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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
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.
Hurd immunity? You must be GNU here.
I simply have the right to decide what I put into my body, regardless of what you think about it.
If you had the magical ability to not spread viruses, I would accept your statement, but you do not. When you have measles, it is exactly the same as walking around town with a handful of hypodermic needles, injecting random passers-by with viruses. You violate everyone else's "right to decide what they put in their bodies."
You live in a society, made of other people. Therefore, you have some responsibility towards the others who you interact with to provide you with food, gasoline, clothing, education, fire protection, etc., etc., etc.
The good news is that vaccines don't need to hit 100% of the population to be effective enough to prevent an outbreak. "Herd immunity" prevents the wide spread of a disease when most of your neighbors are immune. A level somewhere between 80-95% vaccinated is enough to stop an outbreak. But that's a very high level to achieve voluntarily. Vaccines are ineffective in some people. Some people with auto-immune diseases, or undergoing certain therapies, or are just too frail, can't risk taking some vaccines. And some people are so isolated by either geography, finances, or intelligence that they lack the opportunities to learn that they need vaccinations. Between those groups, there is almost no extra safety margin for tolerating people who think they deserve some special exemption because they "believe in" something divine, or think they have some special rights that they themselves violate on a daily basis.
We don't have a special "isolation island" to keep unvaccinated people from putting the rest of us at risk. Instead, we pass laws that enforce schoolchildren to put something in their bodies, or else we deny them schooling. But that's all the control we have, so far. Instead, we have to rely on public health education, and hope people voluntarily comply.
What we really could use would be swift punishment for the anti-vax deniers. Unfortunately, that crosses swords with free speech. So instead, we have to hope we can convince people that anti-vaxxers are stupid, hostile, anti-social jihadist monsters who are trying to destroy humanity with their lies and bioterroristic weapons. It turns out that a disturbingly high number of people are so extremely gullible or stupid that it's not as effective a strategy as we need.
John