Slashdot Mirror
Measles Outbreak Tied To Texas Megachurch
New submitter the eric conspiracy sends this quote from NBC:
"An outbreak of measles tied to a Texas megachurch where ministers have questioned vaccination has sickened at least 21 people, including a 4-month-old infant — and it's expected to spread further, state and federal health officials said. 'There's likely a lot more susceptible people,' said Dr. Jane Seward, the deputy director for the viral diseases division at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ... All of the cases are linked to the Eagle Mountain International Church in Newark, Texas, where a visitor who'd traveled to Indonesia became infected with measles – and then returned to the U.S., spreading it to the largely unvaccinated church community, said Russell Jones, the Texas state epidemiologist. ... Terri Pearsons, a senior pastor of Eagle Mountain International said she has had concerns about possible ties between early childhood vaccines and autism. In the wake of the measles outbreak, however, Pearsons has urged followers to get vaccinated and the church has held several vaccination clinics. ... 'In this community, these cases so far are all in people who refused vaccination for themselves and their children,' [Steward] added. The disease that once killed 500 people a year in the U.S. and hospitalized 48,000 had been considered virtually eradicated after a vaccine introduced in 1963. Cases now show up typically when an unvaccinated person contracts the disease abroad and spreads it upon return to the U.S."
Think of it as evolution in action.
...that you shouldn't listen to people who have no idea what they're talking about.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Where is your god now??
Interesting!
It's almost as if these "vaccines" actually work!
Maybe these "vaccines" were intelligently designed or something!
...so long as you keep the little plague bearers quarantined away from me and mine.
Vaccines are science, if you think they are causing health issues use real science, not a personal feeling. This issue is MUCH bigger than a simple personal choice.
Ever since they gave a lot of "talking time" to folks that may not have any idea at all what they are talking about, our "fair and balanced" media also shares a hand in the killing of these people.
Just add {In Space!} to anything.
The only logical conclusion is god hates these people.
I have no measles, so I know god loves me.
Each Biblical plague was an affront to an Egyptian deity, more or less.
then they're putting everyone at risk for mumps and rubella, both with reproductive implications.
Terri Pearsons, a senior pastor of Eagle Mountain International said she has had concerns about possible ties between early childhood vaccines and autism. In the wake of the measles outbreak, however, Pearsons has urged followers to get vaccinated and the church has held several vaccination clinics.
I respect the hell out of the fact that she actually went against her own original beliefs and recommendations and, in the wake of the outbreak she reversed her opinion no matter the fact that it may have made her look 'stupid'. High five to Terri Pearsons for doing the right thing.
The autism caused by vax was reported by a doctor doing research.
No, it was reported by a doctor perpetrating a fraud. "Doctor" Wakefield's paper was subsequently retracted by The Lancet and he was thrown out of medicine permanently.
Phil Jones has admitted to falsifying data
Sorry, no. He did no such thing. What you just said is the Fox "News" version of the story, in which the truth is far more complicated than you make it. There wasn't any kind of fraud going on, and to talk about this in the same manner as if Jones is equal to Wakefield is pure, unadulterated, bullshit.
There was an investigation spurred by a *republican* and the result was that Jones was vindicated. Which was a fact that you conveniently left out of your "just so" story.
I just can't figure that part out.
Because you are a moron. Full stop.
--
BMO
Please provide a link to any reputable source claiming that Phil Jones admitted to falsifying data and deleting it to prevent peer review. I very seriously doubt that you can. I also very seriously doubt that you care, because you seem to have made up your mind already.
Dumbass religious fanatics spreading disease. Even the Black Death wasn't enough to convince these cretins they should quit inflicting the consequences of their ignorance on rational people.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
To be fair, SETI (the organisation) does not say "we believe there is intelligent alien life out there". They say "We think there is a good chance that there is intelligent alien life out there, and we're trying to increase our chances of finding it if it does exist".
Now, some (even many) members of/contributors to SETI may be 100% convinced that there is intelligent alien life out there right now that wants to communicate with us, despite zero evidence so far. They're the nut jobs. But someone who contributes isn't necessarily a nutjob.
FWIW, I don't contribute to SETI. I think that it is a near certainty that there has been or will be intelligent life somewhere in the universe other than us. I also suspect the chance of encountering signs of intelligent alien life in my lifetime is close to zero (too far away; missed them by a million years, etc). But I do think many of their activities are worthwhile even if they don't result in success in their stated aim.
Oh please. This is a religion. They do everything to cover their asses. On one hand they may be running the vaccination clinics but on the other hand nobody is attending them, that seems like they continue preaching their idiotic viewpoints from the pulpit while legally and publicly covering their asses. All cults do it, Jehovah's Witnesses, Scientologists, ... They preach one thing within the rank and file and then publicly state the opposite.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
You don't need to even bother with any reputable source. The simple fact is this. If you want to beat an anti-vaxxer in an argument, simply give in to them. Admit every single thing they said is true.
Now, with that said. We are going to assume that measles causes 10 autism cases per 1000 kids. A 1% rate.
Measles alone, and JUST Measles, in a first world country, has a 0.3% mortality rate - http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/189/Supplement_1/S4.full
Now we have 3 dead kids, against 10 autistic ones. This doesn't factor in the kids maimed and permanently blinded by complications of just measles.
Now throw in rubella, diphtheria, polio, smallpox, pertussis, hep b, influenza, mumps and chicken pox.
How are those 10 autistic kids looking against the pile of dead, blind and scarred kids.
Exactly. I can concede every single point to an anti-vaxxer and still show the outcome is better with vaccines.
They're only putting those who are not vaccinated at risk.
1) Vaccination is not 100% effective in all subjects. It works almost always, but sometimes doesn't stick.
2) Some people are allergic to some vaccines so can't be vaccinated and have to rely on herd immunity to not come in contact with the disease.
3) Some people, eg. those being treated for cancer, have damaged immune systems and can't tolerate the vaccine; even if they were given it, it would not work due to their immune system being broken.
4) Infants can't be vaccinated immediately at birth; allowing diseases to become common may not affect vaccinated adults much but will still increase infant mortality.
5) More hosts around immune people means the disease has the chance to throw itself at the vaccine over and over until adapted strains that aren't prevented by the vaccine proliferate.
If not, then . . . who cares?
People who can't get vaccinated for medical reasons, for instance because they're babies and too young to get the vaccine yet, or they have compromised immune systems (for one reason or another). People in these groups have to rely on otherwise healthy people to do the right thing and get vaccinated.
Breakfast served all day!
of course the morons will then WHARGARBBBL about fascism and tyranny, as if the only threat to life and liberty comes from the government, and not from the morons living around you
no one should have the "freedom" to kill children, whether theirs or their neighbor's. they might not realize that their beliefs are doing that. and you're certainly entitled to your beliefs, but you're not entitled to your own facts
when the issue is life and death, it's time to force the morons to stop killing children. if they can't be reasoned with, they need to be forced
scientific fact is not tyranny
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Exactly. I can concede every single point to an anti-vaxxer and still show the outcome is better with vaccines.
The other angle to take is that with most people immunising, their position is relatively safe. They can protect their little darlings from the "horrors of immunisation", while the fact that the rest of us continue to immunise protects their little darlings from the disease itself. Seems like a fairly selfish position to take, and certainly doesn't scale.
Yeah, I must be missing something here. Are those who do not get vaccinated putting those of us who are at serious risk?
Yes. The measles herd immunity threshold for the MMR vaccine is 92-94%. If more than 6% of the idiots around you go unvaccinated, measles becomes likely to spread among people who have already taken the vaccine or otherwise acquired immunity.
The reason is simple: the immune system is random. The B cells in each vaccinated individual produce different antibodies in response to the same antigen. Since an antibody's response to antigen X1 doesn't correlate much with its response to antigen X2, and different lines of a disease have different antigens, no vaccine can be 100% effective. Any one person might have total immunity to some given line of the disease (called a "quasispecies"), yet be totally vulnerable to some other quasispecies whose antigens are invisible to the existing antibodies. Different people are vulnerable to different quasispecies, and there are thousands of quasispecies (grouped into 21 strains in the case of measles), so we usually just throw our hands up in the air and pretend that infection vulnerability is a wholly non-deterministic thing.
Herd immunity is the threshold where each infection produces, on average, one new infection. If the vaccination rate is above herd immunity, each infection produces less than one new infection (exponential decay). The outbreak reaches its peak quickly, then vanishes as the existing victims fight off the disease (or die). If the vaccination rate is below herd immunity, then each infection leads to more than one new infection (exponential growth). The outbreak then grows rapidly until so many people are already carrying the disease that the disease runs out of new hosts, reaching a new steady-state of one new infection per infection... at which point we say it has transformed from epidemic (an outbreak) to endemic (never going away on its own).
If vaccines were 100% effective, falling below the herd immunity threshold wouldn't be so worrisome for people who are vaccinated. True, among vaccine-refusing populations (and those who can't benefit from vaccines, e.g. babies, the very elderly, AIDS patients, and organ transplant recipients) the disease would perpetually rage, as there would be enough contact between vulnerable islands that the disease never quite burns out. But in reality (a) each person who is immunized has a small-but-nonzero chance of catching the infection (and passing it on), so everyone is potential virus-habitat regardless of vaccination status, and (b) more victims means larger viral population means more viral reproduction means creation of more quasispecies. More quasispecies means that, if there is some way that the antigens can change that will give the disease access to new victims without compromising the disease's ability to spread, evolution will find and exploit it sooner rather than later, so the virus can get its grubby little capsid proteins on fresh meat that other strains can't touch (i.e. you).
What we're seeing in Texas is an outbreak in an overall US population where vaccination rates are falling, but still above the herd immunity threshold... for now. If rates continue to fall, we can expect these outbreaks to become larger and more frequent, until they eventually reach criticality and the end of one outbreak always overlaps the beginning of the next, i.e. the disease becomes endemic again.
(Pertussis is also stupid contagious and thus has a high threshold for herd immunity, but pertussis is about 10 times more likely to kill a baby than measles is. Like measles, pertussis is also seeing big ugly outbreaks these days: the Denver metro area, Northern California around Marin, Washington state, i.e. basically the places where the cultish and vaccine-refusing Waldorf School has a notable presence
Range Voting: preference intensity matters
Sorry, I just don't get how you can deny AWG. American Wire Gauge has been the standard for wire diameters since 1857, and doesn't look to be going away any time soon.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife