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Measles Cases Top Last Year's Total
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: So far this year there have been 387 confirmed U.S. measles cases, more than 2018's full-year total and the second-largest number since the disease was declared eliminated in 2000 (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The disease has spread to 15 states in 2019, with six continuing outbreaks of three or more cases each in Washington, New York, New Jersey and California. The development has sparked new policies aimed at boosting inoculation and curbing misinformation about the measles vaccine.
Measles cases have has risen since 2000 as infected travelers bring the disease to the U.S. Those travelers -- unvaccinated foreign nationals or Americans who become infected abroad -- have spread the highly contagious disease to others in the U.S. who aren't vaccinated or hadn't previously had measles. These cases have fueled outbreaks in communities where large numbers of people haven't been inoculated because of personal or religious exemptions to the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. The largest growth in infections since measles was eliminated totaled 23 outbreaks and 667 cases in 2014. Last year there were 17 outbreaks and 372 confirmed cases. The number of cases in 2019 could increase in the coming months. Measles is a seasonal disease, with cases rising in late winter and early spring in temperate climates, according to the World Health Organization.
Measles cases have has risen since 2000 as infected travelers bring the disease to the U.S. Those travelers -- unvaccinated foreign nationals or Americans who become infected abroad -- have spread the highly contagious disease to others in the U.S. who aren't vaccinated or hadn't previously had measles. These cases have fueled outbreaks in communities where large numbers of people haven't been inoculated because of personal or religious exemptions to the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. The largest growth in infections since measles was eliminated totaled 23 outbreaks and 667 cases in 2014. Last year there were 17 outbreaks and 372 confirmed cases. The number of cases in 2019 could increase in the coming months. Measles is a seasonal disease, with cases rising in late winter and early spring in temperate climates, according to the World Health Organization.
There is something really wrong with people who don't vaccinate. I don't know what it is exactly, but they are not seeing the world clearly.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
This latest outbreak is going to jump start more laws to stop this stupid crap. If you go to a public school I want no exceptions to MMR and DPT except medical ones. Don't like it? Pay for a private school that doesn't care. If that doesn't work, we need to stop the un-vaccinated from going into public places like grocery stores.
Lets clamp down on these jackasses until they can't live in the society without getting the vaccine, or all go live on their own private island.
This shit just makes me shake my head....all the work and effort and time and money that went into developing vaccines, and these ninnies won't use them.
And it's all because discredited former British doctor (Andrew Wakefield) published a bullshit medical paper claiming that vaccines were unsafe. That's all it took- the morons and dumbshits ate it up and stopped vaccinating their children.
Now we have measles epidemics again, yay.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Most cases are spread by returning unvaccinated travellers, sorry to ruin your dog whistle.
Russia Madcow has been pushing a stupid conspiracy theory for almost three years on MSNBC. Whereas people who call BS on crap like false flags in Syria or a DNC worker being shot twice in a robbery where nothing is taken are smeared as "conspiracy theorists".
Water is toxic. Please stop ingesting it.
Some Aussies looked into the reasons last year.
In order of magnitude, antivaccination attitudes were highest among those who
(a) were high in conspiratorial thinking
(b) were high in reactance
(c) reported high levels of disgust toward blood and needles
(d) had strong individualistic/hierarchical worldviews.
In contrast, demographic variables (including education) accounted for nonsignificant or trivial levels of variance.
The Psychological Roots of Anti-Vaccination Attitudes: A 24-Nation Investigation, Hornsey, M. J., Harris, E. A., & Fielding, K. S. Health Psychology (2018)
I don't know what you can do with that, but that's what's wrong with them: Conspriacy theorists who are bolshie, but not from any particular education level or demographic group.
But why, pray tell, do you think the death count from measles are so low?
L'Idiot
Measles was eliminated in the United States in 2000. Unless you're going to quarantine the US completely (close all borders, no one gets in or out) you're going to have people getting exposed. Vaccines are the only practical way to prevent it from spreading.
www.gaiageek.com
It kind of does if the animals are also vaccinated.
That's how Belgium and Germany eliminated rabies, by spreading vaccinated bait for the foxes.
It is far more difficult to achieve for the plague, though.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Factually what you reflect is the media stupid vault face on everything or jumping on any press release not understanding what is written. The reality is that science in general, no matter what a few tells you about reproducibility or significance criticism, is very very reliable. But the media don't like what they don't understand so you are very likely to read article spreading distrust on expert, or media taking a random idiot and pretending that person is an expert. The end game is people like you distrusting the expert, when in reality without expert you have NOTHING. Same shitty situation as with brexit really, where expert are distrusted "project fear".
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The only infectious human disease we have ever eradicated is smallpox, which was eradicated way back in the 1970s. From an eradication point of view, measles and smallpox are very similar: they are viruses, they are highly infectious, they do not mutate super-fast, they infect only humans, it is obvious when someone has the disease, there is a very effective vaccine. From a technical point of view, eradicating measles is a very similar task to eradicating smallpox.
However, there is one significant difference: measles is a fairly worrying disease, whereas smallpox is absolutely terrifying. This means there hasn't been the social and political will to push an eradication program. If the will did exist, we could wrap it up in about 10 years (wild guess on my part), and then nobody would ever need a measles vaccination ever again. Don't like vaccinations? Push for eradication. Your kids will get the jab, but your grandkids, great-grandkids, etc. forever, will not.
The list of diseases considered eradicable (as of 2008) is quite short. For example, influenza is not - it readily jumps species (so eradication from humans would require vaccinating wild ducks, for example) and it mutates rapidly, so new vaccines are constantly needed.
The list:
Smallpox (eradicated)
Polio (on the verge of eradication, probably 5 to 10 years off)
Dracunculiasis/Guinea worm (on the verge of eradication)
Yaws (on the verge of eradication)
Malaria (eradication still decades away)
Hookworm
Lymphatic filariasis
Measles
Mumps
Rubella
Lymphatic filariasis
Cysticercosis
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Latin Americans are generally vaccinated (MMR) at a higher rate than people in the USA.
I can tell you that when I looked it up online (google search) I found that Latin American countries had higher reported rates of MMR vaccination of their people than the USA does, by and large.
I don't know who brought measles to the USA (illegals or unvaccinated travellers, or vaccinated travellers who got sick anyway), but looking at the stats, it's more justified for Latin America to bar immigration from the USA to them than vice versa.
Kind of took the wind out of any ideas I may have had about illegal immigrants from Latin America bringing disease to USA. Either exaggerated or not true, more likely driven by racist bigotry than fact, at least when it comes to measles/mumps/rubella.
In fact, given that I have heaps of evidence of racist bigotry, (black people get criminal convictions and far harsher punishments in USA for the *exact same crime* and with the *exact same criminal record* (look it up!)) and no real information about immigrants bringing disease, I'm just going to assume claims of immigrants bringing disease in at larger rates than native spread are more likely racist bigotry than fact. Occam's razor--not guaranteed to be correct, but a good heuristic.
--PeterM
Funny that you should bring up the Daily Show since they had anti vaxxer and profession Katherine Hepburn impersonator RFK jr on and from what I remember they didn't mock him. I think this is the video of that episode but it's been a long time since I've last seen it. http://www.cc.com/video-clips/...
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
I didn't get the context about the claim that EVERYONE who got the measles had been vaccinated. I know that in some of the outbreaks in the USA right now, they're mostly raging amongst the unvaccinated.
That said, vaccines aren't always perfectly effective. People's immune systems differ. MMR is 97% effective against measles after 2 doses. That means that 3% of people are susceptible despite vaccination.
When you have an insanely contagious disease like measles, which can infect 20 new people for every case in a population that is not immune, you can expect a good amount of cases in VACCINATED people even when they've been vaccinated.
That 3% of the vaccinated, and those who are immunocompromised by, say, antirejection drugs so that they can keep an organ that they've had donated to them, or who are on cancer chemotherapy, must depend on "herd immunity" to protect them from measles.
Herd immunity is the effect that if enough of a population is immune to a disease, it can't spread in the population, and no member of the population is likely to be exposed, ever. For highly contagious measles and with a 97% vaccine effectiveness, herd immunity requires more than 90% of people be vaccinated.
Anti-vaxxers thus put EVERYONE at risk, not just their poor helpless kids who are the primary victims of their parent's negligence of their civic duty to protect both their kids and the nation from disease. This is a big part of the reason that there is such disgust for anti-vaxxer behavior from the rest of us.
--PeterM
Replying to myself.
A quick check of Clark County, WA, indicates that of 73 cases reported at the time of the article, 63 were NOT vaccinated, three had had only one vaccination (as opposed to the two that are standard), and the remaining seven were "vaccination status unknown".
So, I repeat, where is the evidence that "EVERYONE who got the measles had been vaccinated"? Evidence seems to support at least 90% NOT vaccinated....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
The vaccination rate in Central and South American countries exceed the vaccination rate of the US.
So no, it's not "illegal aliens". They get their shots. We don't.