Social media may spread anti-vaxxer myths but their cause is more complex

Analysis: We can’t fully disentangle social media’s misinformation impact on measles’ resurgence, but technology has only served to amplify age-old tensions about vaccines

Facebook, Twitter and Google have been under pressure from regulators to fight the spread of misinformation (Getty)

Health crises rarely emerge overnight. As with smoking and lung cancer, or the obesity epidemic putting pressure on NHS resources, so the current global measles outbreak can be traced back decades.

Last week the World Health Organisation warned that there had been 110,000 measles cases diagnosed in in the first three months of 2019 so far, a 300 per cent rise on the same point the previous year.

On Thursday, the children’s charity Unicef released its own analysis showing more than half a million children in the UK are potentially unprotected against measles after missing routine vaccinations since 2010.