Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that the United States could be on the verge of a major measles outbreak. We reported the story on our front page on Friday. Today, the Grant County Health District says they are in the midst of that outbreak. Twelve measles cases have been confirmed, and more are expected. The state Department of Health reports the outbreak could soon have ramifications across the state, because one of the girls traveled to Seattle’s Experience Music Project and also went to two restaurants and a roadside rest room while she was contagious.

None of the 12 children were immunized.

Theresa Fuller, spokeswoman at the health district, had an interesting comment that didn’t make it into the story I wrote today about the three new cases, only because she didn’t get back to me until just before deadline, and so there wasn’t time to add more than the missing facts.

“We’re dealing with a generation of parents who have never seen these diseases,” Fuller said. However, she added, they are reading on the Internet all kinds of things about the dangers of the vaccines, convincing them to opt out of immunizing their children. She said the state weighs the risks of the immunization with the risk of getting the disease, which is always riskier than the immunization.

As a parent, I can certainly understand the decision not to immunize. It was a struggle for me to bring my babies into the doctor’s office, to realize that even though the chance was tiny, I could be subjecting my child to some irreversible damage by giving them these shots. And it’s not just one shot. The number of times you bring them back, and back again, and these little tiny beings, usually energetic and happy, coming home from the doctor’s office with a mild temperature, and going into a deep sleep for hours, leaving you worrying the whole time that they won’t come out of it. The upside is, my two children, now 23 and 13, are both healthy and I don’t have to worry now that they might get the measles.

But the decision becomes even more difficult when you realize that some of these diseases are all but wiped out. It can be a noble thing to do something for the greater good, but making your child do something for the greater good is quite another thing. Yes, society will be better off if the measles no longer exists. Then again, why subject your baby to these shots if they’re never going to get the disease anyway? But this outbreak shows that that reasoning doesn’t hold water. It just takes one exposure, and suddenly a whole lot of parents who thought their kids would never be exposed may be reconsidering that decision.

I have no idea why the parents of the 12 Moses Lake children opted out of the immunizations. But I do believe that the CDC and state Department of Health should proceed with caution when adding new immunizations to the list of requirements. Since my kids were young they’ve added chickenpox and a yearly influenza shot. I think maybe there’s a new TB shot in there, too. I just hope parents don’t completely give up on vaccines as the government recommends more and more shots for their children.

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