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As the Colorado River Shrinks, Washington Prepares to Spread the Pain

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As the Colorado River Shrinks, Washington Prepares to Spread the Pain

WASHINGTON — The seven states that depend on water from the shrinking Colorado River are unlikely to comply with voluntarily make deep reductions of their water use, negotiators say, which might pressure the federal authorities to impose cuts for the primary time within the water provide for 40 million People.

The Inside Division had requested the states to voluntarily provide you with a plan by Jan. 31 to collectively reduce the quantity of water they draw from the Colorado. The demand for these cuts, on a scale with out parallel in American historical past, was prompted by precipitous declines in Lake Mead and Lake Powell, which offer water and electrical energy for Arizona, Nevada and Southern California. Drought, local weather change and inhabitants progress have triggered water ranges within the lakes to plummet.

“Consider the Colorado River Basin as a slow-motion catastrophe,” stated Kevin Moran, who directs state and federal water coverage advocacy on the Environmental Protection Fund. “We’re actually at a second of reckoning.”

Negotiators say the chances of a voluntary settlement seem slim. It could be the second time in six months that the Colorado River states, which additionally embrace Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, have missed a deadline for consensus on cuts sought by the Biden administration to keep away from a catastrophic failure of the river system.

With out a deal, the Inside Division, which manages flows on the river, should impose the cuts. That may break from the century-long custom of states figuring out find out how to share the river’s water. And it will all however be certain that the administration’s more and more pressing efforts to avoid wasting the Colorado get caught up in prolonged authorized challenges.

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The disaster over the Colorado River is the most recent instance of how local weather change is overwhelming the foundations of American life — not solely bodily infrastructure, like dams and reservoirs, but additionally the authorized underpinnings which have made these techniques work.

A century’s value of legal guidelines, which assign totally different priorities to Colorado River customers primarily based on how lengthy they’ve used the water, is dealing with off in opposition to a competing philosophy that claims, because the local weather modifications, water cuts must be apportioned primarily based on what’s sensible.

The end result of that dispute will form the way forward for the southwestern United States.

“We’re utilizing extra water than nature goes to supply,” stated Eric Kuhn, who labored on earlier water agreements as common supervisor for the Colorado River Water Conservation District. “Somebody goes to have to chop again very considerably.”

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The principles that decide who will get water from the Colorado River, and the way a lot, have been all the time primarily based, to a level, on magical pondering.

In 1922, states alongside the river negotiated the Colorado River Compact, which apportioned the water amongst two teams of states. The so-called higher basin states (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) would get 7.5 million acre-feet a yr. The decrease basin (Arizona, California and Nevada) received a complete of 8.5 million acre-feet. A later treaty assured Mexico, the place the river reaches the ocean, 1.5 million acre-feet.

(An acre-foot of water is sufficient water to cowl an acre of land in a foot of water. That’s roughly as a lot water as two typical households use in a yr.)

However the premise that the river’s circulate would common 17.5 million acre-feet every year turned out to be defective. Over the previous century, the river’s precise circulate has averaged lower than 15 million acre-feet every year.

For many years, that hole was obscured by the truth that a few of the river’s customers, together with Arizona and a few Native American tribes, lacked the canals and different infrastructure to make use of their full allotment. However as that infrastructure elevated, so did the demand on the river.

Then, the drought hit. From 2000 by means of 2022, the river’s annual circulate averaged simply over 12 million acre-feet; in every of the previous three years, the entire circulate was lower than 10 million.

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The Bureau of Reclamation, an workplace inside the Inside Division that manages the river system, has sought to offset that water loss by getting states to scale back their consumption. In 2003, it pushed California, which had been exceeding its annual allotment, the most important within the basin, to abide by that restrict. In 2007, and once more in 2019, the division negotiated nonetheless deeper reductions among the many states.

It wasn’t sufficient. Final summer season, the water degree in Lake Mead sank to 1,040 ft above sea degree, its lowest ever.

If the water degree falls under 950 ft, the Hoover Dam will not capable of generate hydroelectric energy. At 895 ft, no water would be capable to go the dam in any respect — a situation referred to as “deadpool.”

In June, the commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, Camille C. Touton, gave the states 60 days to provide you with a plan to scale back their use of Colorado River water by two to 4 million acre-feet — about 20 to 40 p.c of the river’s total circulate.

Ms. Touton careworn that she most popular that the states develop an answer. But when they didn’t, she stated, the bureau would act.

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“It’s in our authorities to behave unilaterally to guard the system,” Ms. Touton advised lawmakers. “And we’ll shield the system.”

The 60-day deadline got here and went. The states produced no plan for the cuts the bureau demanded. And the bureau didn’t current a plan of its personal.

A spokesman for Ms. Touton stated she was unavailable to remark.

The division’s newest request and new deadline, set for Jan. 31, has led to a brand new spherical of negotiations, and finger-pointing, among the many states.

Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming argue they’re unable to considerably cut back their share of water. These states get their water primarily from stream circulate, somewhat than from big reservoirs like within the decrease basin states. Because the drought reduces that circulate, the quantity of water they use has already declined to about half their allotment, officers stated.

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“Clearly, the lion’s share of what must be carried out must be carried out by the decrease basin states,” stated Estevan López, the negotiator for New Mexico who led the Bureau of Reclamation throughout the Obama administration.

Nor can a lot of the answer come from Nevada, which is allotted simply 300,000 acre-feet from the Colorado. Even when the state’s water deliveries have been stopped fully, rendering Las Vegas successfully uninhabitable, the federal government would get barely nearer to its aim.

And Nevada has already imposed a few of the basin’s most aggressive water-conservation methods, in accordance with John Entsminger, common supervisor of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. The state has even outlawed some kinds of lawns.

“We’re utilizing two-thirds of our allocation,” Mr. Entsminger stated in an interview. “You possibly can’t take blood from a stone.”

That leaves California and Arizona, which have rights to 4.4 million and a couple of.8 million acre-feet from the Colorado — sometimes the most important and third-largest allotments among the many seven states. Negotiators from each side appear satisfied of 1 factor: The opposite state must provide you with extra cuts.

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In California, the most important person of Colorado River water is the Imperial Irrigation District, which has rights to three.1 million acre-feet — as a lot as Arizona and Nevada put collectively. That water lets farmers develop alfalfa, lettuce and broccoli on about 800 sq. miles of the Imperial Valley, within the southeast nook of California.

California has senior water rights to Arizona, which implies that Arizona’s provide must be reduce earlier than California is pressured to take reductions, in accordance with JB Hamby, vp of the Imperial Irrigation District and chairman of the Colorado River Board of California, which is negotiating for the state.

“Now we have sound authorized footing,” Mr. Hamby stated in an interview. He stated that fast-growing Arizona ought to have been prepared for the Colorado River drying up. “That’s sort of a accountability on their half to plan for these threat elements.”

Tina Shields, Imperial’s water division supervisor, put the argument extra bluntly. It could be arduous to inform the California farmers who depend on the Colorado River to cease rising crops, she stated, “in order that people proceed to construct subdivisions.”

Nonetheless, Mr. Hamby conceded that considerably lowering the water provide for giant city populations in Arizona can be “somewhat tough.” California has provided to chop its use of Colorado River water by as a lot as 400,000 acre-feet — as much as one-fifth of the cuts that the Biden administration has sought.

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If the administration desires to impose deeper cuts on California, he stated, it’s welcome to strive.

“Reclamation can do no matter Reclamation desires,” Mr. Hamby stated. “The query is, will it face up to authorized problem?”

On the opposite facet of the Colorado, Arizona officers acknowledge that the legal guidelines governing the river might not work of their favor. However they’ve arguments of their very own.

Arizona’s standing as a junior rights holder was cemented in 1968, when Congress agreed to pay for the Central Arizona Mission, an aqueduct that carries water from the Colorado to Phoenix and Tucson, and the farms that encompass them.

However the cash got here with a catch. In return for his or her help, California’s legislators insisted on a provision that their state’s water rights take precedence over the aqueduct.

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If Arizona may have foreseen that local weather change would completely cut back the river’s circulate, it’d by no means have agreed to that deal, stated Tom Buschatzke, director of the state’s Division of Water Sources.

Due to its junior rights, Arizona has taken the brunt of latest rounds of voluntary cuts. The state’s place now, Mr. Buschatzke stated, is that everybody ought to make a significant contribution, and that no one ought to lose all the things. “That’s an equitable end result, even when it doesn’t essentially strictly comply with the legislation.”

There are different arguments in Arizona’s favor. About half of the water delivered by means of the Central Arizona Mission goes to Native American tribes — together with these within the Gila River Indian Group, which is entitled to 311,800 acre-feet per yr.

The US can’t reduce off that water, stated Governor Stephen Roe Lewis of the Gila River Indian Group. “That may be a rejection of the belief obligation that the federal authorities has for our water.”

In an interview this week, Tommy Beaudreau, deputy secretary of the Inside Division, stated the federal authorities would contemplate “fairness, and public well being, and security” because it weighs find out how to unfold the reductions.

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The division will evaluate California’s choice to base cuts on seniority of water rights with Arizona’s suggestion to chop allotments in methods meant to “meet the fundamental wants of communities within the decrease basin,” Mr. Beaudreau stated.

“We’re in a interval of 23 years of sustained drought and overdraws on the system,” he added. “I’m not , underneath these circumstances, in assigning blame.”

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California communities are banning syringe programs. Now the state is fighting back in court

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California communities are banning syringe programs. Now the state is fighting back in court

As Indiana officials struggled to contain an outbreak of HIV among people who injected drugs, then-Gov. Mike Pence reluctantly followed the urgings of public health officials and cleared the way for an overwhelmed county to hand out clean syringes.

Pence was far from enthusiastic about launching the program in Scott County, but after it rolled out in 2015, the percentage of injection drug users there who said they shared needles dropped from 74% to 22%. Within a few years, the number of new HIV infections plummeted by 96% and new cases of hepatitis C fell by 76%.

The Sierra Harm Reduction Coalition wanted to keep those same diseases in check in California. The tiny nonprofit got approval from the state to deliver syringes in El Dorado County to prevent the spread of life-threatening illnesses.

Yet when the program was discussed at a December meeting of the county’s Board of Supervisors, the success story in Indiana held little sway. Faced with complaints about discarded needles and overdose deaths, the supervisors voted to prohibit syringe programs in the county’s unincorporated areas.

“These programs may work in other parts of California and throughout the United States, although I have my doubts,” Sheriff Jeff Leikauf said at the meeting. “El Dorado County does not want or need these types of programs.”

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El Dorado is among a growing number of California communities that have banned syringe programs, testing the state’s power and political will to defend them as a public health strategy. It is part of a broader pushback against “harm reduction” — the practical philosophy of trying to reduce the negative effects of drug use — as overdose deaths have soared.

Now California is fighting back. In a recently filed lawsuit, the Department of Public Health argued that local ordinances prohibiting syringe programs in El Dorado County were preempted by state law, making them unenforceable.

The state is seeking a court order telling El Dorado County and the city of Placerville, its county seat, to stop enforcing their bans and allow syringe programs to resume.

An El Dorado County spokesperson said Monday that the county does not comment on pending legal issues. Its district attorney, however, said he was outraged to learn of the lawsuit, saying that state leaders were “seeking to impose the normalization of hardcore drug use.”

“Don’t come into our county and double down on your failed policy,” El Dorado County Dist. Atty. Vern Pierson said in a statement. “Allowing addicts to use fentanyl and other hardcore drugs is exactly what has caused other California counties to experience a death rate that is out of control and getting worse.”

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Mona Ebrahimi, the city attorney for Placerville, said the city had put a 45-day temporary moratorium in place “to study the ongoing effects of syringe service programs in the city.”

“The city wants to protect the health, safety and welfare of its residents,” Ebrahimi said.

The California Department of Public Health has long endorsed handing out sterile syringes as a proven way to prevent dangerous infections from running rampant when people share contaminated syringes. Researchers have linked syringe programs with a roughly 50% reduction in HIV and hepatitis C.

“It sounds crazy: ‘Wait, you want to give out the tools to people to do this thing that we all agree is a bad idea?’” said Peter Davidson, a medical sociologist at UC San Diego. But it works, said Davidson, who called the programs “probably the best studied public health intervention of the last 70 years.”

Public health officials also see them as a crucial way to reach people who use drugs and link them to addiction and overdose-prevention services. In Seattle, for instance, researchers found that injection drug users who started going to a needle exchange were five times more likely to enter drug treatment than those who never went.

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Signs direct visitors to the syringe-exchange program at the Austin Community Outreach Center in Austin, Ind., in 2015. The program was set up to curb an outbreak of HIV among people who injected drugs.

(Darron Cummings / Associated Press)

And in California, harm reduction groups have been particularly effective in getting Narcan — a nasal spray that can reverse opioid overdoses — into the hands of people who need it.

It’s “hugely important to reduce overdose in the community, and these are the programs that do that,” said Barrot Lambdin, a health policy fellow at RTI International who studies the implementation of health interventions.

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Yet leaders in some cities and counties have strenuously rejected the health benefits of syringe programs.

In El Dorado County, local leaders asserted that the efforts of the Sierra Harm Reduction Coalition had not “meaningfully reduced” HIV or hepatitis C cases since its syringe program began four years ago and said the free needles were ramping up the risk of deadly overdoses, which they argued were a bigger threat.

Street scene shows trees with fall colors, cars and old buildings

The El Dorado County Courthouse in Placerville, Calif.

(Max Whittaker / For The Times)

Alessandra Ross, a harm reduction expert at the California Department of Public Health, disputed such arguments in a letter to county officials. Ross pointed out that in just one year, the coalition handed out more than 2,200 doses of medication to reverse opioid overdoses, saving at least 421 lives. Without the group’s efforts, she wrote, “El Dorado County could have potentially lost more than ten times as many people to overdose.”

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Under state law, the California Department of Public Health has the authority to approve syringe programs anywhere that deadly or disabling infections might spread through used needles, “notwithstanding any other law” that might say otherwise.

The agency argued that the “significant state and public interest in curtailing the spread of HIV, hepatitis, and other bloodborne infections extends to every jurisdiction in the state, especially since Californians travel freely throughout the state.”

After El Dorado County prohibited syringe services in unincorporated areas, the state public health department adjusted its authorization for the Sierra Harm Reduction Coalition program, limiting its operations to Placerville. In the court filing, the agency said it made the change out of concern for the coalition’s staff and volunteers, who could be at risk of arrest if they provided syringes in the unincorporated areas.

The nonprofit said when it stopped providing syringes outside of Placerville city limits, roughly 40% of its clients were cut off. In February, Placerville city officials passed their own urgency ordinance banning syringe programs for 45 days, exempting needle provision at health facilities.

Ebrahimi, its city attorney, said officials took that step “after CDPH concentrated their use by authorizing them only in Placerville and nowhere else in the county.”

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The Sierra Harm Reduction Coalition stopped providing syringes in Placerville as well, according to the state lawsuit. The coalition did not respond Monday to requests for comment on the suit.

El Dorado County and Placerville are not alone: A wave of local bans went into effect last year in Placer County after a harm reduction group from Sacramento sought state approval to hand out clean syringes. The county’s sheriff and its probation chief said in a letter to the state that the syringe program proposed by Safer Alternatives thru Networking and Education, or SANE, would “promote the use of addicting drugs” and lead to more “dirty needles discarded recklessly in our parks.”

The Placer County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to ban syringe programs in its unincorporated areas. Cities including Auburn, Loomis and Rocklin banned them too.

“We are the ones who should make these kinds of decisions,” then-Mayor Alice Dowdin Calvillo said at a September meeting of the Auburn City Council, “and not allow the state to just bully us.”

Public health researchers stress that studies have found that free needle programs do not increase crime or drug use, or worsen syringe litter. Yet as much of Placer County became a no-go zone, SANE withdrew its application for a syringe program there.

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“Our political processes are not well set up for us to make reasoned, scientifically sound judgments about public health,” said Ricky Bluthenthal, a USC sociologist whose research has documented the effectiveness of syringe programs. It doesn’t help that “the populations at risk are often marginalized or not politically active.”

Our political processes are not well set up for us to make reasoned, scientifically sound judgments about public health.

— Ricky Bluthenthal, a USC sociologist who studies syringe programs

The California Department of Public Health declined to address whether it planned to challenge local bans on syringe programs elsewhere in the state, saying it “cannot comment on active litigation strategy.”

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Syringe programs have long faced public skepticism: In a 2017 survey, only 39% of U.S. adults said they supported legalizing them in their communities.

Experts say the programs have faced increasing jeopardy as public concern wanes about the threat of HIV and frustration swells over other problems like soaring numbers of overdose deaths and the spread of homeless encampments. Even in Indiana’s Scott County, local leaders voted three years ago to shutter its needle exchange.

Clashes are also arising because programs are making moves into new parts of California, bolstered in some cases by state funding. California officials also have taken steps to help syringe programs overcome local opposition, including exempting them from review under the California Environmental Quality Act.

“It’s not surprising that cities and counties are motivated to protect the public health and safety of their residents through whatever tools they have at their disposal,” said attorney David J. Terrazas, who represented a group that successfully sued to overturn state approval of a syringe program in Santa Cruz County.

In that case, a state appeals court ruled last year that the California Department of Public Health conducted an insufficient review of a program run by the Harm Reduction Coalition of Santa Cruz County. The department didn’t do enough to consult with law enforcement agencies in the area, among other shortcomings, the court said.

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Although the state health department had considered some comments from law enforcement, “it never engaged with them directly about their concerns,” the appeals court concluded. Internal records showed department staff had decided not to respond to some of their comments and called one police chief an “imbecile.”

Terrazas said local officials are best poised to know what works for their communities. But Denise Elerick, founder of the Harm Reduction Coalition of Santa Cruz County, argued it made no sense for law enforcement to hold sway in public health decisions.

“We wouldn’t consult with them on what to do about COVID,” Elerick said.

A bag is filled with boxes of Narcan nasal spray for distribution to people living on the street in Los Angeles.

A bag is filled with boxes of Narcan nasal spray, one of several harm-reduction supplies distributed to people living on the street in Los Angeles.

(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

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Weeks after the court ruling, the state health department rolled back its approval for a syringe program in Orange County that would have been run by the Santa Ana-based Harm Reduction Institute, saying it wanted to consult more with local officials.

The decision was celebrated by city leaders in Santa Ana, who had banned syringe programs in 2020 and sharply opposed efforts to restart one. At a recent meeting, interim city manager Tom Hatch said a previous program was “an epic failure” that left its downtown littered with used syringes.

Orange County is currently the most populous county in the state without any syringe services programs — to the alarm of health researchers who found that syringe reuse increased after a local program was shut down.

The Santa Cruz court ruling was also invoked by the Santa Monica City Council, which directed city officials to investigate how Los Angeles County came to approve a program run by the Venice Family Clinic. That program sends outreach workers into Santa Monica parks once a week to offer clean syringes, Narcan and other supplies and connect people with healthcare, including for addiction.

A woman hands out Narcan to a man at Tongva Park in Santa Monica

Devon O’Malley, left, a harm reduction case manager with the Venice Family Clinic, hands out Narcan to Ken Newark at Tongva Park in Santa Monica.

(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

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Critics want the program to relocate indoors, which they say would better protect parkgoers from discarded syringes. In addition, “if someone has to walk inside, there’s a chance for counselors to suggest strongly that it’s time for them to get off the drugs,” said Santa Monica Mayor Phil Brock, who wants the city to formally express its opposition to the program. “We can’t just facilitate their demise.”

Last month, a group called the Santa Monica Coalition filed suit to get L.A. County to halt the program it approved, saying it should instead be in a government building.

But Venice Family Clinic staffers said unhoused people can be reluctant to leave behind their belongings to go elsewhere. Even offering services out of a van reduced participation, said Arron Barba, director of the clinic’s Common Ground program.

“Bringing the service directly to the people is what we know works,” Barba said.

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Opinion: How measles reemerged as a threat in California and elsewhere

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Opinion: How measles reemerged as a threat in California and elsewhere

The measles virus is resurging in the U.S. despite the long-standing availability of a vaccine that provides nearly life-long immunity. In the past few weeks, hundreds of people were exposed to a child with the virus in a Northern California healthcare facility; our state is one of 17 jurisdictions with reported measles cases in 2024, higher than seen in recent years.

Measles is an extremely transmissible pathogen: On average, one infected person infects 12 to 18 unvaccinated people. The airborne virus can linger in floating aerosols long after someone has left a room, and the common symptoms, which include rash, a high fever, watery eyes, cough and a runny nose, typically take a week or two to appear.

Infections can also cause immune amnesia, in which your immune system becomes better at fighting measles and worse at fighting other infections you were previously protected against. In rare cases it also leads to death, more often in children than adults, from respiratory or neurological complications, including a type of brain swelling in young children that can appear years after the initial measles infection.

Before the measles vaccine was introduced and licensed in 1963, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cites an annual average of 549,000 cases (with likely millions more going unreported), 48,000 hospitalizations, nearly 500 deaths and 1,000 people with chronic disability. By 2000, thanks to vaccination, measles was declared eliminated in the U.S. But because of cases from people arriving here from other countries, combined with pockets of low vaccination, we are seeing outbreaks among unvaccinated people.

Policy can worsen the issue. Last month in Florida, following an outbreak at an elementary school, the state’s surgeon general left the decision to parents whether to send their children to school, citing high levels of community immunity as the rationale for not following the usual protocols. That cavalier response risked a much worse outbreak. A more standard response would have called for unvaccinated students and staff to be vaccinated and quarantine for 21 days (the time frame in which the disease could develop).

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It might be tempting to Californians to dismiss this as a Florida problem. But our state has a measles time bomb on our hands. Ideally communities should hit at least 95% vaccination to achieve herd immunity. But a recent nationwide survey found that Southern California alone has 350 schools falling short of the desired vaccination threshold, meaning a single measles case in these schools could easily become an outbreak among the unvaccinated.

Misinformation around the measles vaccine has been an issue for years. A debunked but influential 1998 research paper in the Lancet, a British medical journal, suggested a link between the vaccine, which babies can receive starting at the age of 12 months, and autism. The paper was retracted in 2010 (and the authors were later reported to have committed fraud). But measles vaccine rates dropped in England throughout the early 2000s.

In California, a 2014 outbreak at Disneyland was connected to more than 140 cases in North America, with declining vaccination rates one contributing factor. A recent systematic review of the reasons why parents reject measles vaccination for their children found fear of autism the most cited concern. Those who were hesitant more frequently cited the internet and social media as information sources on vaccines than those who were not hesitant.

In recent years hesitancy has grown as misinformation about the COVID vaccine has made some parents doubtful of routine inoculations. Vaccination exemptions during the 2022-23 school year reached the highest level ever reported in the U.S., increasing in 40 states and Washington, D.C., and 10 states reaching exemption rates of above 5%. According to the CDC, the 93.1% vaccination rate among eligible children puts about 250,000 kindergarten students at risk for measles.

Encouragingly, we’ve seen in our own state that vaccine hesitancy can be reversed. Marin County had among the lowest measles vaccination rates in the state in 2011 and now has coverage close to 99% among children entering school. State contact tracing efforts that were strengthened during COVID-19, including the California Connected program, have been useful to track the contacts of measles cases.

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But as the recent scares remind us, we still aren’t where we need to be with vaccination. Following the Disneyland outbreak, in 2015 California passed a law to remove the “personal belief” exemption from required childhood vaccines, meaning people must provide a medical reason to decline it. The law broadened the criteria for medical exemptions, which increased the year after it passed. Although the state tightened up medical exemptions with a new law in 2019, with the pandemic disrupting routine vaccinations and increasing homeschooling, the percentage of kindergarteners not up to date on vaccinations went up by 2021.

Vaccine exemption laws vary widely across the U.S., with some states allowing only medical exemptions, some also allowing religious exemptions and others permitting philosophical exemptions too. And outbreaks from one state can spill over across borders quickly.

That means decisions by Florida’s public health department, and vaccine hesitancy anywhere, can affect us all. California has to close the gap for communities that are not well-protected against measles.

Abraar Karan is an infectious disease doctor and researcher at Stanford University, where Julie Parsonnet is a professor of infectious diseases and of epidemiology and population health.

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Video: SpaceX Launches Starship for Third Time

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Video: SpaceX Launches Starship for Third Time

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SpaceX Launches Starship for Third Time

The rocket, a version of which will eventually carry NASA astronauts to the moon, traveled almost halfway around the Earth before it was lost as it re-entered the atmosphere.

“Five, four, three, two, three, one.” “This point, we’ve already passed through Max-Q, maximum dynamic pressure. And passing supersonic, so we’re now moving faster than the speed of sound. Getting those on-board views from the ship cameras. Boosters now making its way back, seeing six engines ignited on ship. Kate, we got a Starship on its way to space and a booster on the way back to the Gulf.” “Oh, man. I need a moment to pick my jaw up from the floor because these views are just stunning.”

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