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US Is Slipping Toward Measles Being Endemic Once Again, Says Study (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: With firm vaccination campaigns, the US eliminated measles in 2000. The highly infectious virus was no longer constantly present in the country -- no longer endemic. Since then, measles has only popped up when travelers carried it in, spurring mostly small outbreaks -- ranging from a few dozen to a few hundred cases each year -- that then fizzle out. But all that may be about to change. With the rise of non-medical vaccine exemptions and delays, the country is backsliding toward endemic measles, Stanford and Baylor College of Medicine researchers warn this week. With extensive disease modeling, the researchers make clear just how close we are to seeing explosive, perhaps unshakeable, outbreaks. According to results the researchers published in JAMA Pediatrics, a mere five-percent slip in measles-mumps-and-rubella (MMR) vaccination rates among kids aged two to 11 would triple measles cases in this age group and cost $2.1 million in public healthcare costs. And that's just a small slice of the disease transmission outlook. Kids two to 11 years old only make up about 30 percent of the measles cases in current outbreaks. The number of cases would be much larger if the researchers had sufficient data to model the social mixing and immunization status of adults, teens, and infants under two.
Medically - politically - I have to look at the calendar everyday because it feels like I'm in a time warp and it's really 1917.
We, the USA, are getting dumber.
I think the issue is that most people alive today of childbearing age have no experience with how awful the diseases that plagued our ancestors were which leaves them with wiggle room to accept doubt from dumbass celebrities.
[Citation Needed]
It falls on you to back up your claim, first.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Stop coddling these people who are willing to put their children and the rest of society at risk for the sake of their pseudoscientific BS. It's been very well studied, and the time has ended for putting up with this stuff. I'm not saying force needles into their or their children's arms against their permission, because it's still their own body and their choice to make, but make the consequences of their (stupid and selfish) choices real. There are people who can not be safely vaccinated for medical reasons, and herd immunity is their only option. Protect them and the rest of the public.
Example: without legitimate medical reasons: 1) don't allow unvaccinated children in public school; 2) don't allow unvaccinated travel to countries where contageous diseases are endemic without putting people in relevant quarantine periods upon their return, at their expense. If people wont accept modern medical preventative measures then they should be subject to 19th-century-style ones until they are proven not to be carriers; and 3) up-to-date vaccination should be a qualification of employment at any health care facility, and probably for admission into any health care training program. No exceptions.
Mandate which vaccinations children are required to have to avail of private / public daycare and schools. And make the parents criminally liable if the child or someone he/she comes into contact with contracts a preventable disease because of their negligence.
First you have to stop certain religious groups in the first world telling people in the second and third worlds that birth control is a sin.
Time for bed, said Zebedee - boing