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The Americas Are Now Officially 'Measles-Free' (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The Americas are now free of measles and we have vaccines to thank, the Pan American Health Organization said earlier this week. This is the first region in the world to be declared measles-free, despite longtime efforts to eliminate the disease entirely. The condition -- which causes flu-like symptoms and a blotchy rash -- is one of the world's most infectious diseases. It's transmitted by airborne particles or direct contact with someone who has the disease and is highly contagious, especially among small children. To be clear, there are still people with measles in the Americas, but the only cases develop from strains picked up overseas. Still, the numbers are going down: in the U.S. this year, there have been 54 cases, down from 667 two years ago. The last case of measles that developed in the Americas was in 2002. (It took such a long time to declare the region measles-free because of various bureaucratic issues.) Health officials say that credit for this victory goes to efforts to vaccinate against the disease. Though the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine is recommended for all children and required by many states, anti-vaxxers have protested it due to since-discredited claims that vaccines can cause autism. NPR interviewed Dr. Seth Berkley, the CEO of GAVI, a Geneva-based nonprofit organization whose mission is to improve and provide vaccine and immunization coverage to children in the world's poorest countries. She says that 90 to 95 percent of people in a given region need to be vaccinated in order to stop transmission in a region. The rate worldwide is about 80 percent for measles, which means that 20 percent of people around the world are not covered.
So 54 people in the United States had the measles last year, but we're measles free because those people picked it up elsewhere?
I'm pretty sure some PR person must've come up with this definition...
#DeleteChrome
We are busy importing hundreds of thousands of unscreened people from areas where measles still runs rampant. This little blip will not last.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
declaring war on terror by striking terrorist training camps and launch pads inside Pakistan
hilarious
We are busy importing hundreds of thousands of unscreened people from areas where measles still runs rampant. This little blip will not last.
What a racist, mysogynistic, homophobic thing to say!
When will you nazi alt-left white supremacist types learn that the only answer to these types of problems is compassion and the liberal plan for immigration and amnesty!
Why, just look at this refugee and tell me it doesn't just melt your heart!
Why do you hate children?
Seth Berkley, http://www.gavi.org/about/governance/secretariat/seth-berkley/ appears to be male. The she in the summary either needs to be changed, or made clearer as to who the subject is.
Thank God now all we have to worry about is Zika, Cickengunya and Dengue Fever! With an occasional bout of Ebola thrown in for good measure! Life couldn't be better!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I have to mention that the previous post was sarcasm, because a lot of people can't recognize sarcasm.
On a more sober note, I'm seeing some doctors claim that vaccines cause children to be more susceptible to diseases later in life. Does anyone have background information about this?
To be specific, Pediatricians admit that vaccines do not cause autism, but some are saying that their vaccinated patients tend to catch more *other* diseases than unvaccinated children, and perhaps getting vaccinated isn't quite so black-and-white.
I'm not conversant with either position, and was wondering if anyone with actual knowledge (and not echo-chamber retelling of conventional wisdom) could comment on this.
Do vaccinated children catch other diseases more easily?
And there's this whole thing about getting the flu vaccine, which apparently is only 50% effective (whatever that means), and is even less effective if you get it several years in a row. Then there are sites like this one that certainly *seems* like it makes a fair point, but...
Nowadays, who can you trust online?
So no more usa strains? All existing measle cases in usa are actually foreign strains? Well, thats the "official story" . Maybe this is an attempt to clasify measles as a foreign problem, not respecting political geo maps. Nasty terrorists and invaders.
yes!
pee in my butt and tell me it's raining
Using Predator drones to kill measles suspects was really effective.
and they aren't being properly vetted.
If it requires a 90-95% immunization rate to reach herd immunity, it sounds like herd immunity isn't very effective. About the only thing herd immunity is good for it counteracting the "law" of diminishing returns, eliminating the extra effort needed to access the recalcitrant 5-10% of the population. If we stabilize at 5-10% of the population as die-hard antivax-ers, this looks like some kind of Nash equilibrium.
The right of self-determination. The freedom for you to live your life as you wish, making choices for yourself as you see fit, not as someone else thinks you should live.
So it boils down to which of these noble rights you think is greater. The right of self-determination, or the right for society to attempt to rid itself of certain diseases. Unfortunately, when resolving conflicts between two noble rights, most people stack the deck. They pick a scenario which supports their predetermined conclusion. For those supporting vaccination (note: I support vaccination), this usually means proffering the scenario of someone refusing to vaccinate their children, resulting in their children getting sick and the disease spreading to others because of lack of herd immunity.
Just to play devil's advocate, someone arguing the opposite extreme would bring up the case of a corrupt government staying in control by locking up and drugging "troublemakers" (aka dissidents). The reality usually lies somewhere between these two extremes.
As I said, I believe in and support vaccination. However, I cannot in good conscience support forcing people who don't believe in it to be vaccinated. At least not with our current system of government. If you do not grant that right of self-determination to others, on what basis can you argue that others should grant it to you? If there were less corruption in government, if I were more confident about the safeguards build into it, then I would probably go the other way. But based on what I've seen, no. History is replete with those in power doing harmful things to others against their wishes with the best of intentions. Our current government simply should not have the power to require everyone be injected with medicines of its choosing. If that makes me fall within your definition of an anti-vaxxer, then so be it.
The way I see it, the anti-vaxxer problem needs to be solved by educating people so they will make the correct decision on their own. Not by subjugating refusers and forcing them to do something against their will. Yes I know that's the hard way. But the easiest way would be to simply put a bullet in their heads. Denying them the right of self-determination is halfway to denying them their life. (It's interesting to note that people who've grown up in or have experienced repressive governments tend to think the right of individual self-determination is paramount. While those who have lived all their lives under a benign government tend to be the ones who think society's rights should overrule the individual's. I'll leave it to you to figure out which of these groups is deciding based on experience and evidence, and which is deciding based on naive idealism.)
> In the Americas, 101,800 deaths were attributable to measles between 1971 and 1979. A cost-effectiveness study on measles elimination in Latin America and the Caribbean has estimated that with vaccination, 3.2 million measles cases will have been prevented in the Region and 16,000 deaths between 2000 and 2020.
Articles like this are a gift to the anti-vaxxers. 101,800 deaths between 1971 and 1970 is about 10,000/year. The population of the Americas is about 1 billion according to Google, so that is a per-year death rate of about 0.0001. The UK had a population in 1968 (when the single measles vaccine was introduced) of about 50 million and a measles death rate of about 75/year (UK govt. figures) which is about 0.0000015 which is a factor of about 65 lower.
Contrary to what appears to be the common perception, a lot of anti-vaxxers are a whole lot more informed than most people who do vaccinate. They see figures like those quoted in the article, do the maths, and conclude - correctly as it happens - that the overwhelming reduction in measles mortality is due to improved living conditions and public health. And then they ask, if measles vaccinations are so great, why the apparent need to present figures that obfuscate the real situation?
WOW! So don't vote:
Don't vote GREEN: Jill Stein’s anti-vax game: How and why the Green Party candidate is pandering to the anti-vaccination crowd http://tinyurl.com/jd9s626
Don't vote LIBERTARIAN https://twitter.com/govgaryjohnson/status/113419678730301440 Sorry Gary but spreading disease is not a right. Ever heard of Typhoid Mary.
Don't vote TRUMP https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/507158574670573568?lang=en&lang=en An idiot
PS There are still antivaxxers in the public out there who won't vaccinate their kids. The virus will survive in their kids as reservoirs and eventually they carry it back to the community. Look in any Microbiology textbook for the graphs.
I'm just glad that they did this instead of looking at gay diseases like AIDS or nignog diseases like sickle cell. They have their priorities right
Calling people you disagree with "crazy" shuts down any reasonable conversation.
You are presuming the conversation was reasonable to begin with. The anti-vax crowd is not spouting off reasonable viewpoints based on considered evidence. There is nothing reasonable about their viewpoint or what they are saying. They are loudly proclaiming harmful falsehood and putting people in harms way by doing so.. No matter how polite on is, ANY discussion with them is basically an instance of pointing out that they are crazy and dangerous. These are fearful people who are either unwilling or unable to listen to reason and evidence. It never was a reasonable conversation in any meaningful sense.
Your right to be protected against disease does not override my right to decide what to put into my body.
Yes you have that right. HOWEVER that does not mean the rest of us have to accommodate you and the threat you present in society consequence free since you have chosen of your own free will (and delusions) to be a potential disease vector. Your unvaccinated children should not be allowed to attend school. You should not be allowed to have a job where you interact with people. Go ahead and stay unvaccinated and I'll defend your right to do so. But I also will insist that you remain in quarantine until it is safe to be around you.
For every thousand people that catch it, the more serious symptoms during the course of the infection are:
60 people with pneumonia, probably requiring hospital treatment.
6 people having seizures.
2 dying.
(rarer complications include SSPE - where your brain shuts down for no well understood reason and you die 1-7 years later, at a rate of about 20 per 100000 cases).
Measles during pregnancy leads to a higher risk of spontaneous abortion.
In the last large outbreak in the USA, 11000 were hospitalised, and 123 died. (1991)
.
As I said, I believe in and support vaccination. However, I cannot in good conscience support forcing people who don't believe in it to be vaccinated.
I would support their choice to not be vaccinated as long under the condition that if they decide not to be vaccinated after receiving education about the consequences of not vacinnating that they remain in some form of quarantine. Is this stance coercive? Yes it is. But when you present a clear and present danger to those around you by your irrational unwillingness to submit to a treatment that is demonstrably safe because of your ignorance I don't see any credible alternative. I would have no problem forcing them to go through an education class about the consequences of their decision. If they still make the choice to not vaccinate then quarantine it is. It might be a mild form of quarantine but if it is important enough to vaccinate for a disease then clearly the public interest is in stopping the disease completely.
If you do not grant that right of self-determination to others, on what basis can you argue that others should grant it to you?
Let's have a little perspective here. Vaccines are about as safe as any medication gets. Any risks are INCREDIBLY small and well documented. The dangers presented by people opting out of vaccines are real, consequential, and measurable. While I would agree that people should have the civil right to opt out of vaccination under normal circumstances, the evidence is clear that they are making an irrational choice and endangering others by that choice. I see no reason why we shouldn't assign cultural consequences to making that choice just like we do so many others.
The way I see it, the anti-vaxxer problem needs to be solved by educating people so they will make the correct decision on their own. Not by subjugating refusers and forcing them to do something against their will.
A common tactic in good parenting is to frame a decision. You don't ask a child who doesn't understand that veggies are good for them if they want to eat veggies because they will opt out every time. You ask them "do you want peas or carrots"? No veggies is not among the options available to them. This gives them the power to make a decision on their own but narrows the choices to a group of good decisions. If someone wants to decline to be vaccinated after being educated about the consequences of their decision then the decision tree should only involve options that are beneficial to society.
Jenner was a fraudster. Most of the 'doctors' alive in his day were also conmen, who jumped on the 'vaccination' bandwagon, what's not to like? Inject filth into people, under force of LAW, and get paid for it! Millions of customers, who have no choice - if they don't get 'vaccinated', they get put in prison? Or weren't you aware of this?
http://whale.to/v/hadwen1.html
Nobody has EVER rebutted any of Dr Hadwen's talks on 'vaccination'. Why is that? There are millions of you (apparently) who believe Jenner's lies, so why haven't you written a simple rebuttal?
Public health is something you need to get familiar with. This debate was settled, at least in the US, back in the early 1900s. You do NOT have an unfettered right to decide what goes into your body and what you do with it. You CAN be compelled to take medications and be vaccinated. Have you ever heard of quarantine, or Typhoid Mary?
In a similar fashion, the state can kill you if the collective polity sees it as necessary.
The fact that you BELIEVE, against the evidence, that you have this right - that makes you unreasonable.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Your right of self-determination ends where it becomes a liability to the rest of society. If you are a selfish enough asshole that you don't give a shit about the rest of society, get the fuck out of it!
We've been here before:
We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.
Holmes concluded his argument by declaring that "Three generations of imbeciles are enough".[12]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bell
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilization
* http://www.npr.org/2016/02/26/468297940/imbeciles-explores-legacy-of-eugenics-in-america
Anti-vaxxers are dumb, but there are larger liberties at stake.
Obviously not pro-choice. Cause I thought the whole argument was that one had a right to their own body. Guess I was wrong.
Who can't use the vaccines due to allergies. The whole argument you folks make is that vaccines are safe and there are no problems.
That's news to me. The last time I was in the local hospital, they had signs up everywhere warning people who thought they had measles to wear masks.
That if vaccines are effective, and your child is immunized, than there really is no issue.
You also realize the effect of many vaccines fades. When is the last time you had an MMR? In fact, a great many adults can be carriers. The vaccine may give them enough protection but they carry the vaccine. So you're concern of a 1% versus a large percentage of society being potential carriers is rather silly.
Except in many states, home schooling is not easily allowed. And in many states there are mandated school attendance or parents are charged and arrested.
Yes, let the anti-vaccers rejoice.
Now they will not vaccinate their kids and say that the vaccines don't work. until their kids get sick :P
You can let the product sell itself. It's convenient not to get sick.
It's not a placebo - it does something to your immune system. You will notice it.
They're not really that safe, actually - but it's fine to use them if you want. You're probably going to be just fine. But they're pretty nasty.
Things are fast-tracked. Corners are cut. Trillions of dollars are involved. Governments and pharma hand-in-hand. Societal pressure like you've never seen. Guilt. Fear of losing kids.
From the other person's perspective, it sucks. You know that Linux is better, but these Windows people keep telling you this, or you realize how elegant a hackintosh is but the Apple people frown on you and the FOSS people think you're strange.
It's a strange place to be in, really, but vaccines are nasty, and they are more or less unnecessary.
But take them if you want them, that's cool. Let the product sell itself. That's the best way to do it. If it's so good (and really, they're not THAT bad... for most folks, anyway.) . But safe, no... not at all. Vaccines can kill you. Or your kid. And they do... all the time.
It should definitely be a choice. But do it if you want to. You'll probably be just fine, and it's convenient - you could potentially avoid some down time.
The anger, the guilt, the fear, the trillions of dollars, the fast-tracking (notice how I'm not even concerned about autism), poor safety record, deaths, permanent disabilities, pain and suffering, etc... it should definitely be a choice (actually, it is, at least for now).
The anti-vaccination perspective is not far from the Linux vs other perspective. Once you get comfortable (kind of) realizing how fragile life is, you realize how much of an insult to your health and well being pumping yourself full of that crap is. But you'll get over it just fine if you're healthy.
Think Linux. And realize that life is short. And make up your own mind. It's important to remain positive, and not intentionally cause distress to others who have very valid reasons to have a viewpoint other than you. There are two valid points of view, and many folks can do vaccines and be just fine. Yes, they are quite nasty, but they serve their purpose and they have their place. So does love.
http://reason.com/blog/2016/08/25/gary-johnson-changes-his-mind-on-mandato
If you believe in herd immunity... how about getting together with your herd and inhaling some inert gas. You will all be protected from it because you are in a herd. F'ing morons.
So after a generation a simple infection will travel like wildfire and wipe us out.
There IS still an issue if your child is immunized AND vaccines are effective.
1) Vaccines are rarely 100% effective. So something like 5% of people vaccinated can still get sick. Furthermore, in the case of measles, which is highly contagious, >~5% vulnerability in the population to measles is enough to support an epidemic. ~5% vulnerability means that measles doesn't get the chance to spread and is incapable of becoming epidemic.
2) It's an issue for ME anyway, if people who are immunocompromised and can't take the vaccine, or are just sick, get sick because of vaccine non-compliers weakening herd immunity. For example, I don't some poor kid on chemotherapy with degraded immunity to die because someone else couldn't be bothered to get the measles shot.
I don't get vaccinated just for myself. I also get vaccinated FOR EVERYONE ELSE, and especially for the most vulnerable.
As for the rest of your comment, it is so incoherent that it's hard to decipher what you mean. Yes, vaccines fade in how well they provide immunity with time. That is why I get booster shots periodically--as should everyone. That said, the subclinical cases you mention are often also not very contagious.
--PM
And with current air travel availability, we're no longer measles-free anymore. That was fast.
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
Were incorrect. The issue was when they asked parents to provide proof of immunizations. Most could not.
However, most are also in school systems where kids cannot attend unless they had been immunized or a special religious exception voucher was submitted. Of which, without, essentially means most of those kids were vaccinated. Few parents can actually find all the vaccination records of their kids.