This month, it’s an apparent chickenpox epidemic at a school in Asheville where some of the parents who may buy into faddish pseudoscience have chosen not to give their children what have become the standard childhood disease immunizations. While many of us have endured the itch and pain of chickenpox, there has been an effective vaccine for it for about 20 years. By the end of last week, 36 children at the Asheville Waldorf School, which serves youngsters from nursery school to sixth grade, had come down with chickenpox. It’s the state’s worst outbreak in the two decades since the vaccine became available.

While this state requires all students to have certain basic immunizations prior to entering school — chickenpox is one of them, along with measles and mumps — exceptions are allowed, based on the advice of a physician or on religious grounds. Many families at the Asheville Waldorf School have taken advantage of the religious exemption, and now they’re paying the price. The school has one of the highest rates of religious exemption from vaccines in the state. And now, bad decisions are coming home to haunt.

While 90 percent of the American population once faced chickenpox as a childhood rite of passage, its incidence has plummeted since the widespread use of the two-dose vaccine began. The vaccine is about 90 percent protective.

The viral illness once appeared in about 4 million people a year in this country, about 10,000 of whom ended up with hospitalizations. It caused as many as 150 deaths a year and was especially dangerous to babies, adolescents, adults, pregnant women and people with compromised immune systems.

As it is with other immunizations, rumors and incorrect information about this and many other vaccines have spread across the country, especially on social media. One of the leading misinformed theories is that the vaccines can cause autism. The initial research was found to be fraudulent and subsequent testing has thoroughly debunked the claim. Yet it has taken on a life of its own, gaining adherents and causing outbreaks of illnesses that had nearly been eliminated. …

Whatever the reasons, the health outcomes from avoiding flu shots aren’t good. During the last flu season, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports, 179 children died from the flu. Hundreds more were hospitalized. Eighty percent of them were unvaccinated. While the vaccines aren’t 100 percent effective, they give people a better chance than they have by going without. …

We hope parents everywhere will consult health care professionals about vaccinations and make the effort to become educated about scientific research into vaccine safety. That means ignoring what’s on Facebook or Twitter and going to reliable sources. Vaccines of all kinds save lives. Ill-considered decisions to avoid them can be deadly.

— The Fayetteville Observer