The Mail

Letters respond to Nick Paumgarten’s reporting on the measles outbreak and the anti-vaccine movement and Alex Ross’s piece on Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

My Shot

Nick Paumgarten, in his piece about the recent measles outbreak in New York State, quotes Dr. Howard Zucker, the state’s health commissioner, as saying that “we need to study vaccine hesitancy as a disease” (“The Message of Measles,” September 2nd). This statement reflects what I believe to be a profound truth that might be helpful in combatting the anti-vaccine movement. Like Dr. Zucker, I am surprised by how many highly educated people are anti-vaxxers. As a medical-school student and later as a primary-care physician, I encountered medical professionals who expressed hesitancy about vaccine use. I have since wondered how many more are among our ranks. It scares me that those who provide primary-care medicine might be, at best, tacitly supporting patients who are not vaccinating their children, or, at worst, spreading falsehoods about vaccines to their patients.

By framing “vaccine hesitancy” as a disease, we can address the paradox of physicians and other health-care providers who do not vaccinate or promote vaccination. Doctors are susceptible to other diseases, such as alcoholism and addiction, so why not “vaccine hesitancy”? The challenge is getting those who are affected into treatment.

Indira Konanur, D.O.
Watertown, Mass.

I was born in 1939, and, like many children who grew up during the mid-twentieth century, I had all the contagious illnesses we associate with that era, including measles, German measles, chicken pox, whooping cough, and mumps. I was eight or nine when I caught the measles; at one point, my temperature was a hundred and six. I remember lying in bed, feeling awful, and knowing that my mother thought I was going to die. She had good reason to be afraid of severe childhood illnesses: in 1912, her twelve-year-old brother, Edwin, had died of diphtheria. Growing up, I saw people dying too young all around me, including one of my peers, who died at thirteen or fourteen after contracting polio.

Measles, diphtheria, and polio—these were prevalent diseases at the time, but now they are preventable, thanks to vaccines. Why wouldn’t we want to spare our children such terrible fates?

Abby Adams Westlake
Ancram, N.Y.

Changing Tunes

Alex Ross, in his review of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s musical œuvre, takes exception to the pejorative cliché “That sounds like film music,” arguing that the century-long history of soundtrack music has been too varied in style and instrumentation to deserve such lazy categorization (Musical Events, August 19th). It occurs to me, though, that eventually the term “film music” may no longer evoke in the average listener’s mind the lush symphonic output of legendary practitioners such as Korngold, Bernard Herrmann, Malcolm Arnold, Ennio Morricone, Max Steiner, Franz Waxman, and John Williams. People might instead equate “film music” with the currently popular mixture of strident synthesizers and pounding percussion. As the action, camerawork, and editing in many Hollywood films have become more assaultive on the senses, the soundtracks have followed suit. Compared with the aural head-banging inflicted upon audiences by wide-release movies, Herrmann’s shower-scene string shrieks in “Psycho” sound as lyrical as Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony.

David English
Acton, Mass.