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Vintage Diseases Making a Comeback
An anonymous reader writes "MSNBC has a piece on a recent resurgence in some old-timey diseases. Mumps, Whooping Cough, and Rickets are making a comeback, back in style like it's 1955." From the article: "Public-health officials certainly weren't expecting to get 'bitten' by mumps this year. Although the virus has been circulating in British kids since 2000, it hadn't caused much trouble in the United States since an outbreak in Kansas 18 years ago. The Midwest is the epicenter again, but the victims are primarily college students, not children. Once a childhood disease, the virus has now taken hold in university towns. That's partly because crowded dorms and cafeterias are breeding grounds for germs that are spread by sneezing and coughing."
Isn't MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) a standard set of vacines everyone gets before they go into school? How long are those supposed to be effective?
In a side note: the girl sitting next to me right now (at work) was gone with the mumps a couple weeks ago.
1864 Mumps: A little fruity, but solid, bold taste. Goes well with chicken (pox).
Vintage diseases huh? I guess that makes them retroviruses.
It's caused by a lack of vitamin D. Children develop Rickets, typified by "bow bones." Adults get osteomalacia, with an increase in fractures. Rickets has nothing to do with "vintage diseases." All someone has to do to prevent it is a) better diet b) multivitamin c) suntan. mumps, pertussis, etc. are a different story...
the big problem is what happens if a bug somehow (RC or ID) gets a mutation to
1 blank the vacciene (like we know the flu bug does)
2 increases the inucubation period
3 ramps the bug to LETHAL
4 includes the "airborne vector"
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So they are infected with mumps and they cross right over the boarder, right over Texas, right over the south and settle in Iowa? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard! Unless your saying they came in illegally from Canada, in which case that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
Demented But Determined.
Taking a look at some of the downmodded posts, I took one of their ideas, and took a nice overlay of (known) illegal immigrant population centers and outbreaks. The similarity? About 75% of the areas do overlap. That doesn't necessarily mean anything but it does raise interesting thoughts/possibilities.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
These resurgences stem from the growing proportion of un-inocculated people in the U.S. When the proportion of people who are invulnerable to infection and transmission goes below a critical threshold, these diseases can spread through the population. The proportion of people who are not innoculated is growing because a calculated cost-benefits analysis reveals that it is wise to avoid some vaccines. There are some diseases that are now so rare in the U.S. that the expected health impact from the vaccine outweighs the risk of being unvaccinated in a by-and-large vaccinated society. In game theory terms, we have a game with two coalitions, Vaccinating and Non-vaccinating, and a couple hundred million players. All players will not join the Vaccinating coalition, because when the proportion of players is significantly above the critical virulence threshold, parents see an advantage to be gained in abandoning the Vaccinating coalition strategy and safeguarding the health of their children to some non-trivial degree. Given that the players in the game are going to continue to be free to choose whether to be vaccinators of their kids or not, not all people will make that choice. And not just because of some primitive superstition or political inclination, either. It's simple opportunism. The only thing that will shift the equilibrium of populations of vaccinators to non-vaccinators are environmental factors that affect each players' benefits analysis, such as: Fear - hysterical news coverage about the mumps and such Conformity Pressures - public shame upon those parents who break with the Vaccination Coalition of the Willing Misinformation - hysterical news coverage that insists that vaccinations don't have any negative health consequences Legislation - rolling back of laws that allow parents to not vaccinate, such as the one in Texas Such actions can be taken, but beg the question of whether they should be taken. Unless we are going to actually eradicate a disease, the Nash Equilibrium that results in the greatest good for society is the equilibrium set by the disease's virulence, A.K.A. only enough people get vaccinated for it to be an advantageous strategy to the rest to not get vaccinated.
I got Whooping cough last year for about 5 months. Man did that suck. You can't sleep well at all. You wake up all the time not being able to breath. The bigger problem is that my Dr. didn't believe me and thought I had a bunch of other problems until the CDC sent out a letter. Anyway, the basic problem, I think, is that the shots I got back in the early 70's last only 30 years. So guess what. It's 30 (well 29) years later, and I got it, almost 29 years to the day that I got the shot.
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
The author the report further states, " In 2003, nearly 26 percent of foreign-born TB patients in the United States were from Mexico ".
The author also warns, "Federal data suggest that as many as 10 percent of the approximately 1,000 Mexicans who emigrate to the United States daily probably are infected with Chagas , said Dr. Louis V. Kirchhoff, a Chagas specialist and a professor at the University of Iowa's medical school". Chagas is fatal and kills you via a set of debilitating chronic conditions which manifest themselves decades after initial infection.
Foreigners coming into America and afflicting the people living there with new dieseases? For some reason, I feel like I've heard that one before.
They didn't call rickets an "infectious disease", they called it an old disease that is making a resurgence.
From the article:
"As if they didn't have their hands full with mumps and whooping cough, doctors are also starting to worry about other blasts from the past. National statistics haven't been collected, but many papers in the medical literature argue that rickets--a vitamin deficiency long thought to be a relic of the 19th century--is increasing among African-American and Hispanic kids, particularly in the North. Doctors blame it on everything from an increase in breast-feeding (breast milk doesn't contain much vitamin D) to the overuse of sunscreen (the body needs ultraviolet light to produce the vitamin).
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Plague has been around for a LONG time. In fact, one of the hottest spots in the world for it, is Colorado. That is why the branch is located at CDC-Ft. Collins.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Then why the absense of veneral diseases?
More likely the reason is that unis cramp as many people into 4x4 yards room as they can without having troubles with PETA 'cause they have less room than laying hens.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I guess we're getting this story now because people wised-up about "Bird Flu". Which, of course, was the successor to the short-lived "Super Volcanos" scare, which was itself the successor to the "World-ending Asteroid" scare story.
It's not that the stories themselves are complete nonsense, it's the way that they are handled. It's as if each one is the focus of world attention for a few weeks, then COMPLETELY disappearing when the ratings drop. Then a short intermission, and the next one comes along with more hype than the last.
I sure am glad that asteroids and bird flu aren't a threat anymore (who fixed them, BTW?), and I can focus on being scared by this new thing.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I'm a law student at the University of Kansas, where the outbreak hit a few weeks ago.
The outbreak hit despite the school's immunization policy, which has always required proof of two vaccinations against MMR.
It would seem, as a previous commenter suggests, and as some news reports corroborate, that the outbreak is affecting those already vaccinated.
""
Most of the current cases have been among people who were vaccinated. But that doesn't mean the vaccine has become less effective, Seward said.
No vaccine is capable of protecting everyone who receives it, she said. Five percent to 10 percent of people vaccinated for the mumps will fail to gain immunity.
These are probably the people who are becoming ill.
"The mumps vaccine is still protecting huge numbers of people," Seward said. "We would expect thousands of people to get sick if there wasn't good immunity in the community."
""
-The Kansas City Star
What does your claim tell us? That you don't care to look at actual facts. You have your set of preconceptions, and are on the lookout for facts that confirm it.
Are you adequate?
It is not that we, at least in the US, do not try to immunize everyone. Every child who attends school must be immunized. No exceptions. I do not believe that health providers, unless the fucked up congress has done something lately, need to ask about anything before giving a shot. These shots are so critical to our public health that we ought to just be giving them away for free to every child. I mean the cost of the shot versus the cost of treating the illness and all. There is no reason to track kids. Just make sure they have shots before putting them in closed groups. Colleges should do the same.
Again, the issue is people not understanding the security implications. Before vaccine, the number of cases and deaths were measured in thousands every year. Two generations ago Polio paralyzed at least 20,000 people per year, and now we are worried about a few hundrend with autism allegedly caused by the vaccine? Would these kids have been strong enough to survive without the vacine anyway? Sure we should make it as safe as possible, but get some perspective. In the case of mumps, there were a few hundred thousand people a years that got mumps, and perhaps a hundred died. Now the number of cases are a few thousand, with perhaps no one dies. Which world do you want to live in? It is like all thes fanatics wanting a simpler world, but who many woulg give up the air conditioning, car, fast food, non-wood stove, or TV?
I am sure that the left and right wing wackos will be the first to complain when an outbreak occurs, but it will be their fault. There is no absolute security, but vaccines has certainly seem to make the world an overall safer place. Whether it is good to have children who would have died under normal circumstances live is up for debate, but what is not is that vaccines seem to help us all.
On a last note, in this case it may be that the virus has outgrown the vaccine, and certainly the overuse of antibiotics and anti-viral agents, especially hand sanitizer, will help create a supervirus that could destroy us all. But vaccines are not there to kiil the virus, just to prepare our bodies for the eventual attack.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
A lot of these childhood diseases actually help strengthen the immune system. Here is an article from The Lancet, which explains that, while the measles vaccine does stop you from getting a rash...the rash is actually the body killing the virus. By stopping the rash, many vaccinated people get MUCH MORE SERIOUS diseases later on in life because they still have the virus, but because of the vaccine, the body can't get rid of it. The biggest majority of these diseases are a pain, but rarely life threatening. I would much rather have measles than lupus erythematosus, Scheurmann's diseases and chondromalacia, which are all chronic degenerative diseases...which means the doctor says, "it sucks to be you." -- Usurper_ii
More info:
-=-=-=-=-
An article in the January 5, 1985 issue of The Lancet is titled "Measles Virus Infection Without Rash in Childhood is Related to Disease in Adult Life." The research, based in Denmark, investigated the histories of people who claimed they did not have measles when they were children. Many of these people with no measles rash as a child, however, were found to have in their bloodstream antibody evidence of the measles infection. Significant numbers of these people had been vaccinated for measles, and "A high proportion of such individuals were found in adult life to have developed immuno-reactive diseases such as sebacious skin disease, tumours and degenerative disease of the bone and cartridge. These included cervical cancer, skin cancers and cases of multiple sclerosis."
The fact that the normal progression of measles was halted by the vaccination appears to have prevented the body from destroying the measles virus. This destruction of the virus takes place in the "spots" for which measles is known, but when the vaccine prevents the spots and fever from occurring, the measles virus is not destroyed, and stays in the body through adulthood, the medical journal article explains.
The Lancet article is further quoted by Chaitow, concluding that, "If this association is correct, absence of a rash may imply that intracellular virus escapes neutralization during the acute infection, and this, in turn, might give rise to developmental disease subsequently."
"Put simply this means that, as part of the process of neutralizing the invading virus, the body literally 'burns' up the cells which contain (measles virus). This incineration takes place at the site of the spots or rash, which measles are known for. If this is stopped in some way (as by an inoculation with a vaccine) then the rash is prevented and the virus survives and lives on in the body, only to cause havoc later," Chaitow writes. Among these people vaccinated for measles and who did not have a rash, the diseases they displayed later in life included lupus erythematosus, Scheurmann's diseases and chondromalacia, which are all chronic degenerative diseases.
"This research confirms the worst fears of those who have speculated on the possibility of viruses remaining dormant for many years after immunization. It also shows the folly of suppressing a self-healing mechanism, such as is displayed by the healthy body in response to infection. A healthy child will suffer no ill-effects from infection by measles virus. A child whose immune function has been modified and impaired by immunization methods, will be unable to adequately deal with such a virus, and may later suffer chronic degenerative disease, of one sort or another. This is no longer mere speculation but is, of course, not proved beyond all doubt. However, there is sufficient evidence to allow for the calling of a halt to the direction in which immunization is taking the human race, and to ask for emphasis to be restored to that aspect of the defense mechanism which has been neglected, the nutritional effort which can boost defenses without harmful potentials," Chaitow suggests.
And the British author concludes, "We have seen earlier that the possibility exists for transfer of genetic material from viruses in the body, to the cells of the body, thus altering their code and their future pattern of reproduction. If malignant changes are part of that new genetic code, then that is what will be produced as the cell reproduces."
Ron Paul