There are several reasons for Wisconsin’s low and declining measles vaccination rates, said Jim Conway, a pediatric infectious disease professor at the University of Wisconsin’s medical school. A “recency phenomenon” is one of them, he said.
“These ‘old-fashioned diseases,’ as one parent said to me a couple weeks ago, just aren’t as concerning,” he said. “Because they’re considered diseases that affected all our parents, but they don’t see them as a current threat.”