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Emergency declared near Portland for measles outbreak in anti-vaccine hotspot
Health officials in Clark County, Washington have declared a public health emergency for a measles outbreak in an area with a high rate of unvaccinated children.
[...] Nearly eight percent of children in Clark County were exempt from standard vaccination for the 2017-2018 school year, according to state records reported by the Washington Post. Breaking down that eight percent, about seven percent of kids had personal or religious exemptions and the remaining one percent or so had medical exemptions. Factoring in the rest of the population, the county is below the 92 percent to 94 percent range some experts consider required to prevent the spread of highly contagious diseases such as measles.
[...] “It’s really awful and really tragic and totally preventable,” Peter J. Hotez told the Post. Hotez is a professor of pediatrics and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. “Portland is a total train wreck when it comes to vaccine rates,” he added.
[...] Correction: This article has been updated to correct the state in which Clark County resides. It is in Washington State, not Oregon.
(Score: 5, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday January 24 2019, @02:52PM (2 children)
I don't hold any of those beliefs, which are all either strawmen or based on fundamental misunderstandings. It is reasonable to criticize various issues in the medical industry, but 99% of the stuff I hear from anti-vaxxers about their concerns over specific vaccines or ingredients in vaccines is based on misinformation.
Also just to address a couple of the misunderstandings -- measles is "serious stuff." Before vaccination, it caused roughly 2.5 million deaths worldwide each year. That rate is now down to around 100,000/year, mostly deaths among small children who are either unvaccinated or immunocompromised (or both). So yeah, I'd say it's a pretty good trade to cause mostly very MINOR adverse reactions to avoid millions of deaths per year.
(Note: it's hard to estimate what the exact death rate would be today, as treatments for symptoms have evolved in the decades since the vaccine became available. But pretending that measles and most standard vaccines are not advocated for "serious stuff" is just nonsense. These diseases have historically tended to cause huge numbers of deaths and/or serious complications.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @12:15AM (1 child)
Bbbbut Runaway survived measles and 3 other illnesses! Tell those kids to man up and get their immune system fighting!!@!
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday January 26 2019, @02:44PM
Ok, I have death by measles with probability p
And I have this with probability q
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cancer-pioneer-martin-gore-dies-after-jab-for-yellow-fever-vccwwxdq2 [thetimes.co.uk]
p or q can be determined only by trusting that pharma and authorities honestly collaborate for your welfare.
What do I do? hm
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