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In the past century, medical advances have done some amazing things. They have helped to eliminate previous infectious scourges: polio, tetanus, diphtheria, measles, congenital rubella and many more.

Those familiar with such grim infections might naturally ensure that they will keep themselves and their loved ones up to date on immunizations. Really, no one wants to return to the days of the iron lung for polio victims, or lockjaw and the foaming mouth caused by tetanus, right?

Ah, but we forget so quickly. Maybe it has been too long since those infections wreaked havoc around our parents, grandparents or great grandparents and we are no longer sufficiently chastened by them.

The decisions of those parents made the recent resurgence of the measles inevitable even though it is an infection that has been irrelevant in the U.S. for generations and it was eliminated in 2000.

At least until a traveler who was already infected visited the “happiest place on earth,” Disneyland, according to the Centers for Disease Control, and triggered a dose of media-driven pandemonium.

If everyone at Disneyland had their proper immunizations, the measles would not have spread, but 102 cases later the situation has devolved into an entirely avoidable crisis. Fourteen states have reported cases of the measles.

Aside from an unnecessary health scare, the situation has revealed an ugly truth about our immunization program in the U.S.: we have forgotten how hard our predecessors fought against diseases that left millions of people paralyzed, brain damaged or dead.

Failing to get vaccinated fails to be a “personal” decision when not getting vaccinated endangers other people. At that point, it shifts into the category of public health hazard.

Basically, people are getting sick because we started slacking on vaccinations, and that slacking is due to the fact that crucial vaccinations are optional.

The standardized program of childhood and adult immunizations has been researched extensively. It works.

Up through 1962, the year before the arrival of the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine, there were 549,000 cases of measles yearly that resulted in about 500 deaths. That changed the following year when the MMR shot was used and the numbers of cases dropped 98 percent. In the medical world, those are very impressive numbers.

So why on earth wouldn’t people do the right thing now?

If you pay attention to the media, you likely know about Jenna McCarthy, a former Playboy Playmate who is the mother of an autistic child. Surely well-intentioned, she helped popularize a falsified study on autism’s key findings — and she continues to do so.

Andrew Wakefield published his findings in 1998 in the normally respectable British medical journal, The Lancet, linking autism to the MMR vaccine. were conducted after that, thoroughly debunking his work and eliminating any scientific question of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Wakefield eventually admitted he had simply made up data.

And yet, U.S. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky — a likely Republican presidential candidate — said in a recent he knows many cases of children harmed by the vaccine. He provided no proof of his claim. There is no such thing as proof for something that isn’t true.

There is zero scientific evidence linking autism to the MMR shot, but not everybody — including some parents — knows that.

So let’s run through the other common misconceptions about the MMR shot?

Some people fear mercury contamination from the shot. Thimerosal, an inactive form of mercury, used to be included as a preservative for multi-dose vials of the vaccine. This was necessary to avoid any contamination after each use. The fact that it’s been taken out did not go unnoticed by people who argued that it was an admission of toxicity.

Dr. William Atkinson, of the Immunization Action Coalition, said that is just not true. Atkinson, who spent 25 years at the CDC, researched the MMR vaccine extensively. The current vaccine comes in a single-dose vial, so there is no danger of contamination from multiple uses. Besides, there has never been a single recorded case of thimerosal poisoning from any vaccination.

The (irrational) fear of mercury poisoning from vaccines gets at a broader issue. Some people argue that getting a vaccine is a personal choice. But failing to get vaccinated fails to be a “personal” decision when not getting vaccinated endangers other people. At that point, it shifts into the category of public health hazard.

As of right now, each state has its own list of possible exemptions that allow children to still go to school if they are not fully vaccinated. (Mississippi has the highest vaccination rate, 99.7 percent, in the country because it only makes exceptions for medical reasons. They have never had a reported measles case. The lowest rate of immunization is reported in Colorado at 81 percent.)

In order for such a highly contagious disease like measles to be eradicated, between 92 percent and 94 percent of the population need to have immunity.

In California, the rate is below 92 percent, not enough to prevent the spread of the measles outbreak. In fact, parents are given the option of exempting their children from vaccination for “philosophic reasons” or on religious grounds. Over 18,000 such exemptions were recorded — — for the 2013-2014 school year.

Hawaii has two possible exemptions; medical justification and religious beliefs. Despite this, the rates for vaccines in Hawaii are very high. They are estimated at almost 99 percent.

Even with the high rates, we still saw our own cluster of measles in 2014, from travelers who didn’t receive their shots before going to parts of the world, like the Philippines, where the measles remains endemic.

Hawaii should eliminate the non-medical exemptions. If children are going to attend school, they must be immunized unless there is a medical reason not to. This would protect the entire population from letting those who “opt out” endanger everyone else, particularly those who have impaired immune systems.

The state Departments of Health should require documentation of the shot before any child could go to any federally funded school. No one wants their child go to school and get sick, and no parent should have to worry that they will because someone else didn’t follow basic common-sense rules.

Some parents believe in “herd immunity,” but it doesn’t work. Thinking that ‘if everyone else got the shot, then you don’t have to,’ is not the answer, because too many people are declining vaccinations for reasons that aren’t medically sound.

For people traveling to the U.S., the same should apply. Visa applications should require proof of immunization, because having sick people come to the United States with easily avoidable contagious diseases endangers people just like inadequate vaccination.

It should be mandatory for just about everyone. The current situation is literally sickening.