Officials encourage vaccinations in wake of measles outbreak

If it isn’t one communicable, and fairly preventable, disease, it’s another. They rage through day cares, theme parks, workplaces and shopping malls. And yet, Americans resist the vaccinations that would safeguard most of them from getting sick.

The Centers for Disease Control had barely updated its flu season checklist when Disneyland experienced a measles outbreak. With the often deadly disease snaking its way around the Southwest and into Mexico, CDC officials urged the public to get a measles vaccination.

CDC officials said 2014 saw the highest number of measles cases in two decades.

Meanwhile, the White House decided it better call a press conference to make yet one more effort to push for vaccination against the measles.

But, as reported by The Hill’s Justin Sink, the White House talking head — press secretary Josh Earnest — was well aware of the controversy vaccination creates.

So, as he faced the cameras and bloggers the other day, he cautiously suggested the public could get vaccinated against the measles to avoid catching them.

“Being guided by the science in matters like this is typically the right approach,” Sink quoted Earnest as saying. “That's, obviously, what our public health professionals recommend.”

Though Earnest said the science on vaccinations is "really clear," he said he didn't want to dispense medical advice, adding that the president believed “that these kinds of decisions are decisions that should be made by parents.”

He left the gathered media with words of advice nonetheless, according to The Hill.

“If you're sick, we recommend that you don't get on an airplane and you don't go to a crowded locations. And that's true of the flu and, you know, of other illnesses as well,” he said. “But this obviously is an illness that's a little bit more potent than the flu.”