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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.
That's not how any of this works.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Autism rates have been on the decline, and this decline started when vaccination rates began their decline.
It has? Can you please give a citation or two? From what I understand autism rates have been steadily increasing for a while now. Though I've read a few sources that state it may be about to plateau.
Granted, part of the increase has to be from prior misdiagnosis and things like Asperger now considered autism. Black and Hispanics are also seeing increases. But some of that can be attributed to a lack of medical care in the past too. Regardless, it's still on the rise
It's my understanding that there are some special cases where vaccines may be harmful to a very small percentage of children, but it's nothing compared to how harmful hepatitis, tetanus, polio, etc can be if you contract those and are not one of those cases.
Nice try at stirring up some hate there but it's not the Mexicans who are the slackers.
http://theweek.com/articles/53...
So what was the point?
While its extremely non-PC to suggest this, but illegal immigration has a role here. The study was done in Texas (a border state). While parents should vaccinate their children, herd immunity should prevent any large-scale outbreaks unless there is an injection of sick people who are acting as carriers.
A lot of outbreaks are also happening in West Coast states (where you have enclaves of non-immunized children due parents' belief in misinformation) where non-immunized foreigners are visiting and spread diseases that are otherwise no longer endemic in the US. Oregon is a good example.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
1) Not a decline, more like a plateau. It's also very recent, and doesn't correspond with the rise of the anti-vax campaigns, which happened years earlier.
2) Autism rates did not increase when vaccinations were introduced; again, the rise in autism only happened later--in this case, decades later.
3) Correlation is not causation.
Not that you will read any of this. You've reached your conclusion, and evidence that doesn't fit it will be ignored.
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.
Autism rates have been on the decline, and this decline started when vaccination rates began their decline.
Explain that, poison advocates.
Has to be a troll, too lucid. Most anti-vaxxers wouldn't be able to write two sentences without quite a few embarrassing mistakes.
On the off chance you are really an anti-vax dickhead, give my commiserations to your children. Their mother/father is a stupid prick.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
[Citation Needed]
It falls on you to back up your claim, first.
Uh, that post is almost certainly trolling, in the original internet sense of the word: somebody who is posting for no other reason than to get a reaction. Responding to him in any way does nothing other than feed the troll; the correct reaction was to ignore him and wait for him to be moderated "troll".
It's too late for that now, though. To deal with facts: the actual response is that autism rates are not declining: http://blogs.discovermagazine....
Here's a good correlation graph, if you're looking for correlation: https://www.sciencebasedmedici...
The problem isn't unvaccinated illegal aliens. The issue is a lot of parents in the US aren't vaccinating their kids because Jenny McCarthy and people like her scare them into thinking vaccines are evil. So, when people visit to/from places where diseases such as measels are still endemic they bring the diseases with them and spread them among the unvaccinated population here (a lot of whom tend to be clustered together since people with anti-vaccination beliefs tend to have certain other political or religious beliefs and live in communities with others who share those beliefs). Illegal immigration is a very small factor, if at all. And if the US and Europe would put in a proper refugee system, a lot of those people you mentioned would have proper medical screenings and be provided food, housing, and education/employment; allowing them to become productive members of a society they literally risked their lives for to join.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
We're blaming anti-vaxxers because it's the fucking anti-vaxxers' fault. How fast does the measles virus mutate? Go ahead and link your research showing that the modern vaccine is no longer effective. I'm supposed to be impressed by the four digits 1971? On it's own that's fucking meaningless mate.
You're just another "big pharma is evil" clown, and safe to ignore.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
So Obamacare was an improvement on what was before? Have we seen a population explosion as a result of Obamacare?
Infant mortality rates have dropped 15% in the past 10 years. That adds about 4000 children per year who would have died in infancy. Obviously not all of these saved lives are because of Obamacare, but the industry certainly cites increased access to healthcare over the past decade as a major driver of this trend.
Certainly not a population explosion, but then again you were probably merely mirroring the same level of hyperbole as the AC you were replying to.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
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
Just make sure *your* children have their vaccinations. The kids of all the dumbasses will be weeded out due to genetic stupidity. It is as it always was... thank you Mr. Darwin.
If only it were that simple. Problem is that the asshats who don't vaccinate by choice cause illness in those who cannot get vaccinated for valid medical reasons. If it was simply people competing for darwin awards along with their spawn I could almost not give a damn. But unfortunately I do actually care about the kids of these dumbass parents. You don't get to pick your parents and just because they are idiots doesn't mean the kid necessarily is.
Personally I think anyone who doesn't vaccinate without a valid medical excuse should have to live in quarantine.
Easy, dead kids never get autism.
Ezekiel 23:20
The reason you can get lifelong immunity (10 or 20 years, anyhow, since that is how long your B cells live) from the vaccine is that these viruses don't mutate much and with attenuated live virus you're getting the whole organism. So all of its proteins would have to mutate enough to evade the immune system at once. Like with us, many proteins will be highly conserved. With fast mutating, killed virus or antigen only vaccines you might need to get one every year like flu. Comparing efficacy across lots is probably done by ELISA and would be very easy. I don't have firsthand knowledge with MMR testing but each manufacturer would be required to run a QA lab that would routinely check the lots being manufactured. No one made a giant vat in the 70s that we are still consuming.
https://slashdot.org/comments....
So, the whole planet Earth was populated by stupid fucks back then, eh? All those common people and dignitaries who hailed Jenner as the Savior - everyone basically - they were all crazy! Or maybe, just maybe those people lived daily with diseases and dead toll that we can hardly imagine today...oh, why don't we have a time-machine to send you, AC, back in time to tell them all how EVIL vaccination really is....I wonder what Napoleon would do to you....
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.
One thing you have to realize is that political issues are never black-and-white, but there are shades of grey. Issues have both positive *and* negative aspects, and it is up to us to assign an inherent value to the plusses and minuses in each case.
Vaccination in the US is all tangled up with immigration and foreign culture.
Measles is brought in by travellers from foreign countries and spurred mostly by immigration - going to visit relatives back in the home country, or having relatives come to visit. Neither of which is a problem, but it adds a small negative value to unrestricted immigration.
A couple of years ago I read about some Islamic groups in Pakistan who intentionally avoided the (freely offered) polio vaccine, and also avoided having polio-laden children *treated*, thinking that if they could somehow get the children into the US they could attack us that way(*).
A few years earlier I read about a California school system with 7,000 students and only enough money for 5,000 vaccinations, but of those 7,000 students 1,500 were illegals. The controversy was about "who gets the vaccinations", and whether we should put tax-paying citizens at a disadvantage by vaccinating foreign nationals for free.
You could definitely say that people are stupid for not getting vaccinated, but you could also say that curbing immigration would help, immigration adds a burden of cost to our society, and that sometimes other cultures and practices will get in the way.
The stupid answer is to have unlimited immigration and also insufficient funds for vaccination. If we have unlimited immigration, we should absolutely be willing to bear the increased medical costs simply for the protection of our own people.
Whether unlimited immigration is worth the increased costs is now a political issue that you can judge for yourself, and perhaps we should poll the population for consensus. Take all the positives and their inherent value, and compare to the negatives and *those* values.
Vaccination is the correct choice, but it's become partly a political issue.
(*) And it didn't help that the CIA used foreign vaxxing programs as a way to locate and register persons of interest.
Evolution. All the idiots who won't get their kids vaccinated will see their genetic line die off. Those with vaccinations will be OK.
Might work if these diseases were always fatal. Problem is that they aren't. They are only sometimes fatal. Sometimes carriers aren't even symptomatic. And they also can infect people who cannot get vaccinated for valid medical reasons.
I wouldn't have a philosophical problem with parents of children who choose not to vaccinate without a valid medical reason to have to live in quarantine. Separate them from the rest of the herd. Basically they are deciding to join a voluntary leper colony. This would keep them and their DNA from infecting the rest of us.
Where is the line when it becomes justified? I don't advocating for forced vaccinations, but a little coercion is certainly in order. I do not see religious or philosophical objections as legitimate excuses for allowing unvaccinated children to attend public school.
Chickenpox kills about 0.003% of victims and hospitalizes about 0.26%. The overall death rate is low, but one quarter of a percent for hospitalizations makes for a lot of unnecessary strain on healthcare systems, especially for a disease that will infect around 95% of unvaccinated individuals.
Measles, besides the immediate death rate (about 0.15% in the US), Encephalitis (0.1% in the US), and hospitalization rate (about 25% in the US) brings a potential for a delayed neurological disease that is 100% fatal for those stricken with it. Around 1.7% of infants who get measles and 0.07% of children under 5 who contract measles will later develop this neurological disease. The mortality rate for subacute sclerosing panencephalitis is 100%. The mortality risk for individuals who contract measles as infants is the most concerning for me because it can happen before they are old enough to get the vaccine.
Not to rain on your anti-immigrant parade, but the west-coast states also have a lot of hippy dippy anti-vaxxers. Immigrants might have some responsibility for the increase; however, I'd guess that the anti-vax movement probably has more to do with it.
How was my post an anti-immigrant parade? I specifically mentioned the idiocacy of the parents belief and that the infections come from non-immunized foreign visitors. But the blame lies fully on the parents for not vaccinating their children, not the foreigners who may not have the money for/availability of vaccinations in their home countries.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
People who advocate forced vaccination should give some thought to what they are promoting. They are stating that they want a government that forces them to do things whether they are opposed to them or not. That might be justified with smallpox or polio, but measles and chickenpox are not so devastating as to call for fascism.
It's not fascism. The government (as an agent of society) has a duty to protect those citizens that are unable to do so themselves. In this case it is people who rely on herd immunity due to an inability to receive vaccinations. Because the government cannot realistically or ethically force those people into social and physical isolation for the rest of their lives, the only other alternative is to ensure they are in an environment safe enough for them (please do not try to construe this into a "safe space" argument). Anti-vaxxers aren't abstaining from vaccinations for legitimate health reasons, they are doing based on religious/political/misinformed (all so one guy could make money off some treatments) beliefs. If they don't want to vaccinate their kids and choose to forgo public schools, day care, or anything else, that is their choice. But that is better than giving the middle finger and saying "sucks to be you" to the people who have no choice.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Polio is still on the vaccine schedule everywhere in the U.S. because - you know - it hasn't been eradicated from the entire world.
You may be thinking of small pox which does not exist outside of the freezers in two high security labs. We do not vaccinate against that.
Think about it. If we stopped vaccinating for polio because it "has been eradicated everywhere except for a few small areas of two countries" then we get an entire generation of people with no immunity. One of those people is eventually going to travel to on of those "few small areas" some day (even if no one from those areas ever comes here), and then will come back. BAM! It is like the Salk vaccine was never invented as a wave of polio cases sweeps an entire generation, all at once.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Autism rates have been on the decline, and this decline started when vaccination rates began their decline.
Explain that, poison advocates.
Correlation does not imply causation.
The supposed "link" from vaccinations to autism is easily studied so it's actually been thoroughly studied multiple times by looking at medical records. No obvious link exists in the available data. I'd call this whole idea that there is a link a lie..
There is just about as much "proof" of the link between vaccines and autism as there is to unleaded gasoline to autism, if you follow the logic used in the first argument.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The numbers really don't support the idea that illegal immigration is a significant driver here. While it's always *possible* for someone to bring in measles, measles has an incubation period of about 10-12 days, so you only have to worry about the number of people who crossed the border illegally in the last week or so.
The total number of undocumented in the US is estimated to be around 11 million (useful fact to keep in mind in the immigration debate), two thirds of whom have lived here for a decade or more. By DHS's internal estimates, about 170,000 - 200,000 people annually cross the border illegally who are not caught.
Compare that to the number of Americans who travel abroad. Last year, that hit a record sixty-six million, twenty five million to Mexico alone. Since the vaccine has about a 2% failure rate, that means about 1.3 million non-immune Americans cross the US border legally every year, almost 10x the number of illegal immigrants. What's more Americans overwhelmingly fly in, which is significant given the incubation time of the virus. About 40% of illegal immigrants arrive by air, and these are overwhelmingly "overstays", people who enter the US illegally but overstay their visa. They are not "illegals" during the period they would be contagious.
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