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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...
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Yeah, if only they bothered to do routine medical checks and give people vaccines.
Oh wait.
You want to do something? Bitch about the sex trade or something useful, not your usual shit.
And don't forget: Three of the four presidential candidates are anti-vaxxers.
https://twitter.com/realdonald...
https://twitter.com/govgaryjoh...
http://www.salon.com/2016/08/0...
You are welcome on my lawn.
I've some background here, and I'd be...generally skeptical since about the only thing I can think of is that maybe we're talking about autoimmune diseases and honestly that seems more a reason to avoid vaccines for diseases that aren't that much of a problem. The immune system can be pretty accurately thought of as being a bored two-year-old, though we've only particularly lately realized that a germ-free environment would actually be pretty horrible.
However, honestly I'd expect just being relaxed about attempting to disinfect everything as long as the kid's actually got an immune system should counter a good amount of the damage, and there is some interesting discussion on if maybe a few of the annoying-but-harmless infectious vectors we don't get exposed to as much anymore ought to basically come out so you can be deliberately infected since it seems those may have helped train the immune system to not do things like take a sudden, virulent hate for your nervous system.
However? If these are the same people who had been going vaccines cause autism before we finally managed to slay that lich? I'd not take any medical advice from them without getting a second opinion from somebody who at least is aware that prenatal exposure to Rubella (the R in MMR) is positively linked to autism.
(In fact, most of what we've traced as causes are prenatal, if not genetic in their origins, and we have been able to push back the ability to diagnose autism to before when most vaccinations are received.)
On the flu shot, though--I've heard reports that some people have found it to be effective for multiple years, and 'effective' with vaccinations means 'your immune system recognizes and does not have to guess at how to make antibodies for this.' From what I've heard, a decent number of the problems with the flu shot can be attributed to the fact that it's based off of educated guesses of what strains will be this year's popular ones...and as I recall, at least one year practically none of the guesses were right. (The flu isn't a single virus but a slew of them, and a lot of people who think they have the flu actually have something else entirely...right up to and including bacteria instead. Generally it's not worth the testing needed to tell.)
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!
For most people, Zika and Dengue are so mild that many don't even realize they are sick. Ebola can be stopped dead in its track with soap. Measles is a far more serious disease than any of these.
You clearly didn't read the article about Stein.Or worse you're just lying. It claims she panders to anti-vaxxers not that she is one.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Diseases can never be eliminated with non-mandatory vaccines -- you can't reach 95% that way, it's hard enough to with mandatory vaccines. And of course without that group immunity the people who really can't use the vaccine due to an allergy are left unprotected. If you're against mandatory vaccines, you're bad for other people.
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The vaccines aren't mandatory per se, they are mandatory if you want your kids to mix with all of the other kids who don't have parents who aren't complete fuckwads.
Go ahead and homeschool your frail little sunflowers, but don't expect that the rest of us want them to join the herd hoping that OUR vaccinations were enough to protect them.
Hurd immunity? You must be GNU here.
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 used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
A few notes (to waste on an AC thread):
The population of the Americas is now 1Bn but wasn't so 40 years ago. The reduction in number of cases to what the Americas have now is significant also because there are more people that could have been affected and are not, thanks to the efforts in eradicating the disease. A more useful measure would probably be morbidity in % of population, to show clearly how big the overall problem was then and is now.
I point out "morbidity" because death is not the only possible effect of catching this disease. While it is a useful thing to measure mortality, measles is linked to pneumonia and encephalitis, which can have significant consequences such as blindness and deafness.
To say that everything would be OK without vaccines because post-facto the disease is not killing a lot of people does not tell the whole story. If there's any obfuscation or misunderstanding of the real situation it is on the side of those who overlook the needs of a growing and mobile population.
Interestingly I've seen this sort of presentation before by someone who thought that polio eradication would have been "naturally occurring" in the USA, overlooking that in the chart she was showing the date range was one where the USA population had doubled (baby boom and huge inbound emigration after WW2). I can't imagine what side effects she was worried about that would lead to going without such strong prevention measures, even if the data shows that the reduction of cases of paralysis was big, and in terms of % of population as actually a very significant and sudden change when the polio vaccination programme started.
"The Americas" includes Mexico.
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