Butler County is blessed with a multitude and variety of individuals whose talents catapult them into national and international forums. Amesh A. Adalja, M.D., is one of these individuals.

A Butler native and graduate of Butler Senior High, Adalja is one of the nation’s foremost authorities on infectious diseases. He is a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. When Dr. Adalja speaks, governments listen.

Such was the case this week when Washington-based The Hill newspaper and website published a column by Adalja warning about a troubling trend in preventive vaccinations.

The trend, Adalja writes, is “the resurgence of some infectious disease that had previously been under control through vaccinations;” parents are refusing to vaccinate their children, many claiming religious exemption.

The issue has become a political war. The battle ground is a private Christian school in Asheville, N.C. In late October, an outbreak of 38 cases of chickenpox at Asheville Waldorf School prompted Buncombe County health officials to call for the quarantine of 104 of the 152 students. That’s how many hadn’t been vaccinated — nearly 75 percent.

The quarantine expired over the Thanksgiving break and children — preschoolers through sixth graders — return Monday.

In her Nov. 1 order sent home to parents, Buncombe County Health Director Jannine Shaphard advised that “the intent of this quarantine is to decrease the risk of transmission of the illness and protect the health of non-immune students, staff and community members.”

But opponents of the vaccine were unswayed. Asheville attorney Lakota Denton said Tuesday the quarantine violated the civil liberties of the children — two of whom he represents in a lawsuit filed to stop the quarantine.

The antivaccination logic is that the virus does no more harm — maybe less harm — to a healthy child than the vaccine. Those who have had the chickenpox vaccine are immune, and so are those who previously had chickenpox.

Adalja pokes holes in that argument.

“Chickenpox (varicella) is not benign. Before the introduction of the vaccine in 1995 about 4 million cases of chickenpox occurred each year with over 10,000 requiring hospitalization; 100 to 150 people died each year,” he wrote. “This is not a mild illness and while the death toll may not have been as high as measles or influenza, it was greater than zero.”

The impact is economic as well: 13,000 hospitalizations and 4 million cases each year was substantial.

“I contracted chickenpox in the eighth grade, in the pre-vaccine era and do not rank it among my most idyllic childhood memories,” Adalja recalls. “Far from being a microbe deserving of parties, which are de facto ritualistic ceremonies to sacrifice children to the virus, chickenpox is something that should be avoided. The illness begins with fever and fatigue and following these symptoms, the characteristic blistery rash develops. This is the point where most people’s knowledge of chickenpox stops. However, there is much more to know.”

For example, did you know that chickenpox:

- Is an important cause of strokes;

- Can cause pneumonia;

- Can lead to severe secondary bacterial skin infections

- Is the necessary precursor infection for shingles, a painful and often debilitating reactivation of the virus in older age groups.

Shingles is also associated with heart attacks and strokes. Chickenpox in pregnant women can be particularly dangerous as higher rates of pneumonia and death occur. Neonatal varicella — which can be deadly — can also develop after infections that arise near delivery.

The highly effective and safe vaccine — administered in two doses alongside the MMR at age 12-15 months and at 4-6 years — is responsible for making a near ubiquitous suffering experience 9-10 times rarer than it was in the pre-vaccine era.

We concur with the doctor’s prognosis: Schools both public and private, whose mission it is to guide developing minds, should set an example of what it means to adhere to facts and logic by forbidding vaccine exemptions that are not based on demonstrable medical necessity.