The Disneyland measles outbreak is directly attributable to vaccine-denier movements, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said today in a conference call with reporters.

From January 1st to 28th, 84 people in 14 states have been reported as having measles, said Anne Schuchat, the head of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. Most of these cases — 56 people — are linked to the outbreak at Disneyland resort in Anaheim, where five employees are sick as well. The remainder were infected abroad and brought the disease back.

"This is not a problem of the measles vaccine not working. This is a problem of the measles vaccine not being used," said Schuchat, the head of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, in the call. "It is frustrating that people have opted out of vaccination."

Some parents have avoided vaccinating their children after a now-discredited study by Andrew Wakefield suggested a link between vaccination and autism. The British Medical Journal has called Wakefield a "fraud," and the studies where he claimed to have found the link were retracted by the journal that published them, The Lancet. In multiple studies since Wakefield's original report, no link has been found between vaccines and autism.

And now, The New York Times is publicly wondering if measles are going to spell trouble for the Super Bowl (over 1,000 people in Arizona have been exposed; health authorities are engaged in contact tracing now). Anna Edney, of Bloomberg News, asked the CDC if they were worried about such a large crowd gathering, on the press call. Because — in case it's not obvious by now —measles is highly contagious. A person with measles doesn't show symptoms for four days before the rash appears, but is capable of infecting others. The virus is airborne, and can live for up to two hours on surfaces after being ejected from the body, according to the CDC. "Measles is so contagious that if one person has it, 90 percent of the people close to that person who are not immune will also become infected," the CDC writes.

But we've beaten measles before. The effort for public vaccination began in 1963, when 3 million to 4 million in the US were infected yearly by the virus; the yearly death toll was around 500. The vaccination campaign in the 1960s was so successful that we've forgotten what a powerful enemy measles can be. "We have a generation that hasn’t seen this disease," said Schuchat. "Clinicians who haven’t taken care of it, parents who wonder if this disease exists." It definitely exists.

And even vaccinated people can be sickened by measles, although the phenomenon is rare. Our vaccination rate among children varies by state: 82 percent in Colorado is the low end; the high end is Mississippi, where virtually everyone got their shots. Public health officials say vaccination rates need to be higher than 95 percent to avoid outbreaks — otherwise, because measles is so good at spreading, it can find and exploit gaps in immunity.

There is no reason why we should have measles outbreaks. Put on your grown-up outfit, suck it up for the good of society, and vaccinate your fucking kids.