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Anti-Vaccine Movement Linked to Measles Outbreak in New York

posted by martyb on Friday January 18 2019, @07:52PM   Printer-friendly
from the how-many-more-will-suffer dept.

takyon writes:

Anti-vaccine nonsense spurred NY's largest outbreak in decades

Health officials in New York are cautiously optimistic that they have a large measles outbreak under control after tackling the noxious anti-vaccine myths and unfounded fears that fueled the disease's spread.

Since last fall, New York has tallied 177 confirmed cases of measles, the largest outbreak the state has seen in decades. It began with infected travelers, arriving from parts of Israel and Europe where the highly contagious disease was spreading. In New York, that spread has largely been confined to ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities. As measles rippled through those insular religious communities, health officials ran into members who were wary of outsiders as well as those who harbor harmful myths and fears about vaccines. This included the completely false-yet-pernicious belief that the measles vaccine causes autism.

To quash the outbreak, health officials met with rabbis and pediatricians in the community, who in turned urged community members to be vigilant and, above all, get vaccinated, according to The New York Times. "Good people, great parents were terrified," Rabbi Yakov Horowitz, founder of Darchei Noam yeshiva in Monsey in Rockland County, told the Times. Despite the fears, he insisted parents vaccinate their children. "They felt that I was asking to give their children something that would harm them."

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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 19 2019, @02:05PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 19 2019, @02:05PM (#788627)

    Although the incidence of polio acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) has decreased in India, the nonpolio AFP (NPAFP) rate has increased. Nationwide, the NPAFP rate is 11.82 per 100 000 population, whereas the expected rate is 1 to 2 per 100 000 population.

    http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/135/Supplement_1/S16.2 [aappublications.org]

    Three years after India reported its last case of WPV, the country has, in one form or another, been reporting around 50,000 cases of flaccid paralysis that, clinically, is exactly like polio, indicating how hollow the polio-free status is.

    https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/is-india-actually-free-of-polio/article7945687.ece [thehindu.com]

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 21 2019, @03:07PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 21 2019, @03:07PM (#789602) Journal

    Three years after India reported its last case of WPV, the country has, in one form or another, been reporting around 50,000 cases of flaccid paralysis that, clinically, is exactly like polio, indicating how hollow the polio-free status is.

    "Clinically" is not good enough. If it's not an actual infection by polio virus, then it's not polio. As with measles, there are other illnesses that can mimic polio, and these need not be infectious. Plus, in a country of over a billion people with a sudden increase in concern and awareness of polio-like illnesses, they're going to see a bunch of them.