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U.S. Measles Cases Triple In 2013
An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. Centers for Disease Control have announced that measles cases in the U.S. spiked this year, rising to three times their recent average rate. It's partly due to a greater number of people traveling to the U.S. when they're infectious, but also because a frustrating number of people are either failing to have their children vaccinated, or are failing to do so in a timely manner. Dr. Thomas Friedman said, 'Around 90 percent of the people who have had measles in this country were not vaccinated either because they refused, or were not vaccinated on time.' Phil Plait adds, 'In all three of these outbreaks, someone who had not been vaccinated traveled overseas and brought the disease back with them, which then spread due to low vaccination rates in their communities. It's unclear how much religious beliefs themselves were behind the outbreaks in Brooklyn and North Carolina; it may have been due to widespread secular anti-vax beliefs in those tight-knit groups. But either way, a large proportion of the people in those areas were unvaccinated.'"
It goes without saying that the moronic get what they deserve, though sadly, when herd immunity is compromised, sometimes the innocent (those who cannot be inoculated) pay the price too.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
... and other idiots
I actually have a co-worker who refused to get the MMR vaccine for his two children, both of whom came down with the measles last year. They didn't shun the vaccine because of religious reasons; rather, Jenny McCarthy convinced them that it would give their children autism. And while it's entertaining to watch this, and it's fun to sit back and mock these people, their belief system, and the consequences of their actions, the fact remains that these idiots are a real threat to our herd immunity.
The real answer to this is education, although that's almost as dirty a word as "vaccination" in 2013 United States.
We even now have a permanent Tetanus combo booster shot (TDAP) instead of the old every ten year one (that probably expired, don't step on a rusty nail!).
Correlation is not causation, but not getting an MMR measles mumps rubella shot is just criminal. Without herd immunity we're starting to see hospitals requiring people to wear masks or stay in isolation wards, measures we never had to do before the "fad" of not getting shots started.
And, no, I don't care what your objections are - there are nasal spray versions of all the shots, so stop endangering everyone else with your stupidity.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Bottom line, normally 60 cases a year, but spike was 175 cases. so what, that is nothing. measles therefore is not a concern in this country.
PDP-11s forever!
Hopefully these people are not allowed in public or private schools or daycare. We care enough about our dogs and cats to not let them in kennels and grooming situations unless they have vaccinations. Why should we care about kids any less. I mean if someone want to start a vac-free school where everyone is not vaccinated, that is their right, but we shouldn't put innocent kids at risk.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
So... this is what happens when you don't use your brain -- and you take medical advice from a stripper.
that measles cases in the U.S. spiked this year, rising to three times their recent average rate. It's partly due to a greater number of people traveling to the U.S. when they're infectious...
I find it interesting that in times when there's been greater scrutiny of who comes to the US, and in some cases tourist dollars having significantly reduced because of the tougher US visa regime and other factors, there are articles like those quoted that "blame" the incidence of disease on outsiders. Incredible!!
The USA should man up and state categorically that some of its citizens are behaving like uneducated villagers by refusing to vaccinate. Do not blame those you call aliens because measles has been and still is on the decline everywhere else.
What will happen when polio strikes?
Just last month, a friends kids class had 8 become infected with measles, but they were all vaccinated.
46137
At least they didn't develop autism
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Wait. What? Atheism being more popular today than in the 70's? That definitely needs a citation.You've got a warped sense of history.
I have insurance. My insurance covers vaccinations. However, my primary care provider will not administer vaccinations because they agreed to a contracted amount with the insurance company but they don't feel that that amount is enough. I called several other primary care physicians who similarly refused to administer vaccinations. I finally got one that agreed to do it but only if I also did a well child checkup, which would cost hundreds of dollars. All of these doctors suggested I go to the Health Department. So I did, and stood in line for a long time, to be told that you had to be on state aid in order to get vaccinations from the state.
Walgreen's and other facilities would do vaccinations, but my insurance would not pay because they are not a Primary Care facility. I would have to pay full price.
So basically, I have to pay for insurance which covers vaccinations AND I still have to pay full price for vaccinations, while if I were poor, I would neither have to pay for insurance nor pay for vaccinations.
To me, the fact that a Doctor can refuse to perform a service because they don't like their profit margin on it even though the AGREED to accept that amount in their contract, is BS. This is akin to a retailer advertising a model of TV for a cheap price, but not having ever even purchased any of said model to be sold.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Was there a spike in the 70s or something? Not as I recall. Quoth Wikipedia
At some points in the 1950s, almost all Americans identified themselves with a particular religion. In recent years, more than 1 in 10 Americans tell survey interviewers they have no formal religious identity.[35]
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Do you know what a strawman argument is? You're saying that the original post here is a strawman argument.. but where's the strawman? What is the other position that's being misrepresented?
What is the snide comment? The summary, which is all most of the posters would have read, is pretty much a list of facts. I mean:
There's not really any spin there, that's just what happened.
And are you really, really taking the position that an increased number of measles cases, where we know that most of the infected weren't vaccinated, is just spuriously correlated to more people not getting vaccinated? That's really where you're at? Do you understand how impossible it would be to gain knowledge about the world if this is how you reasoned?
Hmm. There's no milk in the fridge. Also, I drank all the milk last night. But let's not go jumping to conclusions here. There seems to be correlation, but we can't reason based on that. I really want to choke whoever started the current "correlation is not causation" meme - it's true, but it's mostly used now as an excuse to discount reasonably valid evidence, often in favor of humanity-embarrassing stuff like this:
Yeah, this is how we should do reasoning. We should look at the behavior of people that espouse positions, and if we detect any hypocrisy then their position must be wrong.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
After reports of half a dozen or so children dying because they were not vaccinated parents will start getting their children vaccinated again. Pitty some kids will have to die first though.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
It's a subset, though: plenty of atheists go to church, for social reasons. Very few people believe in some vague idea of God not associated with any religious system, again for social reasons.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Who said anything about blame? In order for an outbreak to occur, you need a source for the infection as well as a vulnerable population. The article is simply stating that increased travel provides more sources of infection, while anti-science idiots in the United States provide the vulnerable population.
Yes, if the U.S. got the vaccination situation under control, no one would be particularly concerned about measles exposed visitors. That doesn't mean they aren't a factor in this present situation.
How do you spread a disease?
How about this: Inject a few million people with the virus and release them into the population.
It's vaccinated people who now carry and spread sickness. Not those who are uninfected.
Don't like the sound of that? Sorry. The science holds on this one.
http://www.sott.net/article/269563-You-will-never-look-at-vaccinated-children-the-same-Shedding-Viruses
Let me know when the mothership arrives.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
First link: "Despite this vaccine being hugely effective against B. pertussis, which was once the primary childhood killer, these data suggest that the vaccine may be contributing to the observed rise in whooping cough incidence over the last decade by promoting B. parapertussis infection." In other words, whooping cough vaccine against whooping virus (for which it was designed) may actually promote infection of a related but not identical virus. This does not say the vaccine promotes sickness.
Second link: "Despite widespread childhood vaccination against Bordetella pertussis, disease remains prevalent. It has been suggested that acellular vaccine may be less effective than previously believed. During a large outbreak, we examined the incidence of pertussis and effectiveness of vaccination in a well-vaccinated, well-defined community." In other words, the whooping cough vaccine may not last as long as thought. More boosters may be needed or a different vaccine may need to be developed. It says nothing about spreading sickness.
Third link: "Safety and shedding data from four clinical studies were included in the BLA supplement. Additionally, a publication with associated electronic datasets was submitted in support of a label claim regarding shedding in HIV positive subjects." In other words, it is shows the shedding rates of HIV infected subjects whose immune system is somewhat compromised, not the general population.
Fourth link: "RotaTeq rotavirus vaccine and vaccine-derived strains were detected actively in stool samples from 13 out of 61 (21.3%) infants having diarrhea within 2 weeks of rotavirus vaccination, and among three out of 460 (0.7%) cases with acute gastroenteritis captured via the Australian Rotavirus Surveillance Program. Six (37.5%) of these 16 vaccine-derived viral specimens were associated with a G1P[8] strain thought to be the result of genetic reassortment between two component RotaTeq strains. Although nearly half of these reassortant-associated cases had underlying medical conditions, such as severe combined immunodeficiency disorder, further study is needed to understand the relationship between shedding, viral reassortants and underlying medical conditions." So a sample size of 61 in which half the infants had other medical issues had samples of rotavirus. Again, the vaccine does not spread sickness.
Those were just the first four links. All of them say the same thing: vaccines are not 100% effective. But no scientists have ever claimed them to be. Each of the first three showed that in certain circumstances, the vaccine is not effective. In fact, the first link says that the Pertussis vaccine is not effective against another disease. Excuse for not being panicked about that.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The article states that 90% of the people in the outbreak weren't vaccinated. I'm all for vaccines but didn't realize it had a 10 % failure rate. I know herd immunity but still. Is that typical of most vaccines?
As a conservative, religious man, I find the religious anti-vaccination crowd a bunch of blind ninnies. I have a few at my church like that, and I want to smack them as they put my children who are too young to receive these vaccination at risk of catching a deadly disease.
I would tell you that your friend isn't very well educated, because he clearly sucks at basic math and statistics. Please tell him to go get a job that he is actually qualified for.
Anti vaccination people should be shipped off somewhere where they can all be together and stop endangering the rest of the population. These people are doing the biological equivalent of firing guns in the air in the middle of a crowded city. Yeah, the chance of someone getting killed is low, but eventually if enough people do it, people will start dying. You want your kids to risk death or permanent disability? Fine, be a shitty parent, that's your choice. But your rights stop at the end of your nose. You don't have the right to put the rest of society at risk.
Ship em to fucking north Alaska.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
The numbers are low, because herd immunity is still strong. The reason for concern is that the infection rate curve probably isn't linear. At some point on the curve there is going to be an inflection point where a lot of people will start getting sick. So, while there are probably things that are currently causing a lot more child deaths now, this is could change quickly.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
You don't have to. Just remind everyone that FDR contracted polio at the age of 39 and was paralyzed for the rest of his life.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Why? 0 of the 159 people with measles in the US this year died. She should likely just be in general population, doing a few years for battery.
Seeing as how net immigrant to Mexico fell to zero last year, wouldn't that mean record low levels of measles if the illegal immigrants were really bring them in?
That, uh, is not what they're saying. It's implied from their statement that some people were vaccinated on time and still got the disease, yes. Clearly the vaccine is not 100% effective. We know this. But they're highlighting the fact that people who were not vaccinated are overrepresented in the infected group, a fact that is true and interesting.
That statement is not making the value judgement you are attributing to it. There could be a million reasons to not get vaccinated. It could be a horrible idea to get vaccinated. They're not doing any of the persecution you're imagining. They're just saying that people who didn't get vaccinated (a smaller group) makes up a disproportionate number of people who got infected.
Measles vaccines are well studied. There are studies that prove the efficacy of the vaccine, and also studies that tell us how long vaccines take to start working. There's also studies on the effect of vaccination programs that are widely followed. Here - http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJM199411243312101 - is an article from the New England Journal of Medicine talking about how the vaccine effectively eliminated measles in Finland.
Of course there are negatives to vaccines, sure, but the vast majority of resistance to them is based on misunderstandings and ignorance of science. There's also a feeling that opting out has no negative consequences; this is dangerous, and something that becomes exponentially more dangerous the more people that buy into it. It's like people deciding not to vote. It's pretty much meaningless in small numbers, but it could become a real issue if too many people stopped at once.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
No vaccines when I was a kid. Didn't go deaf from measles, but I can tell you first hand, Meniere's is not a nice condition.
Vaccinate your children.
40-60% is total childhood mortality in primitive societies. Most of the reduction in childhood mortality since then is probably due to better sanitation, better treatment of diarrhea, and the use of antibiotics, not vaccinations.
Completely agreed on the unreasonable extremes people go to when they say correlation is not causation. By their logic, smoking does not cause cancer and asprin does not reduce fever. Just because we can't fully explain the connection between A and B does not mean one doesn't exist.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
For every 1 person that dies, 2 people suffer brain damage or deafness, per the CDC.
http://www.medpagetoday.cominfectiousdiseasegeneralinfectiousdisease/43268
For measles, it says that for every
500 deaths, you have:
48,000 hospitalizations,
7,000 seizures, and
1,000 cases of permanent brain damage or deafness each year, according to the CDC.
So brain damage/deafness is about 2x as common as outright death from measles.
--PeterM
Anytime someone brought in a kid suffering from a disease that could have been prevented by vaccination, I would first ask whether the parent was brain dead.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Nice statistics there. A word problem and a number. What percentage is "almost all?" Is 90% close enough, or what?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
When comparing modern mortality improvement over the older pre-industrial, pre-modern-medicine regimes, the "most helpful" reductions vary with the age group you're dealing with:
Overall, clean water and sanitation probably win as the single most important advancement in public health, ever, but vaccines are a *very* strong second. Frankly, drugs are at best a distant fourth, behind even improved medical understanding of the human body (enabling more effective trauma and non-drug treatments of common diseases and accidents). Drug improvements really have helped two big categories of people: soldiers at war, and the elderly.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
Here's my idea: offer an insurance program that kicks OUT when you do something deliberately disregarding reasonable methods of protection.
1) smoke? Then no, your lung-cancer isn't covered.
2) don't believe in vaccines? Then no, your measles/mumps/rubella isn't covered.
3) Like to ride a motorcycle without a helmet? No prob, but no coverage for head-related injuries resulting from a motorcycle incident.
Anyone interested?
-Styopa
Conclusion: Atheism leads to a wave of anti-science bigotry that results in people not getting immunized. Case in point: Jenny McCarthy.
How is an avowed Catholic a suporting case for atheism being anti-science? Or are you saying that increasing atheism caused Christians to become more anti-science? Wouldn't that be a problem with Christianity, not atheism?
Learn to love Alaska
Re your first bit, pertussis (like tetanus and diphtheria) is actually caused by a bacterium, not a virus.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
... and your repeatedly discredited, disproved autism-vaccine crap. Though I should blame the idiots who actually listen to a plastic bimbo like you for medical advice, I still hold you accountable in large part. People have DIED because of you, b*tch.
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
Vaccinations not up to date? No passport.
=Smidge=
No, it's an act of god if you get sick.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
about the fact that vaccinated children indeed have a slightly higher risk of having autism... because those that aren't vaccinated have a higher risk of dying before they're even old enough to be diagnosed with autism.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
The stories are fading, but I have a grandfather who has a lifetime disability from polio as a young adult. 'Last rights 3 times' level of sickness from it. Just recently I learned that my grandmother on the opposite side had to relearn how to walk after her bout of polio.
Grandpa took his kids to the doc the moment he learned that a polio vaccine had been released for it. He didn't wait for it to be given out at the schools.
I don't read AC A human right
While your reasoning is off, from what I've read most vaccines have single digit ineffectiveness rates of up to around 10%, but consider the proportion of the population that's immunocompromised today; the figures I've read about average around 10% still vulnerable even if you jab everybody that isn't medically contra-indicated. The very young, the very old, the sick, immunocompromised(not all of whom know it yet), etc...
I don't read AC A human right
This is a social problem. These people continue to be idiots because all of the rest of us are "too nice" to say anything when they start spewing their bullshit. Every time I run into one of these asshats at work, or at a party, I tell them they're committing child abuse, they should be ashamed of themselves, and more importantly they're child is not allowed to play with my child. Then I inform every other parent that might know them that they should let their kids play with them either and that they should shun the adult. This wont change until it's no longer socially "cool" to do this.
If you're a parent who is anti vaccination and your child ends up getting infected with a disease they could of easily fought off with a vaccination then I think you should go to jail for abuse. 99% of the parents who deicde they know better or are better qualifed to make the vaccination choice are simple unaware and dangerous morons who think they should be allowed to play doctor and medical expert based on incorrect reports and very poor evidence. If you play doctor professionally and don't have license you can go to jail, so why should we not subject these parents to the same and worse? If you don't vaccinate and your child gets sick because of not being vaccinated then you abused the child and hence should suffer for that.
Heal the world. Arrest the basterd.
Those are some amazing leaps of illogical thinking. One of the circumstances noted was a vaccine does not protect against a different virus. That doesn't take rocket science to understand. Another one was for individuals with deficient immune systems may not get the full benefit of a vaccine Again, this is common sense.
. Interesting, my question is this: With so many unexplained, unknown, or unintentional consequences, how can anyone say "vaccines are safe"?
Only if you are willing to ignore decades of science. But based on the rest of your post, it seems that you are willing to ignore anything that doesn't fall into your narrow thinking that vaccines==bad no matter what science is behind it.
At what point are we to be considered test subjects for filthy money grubbing corporations, who already break the rules on normal pharmaceutical manufacturing, efficacy testing, and safety testing?
FDR was paralyzed for the rest of his life after age 39 from polio. Many millions were also afflicted. Since the polio vaccine paralysis is from polio is virtually no existent. Yet people like you will continue to question the "safety" of them.
Glaxosmithkline was recently fined 3 Billion dollars for falsifying data for a product the FDA DID NOT BAN.
WHICH HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH VACCINES.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
You're missing the point. That collection of links was not gathered together in order to prove that vaccines were not 100% effective. They were gathered together to illustrate how secondary infection from vaccinated subjects to non vaccinated subjects has been observed to function and to invite thinking on the subject.
You are missing the point. A pertusiss vaccine doesn't protect against a parapertussis? HIV positive patients doesn't get the full benefit of vaccines? In my world, that's just fucking common sense. So what?
Your objections come off more as personal spin doctoring than anything else. If, for instance, an HIV patient can be infected by a vaccinated vector, then it demonstrates something very important. It doesn't matter that an infected party is prone to infection. That's like saying petri dish experiments are irrelevant because petri dishes are easily colonized by microbes.
You missed the point entirely. The study says NOTHING about the general population. It says something about a specific segment of the population. It's just scare mongering not to clearly state how narrow the study is. Just like a study that says a statin is not effective with people with high blood pressue. It doesn't say that the statin is not effective for most people.
Particularly in instances where live viruses are used in vaccines, why should the concept of secondary infections come as any surprise at all? That's how viruses work.
And how common is secondary infections? Minor or major? AND it wasn't the premise of the GP: "How about this: Inject a few million people with the virus and release them into the population. " It implied that vaccines themselves were the cause of disease not secondary infection.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
"In all three of these outbreaks, someone who had not been vaccinated traveled overseas and brought the disease back with them"
One thing seems obvious to me. Ban our CITIZENS from reentering the US unless they can show that ALL of their vaccinations are current. We could delay reentry to the US by quarantining them in a place similar to Ellis Island for 21 days (or some suitable time) to make sure they were not carrying in a disease. Those people that have religious, moral (or just plain stupidity in the case of vaxers) could avoid the vaccinations by just being sequestered.
NOTE: Quarantining is not incarceration and has been proven legal such as in the case of "Typhoid Mary" and quarantining by the health department. I don't see any legal problems but IANAL.
The article/video was designed to explore that very question. And if you go back and read the first post, you'll see that it was indeed the premise:
Hello? Are you reading the same post I am?
How do you spread a disease? How about this: Inject a few million people with the virus and release them into the population. It's vaccinated people who now carry and spread sickness. Not those who are uninfected. Don't like the sound of that? Sorry. The science holds on this one.
The video also is not about secondary infections and is clearly designed to spread FUD about vaccines. It distorts the words of Anne Schuchat by only showing the parts of the statement and what she was addressing. In fact the end of video it advocates for the rights of parents not to vaccinate.
It seems you're letting ego obscure the matter, because it's a valid question and the observations collected from studies which may not have been designed to directly examine the issue, nonetheless still provide useful information toward clarifying our understanding of that point.
Please. The whole statement is tinfoil hat thinking as if there was a grand conspiracy to spread a disease by vaccinating against it. The question that was stated didn't have anything to do about secondary infections. It wasn't stated whether immunities last as long as once believed. Also one aspect ignored by the anti-vaccine crowd is even if immunities do not last as long, that doesn't negate the fact that the person had immunity and there are much less likely to be infected with a vaccine than without.
A study trying to determine the rate of disease in cats, by default suggests that cats really do exist despite that not being its primary critical goal. Lateral thinking.
Unless that is the entire goal of the study. Extrapolation is a tricky thing in science. The goal of the HIV study was to study how HIV affected particular vaccine by the manufacturer. Trying to extrapolate to what it means for the general population when decades of other research has already answered the same question is bad science.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
False equation, presumably from some sort of retarded bigot.
Here's a perfectly reasonable potential : Joe Sixpack had a bad reaction to the first dose of his vaccine and was advised (or his parents were) against taking the second shot, leaving him vulnerable. Years later, Joe works in electronics and goes to sell flange sprockets to the RasPi factory in South Wales (to inject Slash-cred into the story). South Wales being in Europe and Europe being civilized, having free-at-the-point-of-use health care even for filthy foreigners, Joe didn't see any need for special medical care. Unknown to Joe, in a cafe near the RasPi factory he comes into contact with a victim of the recent measles outbreak and becomes infected. While infectious, and not knowing it, Joe returns to the USA, where a million anti-vaxxers are waiting to die.
What is illegal about Joe?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
It appears to show a decline.. hmmm, yeah... It's a log graph - it went from like 100,000 to 10, you fantastic, almost unbelievable idiot. That's not methodological differences or something. A whole bunch of people used to get measles, and then almost nobody did. Because they were getting vaccinated.
Your stupid, stupid mental agenda is preventing you from getting anywhere near the ballpark of sanity.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
My sister worked for a while some years back in a veteran's hospital. An old guy came in and since she was the admitting doctor she went through the paperwork and she had a conversation a lot like this:
"Have you ever had any serious life threatening diseases?"
"No."
"What about malaria?"
"Oh yes, gave me trouble for years."
"Yellow fever?"
"Yes."
"Beri Beri?"
"That too, but everybody who fought in the jungle had all those. They were not unusual life threatening diseases."
What you and I don't take seriously and doctors know to take seriously can be different things. I'm not a doctor so I just have to take their word for it with chicken pox. As I kid I didn't take it, mumps or measles seriously.
I don't want to be insensitive to the children, that have little choice on whether they are vaccinated or not, or more responsible relatives that would have vaccinated these children if they could have, but isn't this just natural selection at work in our modern society? How is this any different than parents that smoke around their kids or don't put them in the proper restraints when in a car? The parents, who either because of their intrinsic intelligence or because of the beliefs of their social groups, etc, choose to not protect themselves and their offspring from danger. Because of this, they can be removed from the gene pool, and this alters the future generations, hopefully for the better.