What the Anti-Vax Movement Doesn’t Tell You About Measles

[KamaAina]

http://www.thenation.com/article/198609/what-anti-vax-movement-doesnt-tell-you-about-measles#

Or it might be measles, in which case you need to know. Fast. Because measles is the most contagious disease on earth. Among unimmunized people exposed to the measles virus, some 90 percent will contract the disease. Anyone with measles is contagious for several days before the rash even appears; the cough effectively spreads tiny droplets of the virus, which can remain in the air for several hours, long after an infected person has left the room. In an unvaccinated community, each person who gets measles spreads it on average to twelve others. Complications like pneumonia and meningitis can be permanent, deadly, or both, especially for immune-compromised patients such as those with cancer. And in the ER, one of these kids might be in the next bed.

Older Americans remember measles as a common childhood disease that just had to be suffered through, but in fact it is still frequently deadly in low- and middle-income countries. And because the virus weakens the body’s natural immune system, children who survive measles get more infections and have a higher risk of dying from them for several months afterwards....

These steps are all the more vital now that measles, long forgotten, is ”back” in the United States and far too few doctors know how to recognize it. And not only is measles proliferating; so are the nasty allegations about the danger of the vaccine by anti-vaxxer ideologues and unscrupulous politicians, even though the vaccine is not only safe, but mass measles vaccination is also the single best public-health intervention we have....

But because of vaccination lapses, measles is now on the rise. There were twenty separate outbreaks in the United States in 2014, involving 644 individual cases—a record number since measles was eliminated from the US in 2000. So far in 2015, there have been 141 cases in seventeen states, 80 percent of which are linked to Disneyland. Blaming it on Mexico and porous borders, as some opportunistic politicians have done, has no basis in reality; there were only two cases in Mexico in January, both imported from the United States. Globally, the number of cases rose from 122,000 in 2012 to 146,000 in 2013, reversing a twelve-year downward trend. In November 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) gave up on meeting its target for measles control.

[Maedhros]

1. The anti-vaccinnation movement DOESN'T CARE.

From their viewpoint, if you get measles it's YOUR FAULT.

Think of the anti-vaxxers as a strain of Sovereign Citizens: they only care about themselves, and the rest of society can go to hell for all they care.

[KitSileya]

2. I wish I could rec your post as well.

It is so true.

[Warpy]

3. Exactly, and selfish and stupid people need to be steamrolled

by airtight public health laws with serious teeth in them.

I had a grand aunt who thought indoor plumbing was insanitary and had what she was old fashioned enough to call a "water closet" ripped out of her house. She lived near downtown Albany in an upscale neighborhood and was appalled when the city wouldn't allow her to dig a pit for an outhouse on her tiny lot. They steamrolled her out of it because it would have been not only a foul smelling nuisance, it also had the potential to make all her neighbors ill as bacteria laden waste percolated through the soil and flies carried bacteria everywhere.

She was appalled, of course, but it was necessary for the good of the community.

(She never did have the plumbing put back in. In the corner of a very stiff Queen Anne dining room sat a chemical toilet. I was fascinated with it at the age of four, but when I had to go, I flatly refused to get up on that thing. I think my mother was grateful for the excuse to get the hell out of there.)

[3catwoman3]

4. "It's you fault." Must not have eaten enough...

...home grown organic kale.

[KellyW]

5. This bit of the article is seriously missinformed

"...if the threat of that deadly disease isn’t enough for you to reject anti-vax folklore, here’s a little known fact about the benefit of vaccination. The measles vaccine doesn’t only protect against measles. Because it contains a small amount of a live virus, the immune system must rev up to fight it, which in turn reduces mortality from other infectious disease—including pneumonia, sepsis and others—by 50 percent. This protective effect lasts until a vaccine is administered with a killed rather than a live virus, such as the one for diphtheria and tetanus."

Live attenuated vaccines carry a different set of risks. Live polio vaccine (OPV) is no-longer available in the USA and is NOT recommended by the CDC. It was widely used un the US until 1999. If a live virus vaccines provides extra immune protection against other diseases why was it withdrawn?

The CDC provides the answer:
"Is polio still a disease seen in the United States?
The last cases of naturally occurring paralytic polio in the United States were in 1979, when an outbreak occurred among the Amish in several Midwestern states. From 1980 through 1999, there were 162 confirmed cases of paralytic polio cases reported. Of the 162 cases, eight cases were acquired outside the United States and imported. The last imported case caused by wild poliovirus into the United States was reported in 1993. The remaining 154 cases were vaccine-associated paralytic polio (VAPP) caused by live oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV)."
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/polio/dis-faqs.htm