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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.
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.
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.
[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
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.
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.
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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