I am perplexed that your paper has not covered the human disaster happening on Samoa thanks to low measles vaccination rates. Seventy people – mostly children – have died from measles; nearly 4,700 persons have been infected on this island nation of 200,000.

Vaccination rates were at the 30 percent to 40 percent range because of a botched vaccination two years ago. Now, an anti-vaccination activist there has gone to jail. Too late for the victims.

Retirees working for New Zealand’s Kiwi Coffin Club are building 24 child-sized containers as charity. Anyone thinking about voting for religious or philosophical exemptions to mandatory vaccinations in Maine needs to read Washington Post reporter Miriam Berger’s Dec. 7 article about the initiative: “Dozens of Samoan children have died of measles. So New Zealanders are sending child-sized coffins.”

Larry Butler

Thomaston and Reston, Va.