SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:20PM (5 children)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @12:18AM (4 children)
It is always interesting when facts arent challenged by facts but by changing the subject. I never mentioned vaccine efficacy. I presented a simple fact that measles was not considered any more "scary" than a cold or skinned knee, etc that children commonly experience at the time vaccinations were introduced.
I also see you don't remember our previous conversations about how that graph ignores at least:
1) changing definitions of measles (replacement of clinical measles diagnosis with antibody tests)
2) changing tendencies of doctors to diagnose/report measles
3) introduction of public health campaigns meant to stop people from purposefully spreading measles amongst their children
So whatever percent can be attributed to the vaccine, it is somewhat less than what we see in that chart.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 21 2019, @01:11AM (3 children)
Good advice, you should take it since instead you wrote:
And 4) introducing irrelevant "facts" to confound the issue. None of those three are sufficient to explain the orders of magnitude drop in measles cases (and yes, I realize the next step is for you to dump several links that will confirm that argument) - especially since the same trend is seen globally every time the measles vaccine was introduced. This argument is a retread. I can't find it in Google where I corrected this nonsense before in SN (did old pages fall off the search algorithm?), but it's the same opening move. When I have time, I'll try to find the corresponding thread.
But as an aside, does anyone here believe that making the obvious point that an enormous drop in measles cases (without corresponding increases in other diseases that could be confused for measles like chicken pox) is only due to reporting difficulties and these reporting difficulties happen every time the measles vaccine is introduced to a new population?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 21 2019, @04:15AM
I thought at one point I had done a more detailed discussion of various studies that had been brought forth in such a discussion, but I guess not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @05:01AM (1 child)
There are still about 20k cases of measles like illness (no chicken pox isn't one) each year.
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=29667&page=1&cid=788467#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 21 2019, @02:58PM
Which aren't measles nor necessarily virus-related (contrary to your assertion in that post). For example, rashes from first time allergic reactions could trigger such a test with nothing infectious involved.
Rashes and fevers can come from a variety of causes and doctors in the US have long taken a stand of better safe and profitable, than sorry when it comes to medical tests. It's far easier and a bit more profitable to run a test for measles given a vague suspicion than to chance it and risk malpractice lawsuits.