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Measles Resurgent Due To Fear of Vaccination
florescent_beige writes "In the September Mayo Clinic Proceedings, Gregory Poland, M.D. writes that 'More than 150 cases of measles have been reported in the United States already this year and there have been similar outbreaks in Europe, a sign the disease is making an alarming comeback (abstract). The reappearance of the potentially deadly virus is the result of unfounded fears about a link between the measles shot and autism that have turned some parents against childhood vaccination.'"
This follows the recent release of a massive review of studies into the side effects of vaccination, summarized here by Nature, which did not find convincing support for the idea that MMR shots caused autism.
Yeah. My friend's brother has an allergy to the vaccine, and his health relies on herd immunity. When idiots like these (and my one uncle; I don't really talk to him anymore) refuse to vaccinate their kids, my friend's brother is the one most likely to get hurt by this.
Cynical Idealist
Because vaccination does not guarantee immunity. Sometimes the vaccinations don't take hold immediately. For example, my fiancee had to get at least 3 Hep B vaccinations because her body didn't react properly the first few times. Or some people have a weakened immune system, and can't produce the antigens. Or what about people who would love to get vaccinated, but can't, because of an allergy to the vaccine? All of those people, and many others, rely heavily on what's called herd immunity.
Herd immunity relies on a sufficent percentage of the population being vaccinated. That way, there are no vectors to people without the immunity. You can't get sick if you don't encounter the bacteria, and if everyone you meet is vaccinated, then you'll never get sick.
However, if someone isn't vaccinated, but is strong enough to fight it off, they could pass it to you. And if you have a weak immune system, that can lead to severe short and long term consequences.
Cynical Idealist
Im not sure theres ever as clear as a correlation as this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Measles_US_1944-2007_inset.png
I mean, there doesnt even seem to be a shadow of a doubt that the shots are effective, whatever other complaints you might want to make about them.
It is probably going to be said a million times but, here goes:
Firstly, no vaccination is a 100% guarantee. The best give some high 90's percent chance of immunity, many much lower. However, even when you are not fully immunized from a vaccine, it can still mean you get a much milder case of the disease.
Secondly, not all people can be immunized. Children too young to have a fully working immune system, people with cancer or some immunodeficiency. They, in stead, rely on herd immunity: If enough of the surrounding people are immunized, they won't get the disease. So, by choosing to not get immunised when you can, you basically make life much worse for children with cancer. I would say that that is a group who could use any break they can get, and does not deserve to be made more miserable.
I'm sick of hearing this shit. People die because of this. And not just the anti-vaxxers' kids, but people who, for one reason or another, don't or can't develop the immunity, despite getting the vaccination. Or people who can't get the vaccination.
Cynical Idealist
You're an ass. If it weren't for science, none of us would be alive, because we wouldn't have made it out of the dark ages. We'd still be filthy and have no knowledge of diseases, and dieing when you were 50 would be a regular part of life. Get fucked you ignorant shit-eating asshole.
Cynical Idealist
It is shocking how stupid some people can be.
The vaccine isn't 100% effective, there are very few things which are. According to the National Network for Immunization Information one vaccination is 95% and two is 99.7% effective. The U.S. started giving 2 shots in 1989. That probably means there are between 10 and 15 million people in the U.S. who received the vaccine who are still vulnerable to Measles.
Now, I do have a degree in Mathematics so you can take my word on the fact that a 0.3% is much less than 100%. There is a 0.01% of a child having a reaction, and a 0.00001% of a child having a severe reaction, and 0.000001% of a child having an anaphylactic reaction. No children have died as a result of the vaccine in the United States since 1990. Before vaccination started (in the 1960s), 450 people died annually from measles and another 4000 got encephaltis. Again, I give you my assurance that 0 is much less than 9000.
The risks of just one disease the MMR vaccine protects against far greater and more severe than the risks of the vaccine.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
You clearly did not read the nature article as this is in no way a strawman. They did not just look at the relation between vaccines and MMR, but about negative effects of vaccines.
They found
We looked very hard and found very little evidence of serious adverse harms from vaccines
Stop putting out your own knee-jerk reactions and at least read the article you are criticising before putting out dangerous misinformation.
The situation you describe is reliance on "herd immunity": if enough of the population is vaccinated that *your* exposure risk is negligible, then yes, there's a slightly higher risk of harm from the actual vaccine than the disease, because there's little-to-no chance of anyone around you can infect you with the disease.
The situation *now* is that because so many families have skipped the vaccinations because of the Andrew Wakefields and Jenny McCarthy's of the world raising fears of vaccine-triggered autism that the situation is now reversed: enough of the population around you have *voluntarily* skipped the immunization that you're at greater risk of the disease.
Ye fscking godz: I'm enough of a geez to remember the days of closed pools and iron lungs because of polio risk. The idea that a parent would *voluntarily* put their kid at risk for diseases because of some talking head on the TV infuriates me.
So you're arguing not to use soap?
The fact is that vaccination programs have been, by any measure, among the most successful public health initiatives ever. Illnesses like polio, measles and smallpox caused untold misery and death, and were major contributors to infant and child mortality rates (which were huge before the end of the 19th century). People today, living in the comfort provided by over a century of public vaccination programs, simply do not understand this. And this garbage about vaccines causing allergies, or whatever it is you're trying to say, even if it were so, would still not be an argument vaccinations. Vaccines, like all medical procedures, carry inherent risks, but the benefits of wide-scale vaccination programs is so large that it outweighs what ultimately are a few relatively infrequent serious side-effects.
Oh, and your whole post reads like yet another idiot who comes up with a pet theory while drinking beers in the backyard with his friends. "Say, y'know Tom, I bet that MMR causes allergies. Little Billy got the MMR vaccine, and now he sneezes all the time."
Look up the cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Yeah. My friend's brother has an allergy to the vaccine, and his health relies on herd immunity. When idiots like these (and my one uncle; I don't really talk to him anymore) refuse to vaccinate their kids, my friend's brother is the one most likely to get hurt by this.
Herd immunity protects more than just people like your brother who cannot take the vaccine. The fact is that vaccines are not 100% effective. Herd immunity protects those who took the vaccine but for whom it was not effective. So people refusing to be vaccinated are not just a danger to themselves, but also potentially to anybody who HAS taken the vaccine.
For example, if you got your MMR vaccine before 1990, then there's a 5-10% chance that you're not actually protected from Measles.
I share this sentiment exactly. I have a 10 month old boy, we recently found that he's a little bit allergic to egg. Sometimes the jabs they give have egg in them. But you know what? Fuck it, he's still getting the jab in a couple of months time. They said the chances of him having a reaction to it are still pretty slim, but I'd rather if he was going to have a reaction, he did it in the presence of many qualified nurses and doctors, rather than contracting measles at a random interval in the future, whereby we might not be near any medical professionals. All because I know too many people are not vaccinating their kids, because they're fucking idiot.
This is a sore issue amongst my wife's family and ourselves. My wife and I are completely for vaccination, we're both reasonably intelligent adults and understand all the statistics and how some reports from a decade ago were complete and utter bullshit. However, her mother and aunt disagree. What makes this worse is that her aunt is a nurse, a community nurse that's supposed to promote vaccinations, but because her daughter is somewhat autistic, she doesn't trust them. I hope the guy who wrote that bullshit report, as well as every journalist who proliferated it, dies in a very painful death. Their actions, over the next few decades, could cause hundreds, maybe even thousands of people to die needlessly.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
The eugenicists, knowing that natural selection does not truly operate in a high-technology society, wanted to use the power of the state to "enforce" it by culling the weak and the mentally deficient. Sometimes this was combined with racism to argue that certain peoples were genetically disposed to be unproductive and should also have their populations controlled. This is pretty much the opposite of libertarianism, which prefers minimal government. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and just assume your are woefully ignorant and not truly malicious in your misinformation.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Unless we're adapting to being stab-resistant, or able to survive collision at 100km/hr, we're not really moving anywhere.
Alternatively, consider adaptations (including cultural ones) that make you less likely to get into a knife fight or car crash in the first place. I can't think of too many fang-or-claw-proof prey animals, but I can think of plenty of big-eared, big-eyed, skittish ones.
I'm sorry, but MMR does not cause autism. It was made up, in order to sell a more profitable (for the guy who made up the lie and the company that paid him) single vaccine.
It has been one of the most shameful situations to come out of the British science community.
The "study" was massively flawed, and the paper has been discredited and removed from publication.
Now, you may have valid concerns over 0.5% reaction rates to administered medicines (allergies, sensitivity to compounds etc) that cause adverse reactions in some people - and so do the medical professionals; it's why we don't routinely vaccinate 100% of the population, but "causing autism" is not one of them.
I don't see why there's such a big screaming panic about a disease that gives you spots and a bit of a temperature, and a couple of days off school...
Because for about two per thousand cases, it causes meningitis which kills about half of the affected patients, leaving many of the survivors brain damaged for life. For quite a few who don't get meningitis, it causes blindness and deafness (measles was the #1 cause of both in the 50s.) Because it causes pneumonia of the "hospitalized for days" variety in up to 30% of cases (and before oxygen therapy, IV fluids, and antibiotics killed about 10% of patients.)
I had measles before there were vaccines for it. All I have to do is mention measles to get my mother worked up -- she remembers spending a couple of weeks terrified for me, because she grew up before those treatments and even in a small town in rural Illinois she knew families who had children die of it and others who were handicapped for life.
Talk to people from India about measles, or any of the other vaccine-preventable diseases. You won't find any of them who will tell you those diseases are no big deal, because they know them. In the USA, we've mostly forgotten how bad they are. Thanks to vaccines.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Measles outbreaks have been reported in Mexico this century
The USA has had several measles outbreaks not only this century but in the past year. Oh.
All of the outbreaks have been traced to unvaccinated travelers to Europe, in particular Switzerland. (Not a big source of brown-skinned immigrants, by the way.)
Mexico has an extremely thorough measles vaccination program and treats outbreaks far more aggressively than the USA does.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Thiomersal was phased out of almost all US childhood vaccines around a decade ago (as, in fact, the Wikipedia article mentions). Yet, the rates of autism continue to rise.
You look a little stupid here, you know?
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.