Measles outbreak! Vaccine trutherism now officially a public health crisis: It’s back. Three years after public health officials realized that they had been premature in declaring that measles was eliminated in the U.S., new outbreaks of the highly-infectious disease are once again cropping up in cities across the country. And it would be a mistake, epidemiologists warn, not to take this extremely seriously... ”I think that these outbreaks are a really huge deal,” said Thomas Sandora, a specialist in infectious diseases at Boston Children’s Hospital. ”Measles is essentially the most contagious disease on the planet” right now, he explained. It becomes contagious four days before the telltale rash appears, and can remain in the air for two hours after an infected individual has left the room. All it takes is for one case of measles to be introduced into a vulnerable group: About 90% of people who haven’t been immunized, if exposed, will become infected. “To me, the fact that we’re seeing more cases is an indication of a problem that is increasing,” agreed Stephen Morse, a professor of clinical epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Immunization rates in the U.S. remain high at about 90%, but they weren’t high enough to prevent measles’ resurgence. In Europe, all it took was for them to dip below 80% for the disease to once again become endemic — as if it had never been eradicated in the first place. ”When it reaches a tipping point … when we have to start doing massive immunization campaigns again, the way we did in the 1960s, is very hard to say,” Morse added. Vaccines are the victims of their own success, the aphorism goes. Morse is old enough to remember what it was like in the pre-vaccination days: As a child, in 1957, he himself became infected. It was only in grad school, he said, that he learned of the serious complications he managed to avoid: they include pneumonia, loss of hearing, brain inflammation and blindness. But in the post-vaccine era, Morse said, our understanding of the balance between the benefits of vaccines and their potential to cause harm has shifted. While no vaccine is 100% safe, the side effects are extremely rare. When measles was eliminated, that made vaccination, for some, appear to be the greater risk. If enough people continue to prioritize the risks of vaccines over the risks of an epidemic, “we will see measles come back” to an even greater degree, Morse said. “And I think people will feel very differently.” The question now is how much damage they’ll manage to do before that happens. --Measles outbreak! Vaccine trutherism now officially a public health crisis, Lindsay Abrams, Salon, Mar 20, 2014 salon/2014/03/20/measles_outbreak_vaccine_trutherism_now_officially_a_public_health_crisis/ Thanks to Ed R.} **************** **************** Thanks, Anti-Vaxxers. You Just Brought Back Measles in NYC: Measles was considered eliminated at the turn of the millennium. Now it’s back, thanks to the loons who refuse to vaccinate their children. Reports from New York note that several people have been hospitalized, and infected patients include infants too young to be vaccinated themselves. Because the American public hasn’t needed to worry much about this once-contained threat in quite some time, most people probably don’t know that measles can kill, or leave children permanently disabled. We vaccinate people for a reason. It is because I never want patients in my office to contract vaccine-preventable illnesses (like at least two unlucky people in the New York City outbreak, who got the disease from visiting their own doctors) that patients whose parents refuse to vaccinate them are not welcome in my practice. I cannot entirely eliminate the potential for disease exposure between children who come to see me, but I can do my best to mitigate it. I never want to know that a child was sickened or killed because I let the recklessness of a vaccine-refusing parent jeopardize their health. But now, shoppers in Boston-area supermarkets get to worry that they may have been exposed when they stopped by for groceries. Commuters in the Bay Area now have to contend with the possibility that they or their children may contract the illness because they happened to get on the wrong train. Over a dozen people around Los Angeles have been diagnosed with measles already this year, nearly half of them intentionally unvaccinated. This is sheer lunacy. Just over a dozen years ago this illness was considered eliminated in our country, and this year people are being hospitalized for it. All due to the hysteria about a safe, effective vaccine. All based on nothing. There is no legitimate scientific controversy about whether or not vaccines are safe. The original study that started us down this insane path by linking the MMR vaccine to autism has been retracted outright. thelancet/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2897%2911096-0/abstract The evidence against administering the MMR vaccine to healthy individuals is utterly without merit. But people continue to make the utterly baffling choice to refuse it anyway. Dispiriting new information seems to indicate that they are immune to persuasion when confronted with facts inconvenient to their worldview. Indeed, writers at prominent online media outlets chide us for “demeaning” vaccine-deniers, saying to do so “defies explanation.” The explanation is simple, and is as accessible as the nightly news. Vaccine-deniers are responsible to the resurgence of once-eliminated illnesses. Their movement is responsible for sickening people. They are to blame for the word “outbreak” appearing in headlines from coast to coast. The anti-vaccine crowd may think they’re only making a decision for their own family. In fact, they’re threatening to make the rest of us sick. Refusing to vaccinate your children means you are contributing to a worsening public health crisis. There is no denying it, and there is no point in sugar-coating it. I hope the anti-vaccine movement somehow loses steam. Perhaps America will take note of the return of long-gone illnesses and will stop treating vaccine denialism as a viewpoint worth considering. Perhaps vaccine-refusing parents will consider whether it’s worth the anxiety of knowing that a person who coughed in their grocery store two hours earlier could infect their kids as they do the week’s shopping together, and will reconsider their choices... --Thanks, Anti-Vaxxers. You Just Brought Back Measles in NYC, Russell Saunders, The Daily Beast, Mar.13, 2014 thedailybeast/articles/2014/03/13/thanks-anti-vaxxers-you-just-brought-back-measles-in-nyc.html ****************** ****************** ****************** VIDEO: Penn and Teller on Vaccinations: youtube/watch?v=RfdZTZQvuCo ****************** The Truth About 9 Anti-Vaccine Studies: popularmechanics/science/health/med-tech/4345610 ****************** How Much Harm Are Anti-Vaccine Celebs Doing?: usnews/news/articles/2014/03/18/from-mccarthy-to-cavallari-how-much-harm-are-anti-vaccine-celebs-doing ****************** Celebrities Endorsing Stupid Things: (like) The Anti-Vaccination Movement: relativelyinteresting/celebrities-endorsing-stupid-things-like-the-anti-vaccination-movement/ ****************** jennymccarthybodycount/Anti-Vaccine_Body_Count/Home.html ****************** ****************** COMMENT: Its apparently politically incorrect to talk about the real reason for childhood disease outbreaks. Instead, everybody jumps on the vaccinate bandwagon to berate those who dont want their kids vaccinated. Until people are willing to talk about illegal immigration from countries where vaccination is not common as a cause, theres no point in even discussing the relatively small percentage of USA citizens who choose not to vaccinate.
Posted on: Sat, 22 Mar 2014 17:38:43 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015