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Diphtheria Returns To Spain For Lack of Vaccination
TuringTest writes: A six-year-old child was admitted to a hospital in Barcelona and diagnosed with diphtheria, which hasn't occurred in Spain since 1986 and was largely unheard of in western Europe. The boy had not been vaccinated despite the vaccine being available in free vaccination programs. Spanish general health secretary called anti-vaccination campaigns "irresponsible" and said: "The right to vaccination is for children, not for the parents to decide." The child is in critical condition, though he's now being treated with a serum expressly brought from Russia through an emergency procedure.
... so why are you listening to medical advice from him?
A Public Service Announcement from Get Your Brats Immunized
No. Vaccination rates are highest in the Bible belt, while they are lowest on the west coast. I think it has less to do with political affiliation and more to do with who reads idiot granola mommy and food blogs.
I strongly think that parents who elect to not vaccinate their children (absent a documented medical condition preventing safe vaccination) should be liable for child endangerment. This is reckless behavior that is reasonably likely to result in bodily harm to another human being. This is a public safety issue with a clear and benign and effective solution. Those who opt out should be liable for the consequences of their actions.
I didn't know there WAS a Bible Belt in Europe, especially the Netherlands. Here in the US, non-abortion-related medicine is usually without any religious controversy, save for the Christian Scientists (who are, depending on what angle you view them from, neither Christian nor scientific), a relatively small, fringe sect that believes that all medical care represents faithlessness.
Here in the deep-south, there's a modern-day parable that goes around Christian circles that demonstrates the general philosophy in this regard: A man goes over a cliff overlooking treacherous waters and manages to grab hold of a thin root half-way down. In desperation he cries out to God, "Save me! Send me deliverence!" Having thus prayed, he resolves to place his trust in God. A man walks by the cliff and lowers a rope. "Grab the rope!" he says. The hanging man replies, "I cannot! I have placed my trust in the Lord, and I will await His deliverance." Next a boat drives by under the cliff. The man in the boat says, "Jump! I'll catch you!" The hanging man replies as he did to the first. Next, a rescue helicopter hovers nearby, and a man lowers a ladder. "Grab the ladder!" he says. Again the hanging man replies as he did to the previous two. Slowly, the hanging man loses his grip, falls into the swirling waters, and drowns. He arrives at heaven, meets God, and cries, "Why did you never answer my prayer?" To which God replies, "What are you talking about? I sent you a man with a rope, a boat, a helicopter..."
Bible Belt states have some of the highest AND the lowest vaccination rates.
http://www.motherjones.com/pol...
And as usual, it is probably a combination of factors which influence the anti-vaccination attitudes.
Though one factor does seem to be common - clustering.
I.e. It's social. Where there's one anti-vaxxer, there's more anti-vaxxer.
Overall, national vaccination rates seem high: The median rate of coverage for the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, administered to most before entry into kindergarten, was 94.7 percent for the 2013-14 school year. But, as Schuchat points out, the rate is lower in communities where unvaccinated families tend to cluster. In some areas, low rates might have more to do with access to clinics than with beliefs about vaccinations.
"The national estimates hide what's going on state to state. The state estimates hide what's going on community to community. And within communities there may be pockets," Schuchat said. "It's one thing if you have a year where a number of people are not vaccinating, but year after year in terms of the kids that are exempting, you do start to accumulate."
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Diphtheria is a bacteria, not a virus. When it isn't in people it can just go live in the environment.
So did it go hide out for a while in Africa or something?
Many diseases that were rare or unknown in developed European nations twenty years ago have been making a comeback lately. The reasons are obvious, but no-one is allowed to talk about them in SJW^H^H^Hpolite society.
"With so many Africans in Greece, at least the West Nile mosquitoes will eat home made food!"
That joke about the West Nile virus posted on twitter by the Greek triple jumper athlete Voula Papachristou few days before the 2012 Olympics was the reason to be expelled from the games...
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
how is it a public safety issue, the ones who do get vaccinated aren't at risk... so they only endanger themselves and likeminded folks
Wrong. Not everyone can get vaccinated because some people legitimate medical conditions making it inadvisable. Sometimes they are too young. Sometimes they have allergy or other medical conditions that prevent their vaccination. These people depend on herd immunity to avoid the illness. If people start avoiding vaccines for non-medical reasons then these people who cannot be vaccinated are endangered by those who recklessly decide to avoid vaccination for no good reason.
Furthermore diseases have a substantial and measurable cost to society. We have finite resources both financial and time to devote to treating diseases and if we waste them on something that could be solved with a cheap and safe vaccine then we necessarily cannot spend those medical and financial resources on something else. Should we spend a few dollars for a vaccine or thousands on a treatment. THAT is a public health issue.
The Diphtheria vaccine doesn't prevent infection, it only immunizes against the effects of the toxin the bacteria produce.
Thus, it's still around and kicking, it just doesn't kill people anymore as most people can fight off the infection on their own without the toxin wreaking havoc on their body. And most people won't even notice anything other than "flu-like symptoms" as all the effects of Diptheria are caused by the toxin, rather than the presence of the bacterial infection.
The poor kid probably just got coughed on, or touched something and then cross-contaminated something he put in his mouth.
The reasons are obvious, but no-one is allowed to talk about them in SJW^H^H^Hpolite society.
Something to do with gaming journalism?
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
/sigh... and as I do in every single thread this comes up in: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/previe...
Further data: 7 of the 8 most vaccinated states went to Romney in '12.
We had the choice to get vaccines growing up (2nd grade, 6 y/o). ..., and that pretty much scared people more than the needles (which I would say didn't really bother half the class).
They explained it to us, and most took it because of the dire warnings and videos of people with diseases.
They showed us filmstrips from the 40s and 50s about measels, diphtheria, whooping cough, scarlet fever,
For the few who didn't want to, they were just goaded into it by peer pressure of all their friends and classmates (either by comforting or mocking, depending on gender). Kids are cruel, and also don't want to be excluded for chickening out / being afraid (and then teased). It's pretty effective.
I don't think it survives in the environment, and it doesn't seem to have any animal hosts. There are places in the world where it's endemic and somewhat common, and it can live in the pharynx of vaccinated or asymptomatic humans. So it probably comes into a country from an immigrant or traveler with some frequency, it just doesn't spread because of vaccination.
Then there's this kid.
From microbewiki (emphasis added): "C. diphtheriae is a Gram-positive, aerobic, nonmotile, toxin-producing, rod-shaped bacteria belonging to the order Actinomycetales, which are typically found in soil, but also have pathogenic members such as streptomyces and mycobacteria."
Now you're just being a pedantic assclown.
Smallpox is still maintained in US and Russian laboratories. It was declared eradicated in 1980. The WHO wanted the last of the laboratory samples destroyed, but it has so far been delayed. Interesting history in that link.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
I wish I could find it, but there was a vaccination map for Southern California. You live in a poor part of LA? Really high vaccination rates. Live in a Rich and/or Hippie infested area? Vaccination rates MUCH lower than the surrounding areas.
And who knows how many more forgotten samples are out there?
The only way I even know the name is because George Bailey saved the pharmacist from poisoning a kid with it in "It's a Wonderful Life." And the last recorded case of it in Europe was decades ago. So did it go hide out for a while in Africa or something?
It's endemic in some populations; also: a bacteria, Corynebacterium diphtheriae, not a virus, FWIW.
Yes. There are large reservoirs of the bacteria in many North African countries, as well as Pakistan. What's only noted in a couple of places is that while the kid was "a resident of Olot (Girona)", the kids origin was as an adoption of an immigrant child.
To see the reservoirs, here is the World Health Organization data on reported cases by country through 2014:
http://apps.who.int/immunizati...
If you care, you can also look at diseases other than Diphtheria, across the top of the chart. For example, there were 52'628 cases of measles in China in 2014, and there are rather large reservoirs in the Philippines as well (which is whre the person who was pation zero in the Disneyland measles outbreak had just travelled into the U.S. from, presumably infectious at the time they travelled. Somalia, India, Ethiopia, Viet Nam, and China also have significant measles reservoirs.
http://apps.who.int/immunizati...
Of course, we don't perform health examinations or quarantines on people traveling from these hot zones into the U.S.
P.S. India, the U.S., and Australia are the top reservoirs for pertussis (whooping cough), so it'd be a good idea to check those people too, if they happen to be coming into your country.
In the U.S. the anti-vaxxers are largely those who go around calling people Deniers because they don't drive a Prius.
GIven that much edepends on the framing ot the questions, it appears that between liberals, moderates, and conservatives, it's all about the same.
http://blogs.discovermagazine....
As in so many aspects of life, it depends on your own political views. If you are conservative - the liberals are the bogeyman. If you are liberal, it's conservative bugaboos.
People like myself, in the middle, recognize that one's politics, left or right, does not prevent them from being a flaming asshole, which any anti-vaxxer most certainly is.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.