attractive as she is, this is an area that the science isn't supporting. And the difficulty is when you like these people, these people that you see on TV, these people that you feel close to because you've had them in front of you all this time, it's easy to avoid the science that you caught up in the emotionality. And that I think is what's been happening. There's a phenomenon here. If you're in a leadership position and arguably anybody famous is in a leadership position because they have the technology to leverage the statements to millions of people, that person has an effect on you, on people. And the TV and the social media, whatnot can deliver that to large numbers of people who will follow the advice of that person, the leadership of that person, even if the person is completely unqualified. And who's pushing back? Who's pushing back? There's no progressive, wait a minute kind of organization that says, wait a minute, Jim, you can't do that. Step down, will you? In fact, we criticize him here, but I don't think there's anybody that in a large sense, criticizes him for doing this. So I think we have social media lives in a world of its own. The leaders of Hollywood are very influential and they pervert the information. They make it miss the information. And how do we deal with that? Because there are many people who never read the paper, but they read social media. There's never people who never get actual facts about anything, but they watch the Oscars. It's where they get their information from the Oscars. I think you've hit it. I mean, that's one of the major issues with social media. And one of the reasons is because it creates these groups. Social media is almost designed to create groups of people that have like thinking. And so if you enter that group and you don't share that thinking and you in fact either criticize or in some way question that, you can be the subject of ridicule. I mean, to the point of almost threatening. It's bullying. That's what's kind of a version of bullying. Well, exactly. And so what ends up happening is that, as you said, it takes on almost a life of its own. And in these groups, the discussion doesn't center around whether or not there's strong science supporting it. It pulls in groups of people that have made these same anecdotal links between either their child or friends or relatives, autistic child and the fact that they also had an MMR vaccine. And again, most children do have MMR vaccines in the United States. So if you take all of the autistic children from among them, which were statistically going to happen in the United States, and they start talking and then they point out that, oh, we also had the MMR vaccine, I think you're gonna find that that's gonna be almost universally true, okay? It's also gonna be universally true that they probably all had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at some time in their life. That they all played on a jungle gym and that they all like Oreos. I mean, that just is, these are all things that are maybe in common, but are not causally linked. Yeah. So, I'm thinking on a mass scale. Yeah. One thing that enters into this is that why, there's some of these people know, even though they don't agree with, the medical profession and the public health profession is telling them that's wrong. It's no relationship. Here's the right survey. This is what we know medically for a fact, but they don't buy that. And I think that opens up a whole new sociological question in this country. You don't trust the institutions. You don't trust the medical profession. You don't trust the government. You don't trust public health officials. You'd rather buy it from Jim. Carrie. You know, because you love him. It's an emotional thing. And it's very troubling because we see this in other aspects on other issues of our society, don't you think? We absolutely do, but we see it in the medical profession as well. Okay, so you don't have to walk back that far. Go back to, I don't know, 1960s. And you look at the pictures of doctors all standing there with their pipes and they're all smoking. Right. Okay? And the nurses are smoking cigarettes and this was commonly accepted practice. And the link between cigarette smoking and cancer had not been developed. And even when it had been developed, the tobacco manufacturers were actively bringing in researchers to research to try and debunk the causal link that had been determined by the medical profession. And this went on and went back and forth until finally it was the subject of huge lawsuits and such. And they demonstrated that these companies that were being set up and funded by the tobacco manufacturers were actually fronts for pseudoscience in an effort to try and continue to challenge the actual causal links that have been developed scientifically to prove the link between cancer and smoking cigarettes. So it is understandable that people have this fear in a lot of different areas of the institutions of the medical profession, of the government, of all of this. I get that one. But when it comes to, and if you wanna roll the dice and such with that, with you, that's one thing. The danger is we're doing that with our kids. And it's years from now that the kids end up facing either epidemics or other health issues that, you know, from cancer to other problems, that- Because of the measles. Because of the measles and that's just on the MMR vaccine. Those that are on the anti-vaccine movement and are strongly believing in that are also not taking a host of others. Yeah. Well, when we come back from this break, Craig, I wanna talk about other leadership, political leadership in Washington. I wanna talk about their obligation to do things. And in the states, in the state capitals. Let's talk about legislation. That's Craig Wagner. He's a concerned citizen and a lawyer, which is actually synonymous. We'll be right back. Hello, I'm Dave Stevens, host of the Cyber Underground. This is where we discuss everything that relates to computers that's just gonna scare you out of your mind. So come join us every week here on thinktecawaii.com, 1 p.m. on Friday afternoons. And then you can go see all our episodes on YouTube. Just look up the Cyber Underground on YouTube. All our shows will show up. And please follow us. We're always giving you current, relevant information to protect you. Keepin' you safe. Aloha. Hey, Stan the Energyman here on thinktecawaii. And they won't let me do political commentary. So I'm stuck doin' energy stuff. But I really like energy stuff. So I'm gonna keep on doin' it. So join me every Friday on Stan the Energyman at lunchtime, at noon, on my lunch hour. We're gonna talk about everything energy, especially if it begins with the word hydrogen. We're gonna definitely be talkin' about it. We'll talk about how we can make Hawaii cleaner. How we can make the world a better place. Just basically save the planet. Even Miss America can't even talk about stuff like that anymore. We got it nailed down here. So we'll see you on Friday at noon with Stan the Energyman. Aloha. Okay, we're back here on Community Matters with Craig Wagner. We're talkin' about the measles in Washington and other places in the country. And I wanna say, if you wanna know more about the technical aspects of this and how the vaccine works, if you wanna know how Craig felt about this about a year ago, there's a commentary on our YouTube collection and on our website where he made a very patent. No less passionate statement. About the subject of vaccinations. So it's worth taking a look at that. The other thing that comes to mind as a consequence of Craig's comment so far is that, yes, you take a vaccination, you have your kid take a vaccination for your family, for him or her. But you also take a vaccine. I can hear the voice of John Kennedy ringing in my head. Do it not only for your family, do it for the community, do it for the country. Because every single one of these multiple dozens of epidemics around the country is pretty serious. And I'm gonna ask Craig about that. Is a result of people refusing to take kids to vaccination. And do it for the children that are immune compromised, that cannot take advantage of the MMR or other vaccines. They're in a position of ultimate vulnerability because not only can they not take the vaccine that would prevent them from getting measles or mumps or rubellum or some other host of disease, but they're susceptible to it and highly so. Ever hear or see of kids themselves saying, I don't want the vaccine? Well, every kid doesn't want a shot. Okay, but not that they don't want the vaccine. And it shocks me that at my children's school, many schools now, you can't walk in there with a peanut butter sandwich. You can't bring peanuts on campus. Because it might harm their students that have allergies and other things to that that are dangerous and in times like threatening. So there's reasons behind that. But you can't do that, but you could walk on there potentially carrying measles, mumps, or rubellum. And that's an exercise of your individual philosophical and or religious views. And it's acceptable. If any kid tells me he's got a philosophical objection, I'm gonna say, are you kidding me? You're too much too young to even address philosophy. Tell me about Emmanuel Kant. Tell me about Heidegger, man. And then we'll talk about your philosophical position on the universe. I have a teenager, he has a philosophical position on everything, but I agree that that is one that I have not seen come from the kids. This is one that has demonstrated itself time and again, particularly now, as an exercise by the parents of parental, the freedom of parental rights. And that's what it's turned into. And that's the line that's being drawn by anti-vaccination groups and others is this is our right to do what we want with our children, with our families. We need to have this control. We don't wanna have it made for us. And so we're drawing the line. If we don't wanna vaccinate our kids, we won't vaccinate. I consider that criminal considering that the kid is in touch with other kids and this is the kind of conduct that leads to epidemics. We don't know the extent of the epidemics yet. We know from the Washington Post they're in dozens of states now and they're in foreign countries now. And it could come to Hawaii just as easily with so much travel here. Well, very easily. It has, numerous times. Both measles and mumps have come here on Maui and I believe on the big island as well, we've seen different small occurrences, a handful of people. But again, the fear is there that if we do not have the critical mass vaccinated, we have the potential for an epidemic. Certain percentage tipping point. So if you have X% of a given population that's not being vaccinated, you're pretty sure it's gonna spread like wildfire. Particularly if it's introduced from outside into that community. That's my understanding and that, again, is different depending on the disease we're talking about in terms of the actual percentage. But it's not a small number that need to be vaccinated. We're talking in the 95 to 97% of the population that needs to be vaccinated with measles in order for that to be an effective deterrent to any type of epidemic. So strikes me that this is a perfect time for national governments to take action. This is a perfect time for our president, Donald J. Trump, to take action and to say wait, we have a national health emergency. We have all these states where all these kids are getting infected and you don't even know the consequences to their lives. As you mentioned, going forward, who knows what will flow? There are bad side effects medically out of having the measles. So has the federal government done anything about this epidemic? Well, to my knowledge, no. I mean, the general effort and everything has been concentrated primarily trying to get a message out about them and to encourage parents to all of the vaccinating their children to provide to make sure that the distribution networks and everything else are in place to have that available for everyone. That's step one, availability and information. And so, yes. And so that effort has been made. It sounds like Roe v. Wade in a funny way, doesn't it? It does. But as you mentioned, I mean, this is becoming, this isn't just one pocket in one state. I mean, we have an appearing in states all over the country, and particularly measles right now. And that is so odd given that it was only, it was less than 20 years ago, this was eradicated. I mean, it just literally, there was nobody was thinking about it. And so it makes you think of something like, like polio, for example. You don't see any kids coming home from school going, ah, you know, Jimmy didn't come because he has polio and he's gonna die. I mean, that doesn't happen in our schools. That doesn't happen in our society. Why is that? The March of Dimes was created to eradicate polio. You know what it did? It eradicated polio. It's gone. Look up. March of Dimes isn't even dealing with polio anymore. They went to burst effects in general and now they're dealing with, you know, pregnancy for, I mean, healthy pregnancies and such. I mean, they're doing wonderful work. It's not polio now. And it doesn't need to be any. The other thing that strikes me is if you entered a certain community and you said, okay, we're gonna vaccinate everybody now, except the ones who have immune deficiencies. That doesn't stop the health problem because it takes a while for the vaccination to have an effect. It's not immediate, is it? Well, it isn't. And so then that's one of the other dangers is that the wait and see approach doesn't work with immunization. And the reason is there's an incubation period and a period where your body is building the white blood cells and the counteractive measures so that you won't get it. So that if you are in a situation where an epidemic has started, it's too late for you to be running, trying to get your vaccination then. Yeah, that's very scary because even if the federal government decided to do something more affirmative. By the way, before we close, I need to know what the federal government could do, at least in your view, on a moral basis, on a socially acceptable basis in terms of legislation. How could it make people have their kids take the vaccination? What could it do without violating your sense of the ethical issues involved? I mean, that's the million-dollar question. And right now what they're doing is they're taking a step back and saying, this is a states' rights issue. And part of the reason it's a states' rights issue is because there are, first of all, you're required to take the MMR vaccine as a condition to attending public school. And that is one of the things that accross the nation. Is that everywhere? That's everywhere, okay? But there are exemptions from it. And those two exemptions are primarily philosophical and religious. And different states have allowed those two exemptions or one of those exemptions here in Hawaii. We have religious exemption, but not philosophical exemption. But as a practical matter, saying that you have a religious exemption is taken at face value. So whether or not you actually are part of a formalized religion that says no vaccines is not the question. It's a question of whether or not you've elected not to do it and that you claim that that basis is because of your religious beliefs. You know, I'd like to tell my kid, you know, that's Johnny over there. He has declined to take the vaccination on the basis of religious or philosophical reasons. Don't go near that kid. How about ostracizing that kid? Because he's dangerous. Okay, then, you know, then he gets a question of, is it appropriate to reveal ostensibly private matter where this kid has refused to take the vaccination? Because that's exactly what I would tell my kid. Could we put a star or a mark on them somewhere? Yeah. I think we'd be going a little far to do that one, but it's a fair point. I mean, you can't look at somebody and tell whether or not they've been vaccinated and immunized for any particular diseases and such. And I don't think we want to have that. What we do want to do, and I think this is the biggest challenge with this, is we've got to get past this misinformation campaign that's going on. All of us as concerned citizens need to be looking at things critically, every bit of information that comes in. But look at the real science behind it. Yeah. So what you have is its variation. You know, if the federal government says, oh, this is the state's rights sort of thing, which I don't agree with, but you know, what happens is you have different standards around the country. Now, measles is the same in every state. Measles is always the same. It's uniform, you know, its identity, its operation, its function, its damage. It's the same everywhere. It's a natural phenomenon. And it doesn't know any boundaries. So why have different standards in different states? Why have different legislation that either passes or is protested out or doesn't pass or nobody introduces it? You know, you have variations, huge variations. If we made a grid, you know, a matrix of all the different ways that the various 50 states deal with this issue, it would be that wide, 50 by 50. So I mean, and take a moment and address that and tell me roughly how much dispute is going on in the streets and the social media with the signs in front of the Capitol buildings. What is it like out there? Well, I mean, the challenge with that in my mind is that, you're right, measles, it knows no boundaries. It can cross any state, anywhere, it can cross other countries and go anywhere. It also is not, you know, measles is measles is measles. So it's the same issue that we're dealing with everywhere. The challenge with that one is if you utilize that as your basis for federal legislating, quite frankly, there's gonna be very little left to the states because that's true of so many different social and political type issues that are going on in the different states. And we as a country have held strong to the fact that within our states we want these states rights to be strong. We wanna be able to address issues within our communities. And so for the most part, the federal government in those areas has tried to stay to keep off. Where I think you're gonna see it come back is the fact that we have pockets in Washington and in California and in Arizona and possibly Hawaii and other places where this measles starts coming up. And that's what's going on. The process of the map of all this Washington Post that is a lot of states are measles states now. That's right. And if I were considering moving or taking a job in a state, I would look that up. Well, you may wanna know that one, that's right. In particular, if you have young children or immunization compromised people of your family, older people, that becomes more of a concern and an issue, obviously. But as it becomes more of a national issue and when you have one pocket here or one or two issues and such, it's one thing. As it starts to pop up in other states and starts to be looked at as an epidemic on a more national scale, we could see action being taken on a federal level. Well, we'll see what happens, Craig. You know, the reality is we live at a time when people are not necessarily trusting of government. And this whole affair is part of that phenomenon. It certainly is. Thank you, Craig. Hey, thank you for having me. Certain citizen and attorney, synonymous. Hi. Thank you very much. Thank you.