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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."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by rleigh on Saturday January 19 2019, @11:22PM (3 children)
> This isn't written with a scientific-level of care
No. No, it isn't. That's because the post I replied to was so devoid of sensible thought, I assumed they would be incapable of grasping that level of nuance, so I stated it much more bluntly to be sure it couldn't be misinterpreted.
Regarding encephalitis and encephalopathy as a result of MMR vaccination. This is most likely nothing to do with thimerosal, and everything to do with it being symptomatic of a full-blown measles infection. Vaccines work by stimulating an immune response based upon an attenuated or inactivated form of the virus (inactivated for most measles vaccines). You're essentially having a low-grade but non-fatal infection and/or immune response to prime the immune system for a potential future infection with the real thing. In some rare individuals, the reaction can be more severe.
The danger from measles or chicken pox is high if you are unvaccinated. The overall mortality rate used to be up to 1/500 in the West. And that's not including the serious complications which aren't fatal, like brain damage or permanent hearing loss. In some parts of the world, mortality rates approached 50% when indigenous populations were first exposed to it. It's absolutely a serious infection. And that's not even adding in the other viral infections like chicken pox and polio. Puts the chance of autism properly into perspective, doesn't it? Yet the nutjobs still worry about vaccination.
We only treat these infections as inconsequential due to the pervasiveness of vaccination programmes. Measles epidemics were some of the primary causes of infant mortality and lifelong disability, but we haven't seen a serious measles epidemic in our lifetimes. That's why we have vaccination programmes in the first place. Measles can be fatal. It can cause brain damage, permanent loss of hearing, as well as other serious side effects. Polio can cripple for life. If you aren't vaccinated in childhood and you catch measles or chicken pox in adulthood, they are both extremely serious, much more serious than for childhood, and can be fatal. None of these are "not a big deal". That's complacency due to the effectiveness of our vaccination programmes.
The paper you linked to is fine. But note the dates of the data collection for the complication statistics. It's in a society with established herd immunity, and that absolutely affects the results even for unvaccinated people. Were herd immunity to be lost, those numbers would be very likely to change.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @07:19AM (2 children)
You didnt say due to thimerosal, you said "There is not, and never has been, any connection between vaccines and autism or brain damage."
You mispoke, I'd recommend being more careful in the future (keep in mind that on a site like this the audience is primarily other people who read your conversation). Your claims about the danger of measles are also inappropriate, since they refer to a time well before the vaccination campaigns were introduced. When vaccinations were introduced it was closer to 1/10k cases:
There are other issues but really whatever, my point is your posts aren't convincing to the audience when they are sloppy like that. That's all, I'll just stop there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @07:22AM
Ref: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20789272 [nih.gov]
(Score: 2) by rleigh on Sunday January 20 2019, @08:42AM
You're right, I did miss speak about that. It would have more appropriate to say that the chance of that happening is extremely remote, and compared with the risk of complications or death without vaccination, is a minor consideration at best. The reason I stated it in such black and white terms is that there are far too many people who are incapable of understanding or assessing risk, and end up obsessing over unimportant risks whilst ignoring the big ones. Like worrying about autism, when death and brain damage and deafness are far bigger problems to be concerned about.