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Submitted via IRC for Bytram
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: 2) by HiThere on Thursday January 24 2019, @05:06PM
No. The mercury was present, but it wasn't the cause of the fear. That was started by a fraudulent paper published in a British medical journal.
OTOH, the readiness with which that thin straw was seized upon indicates that it merely stimulated an already present desire to believe...but what? Probably that the corporations were attacking their children. This was&is true, but why they seized on a fake result rather than one of the many true ones is to me a mystery. They didn't notice the Barbie dolls that were reporting all nearby conversation to headquarters. They didn't notice the baby monitors that broadcast what was going on in the nursery to any interested passer-by. (P.S.: It's not clear that anyone did anything with the information being broadcast by the Barbie, but they *could* have, and eventually would have...unless it's been cleaned up [HAH!] they will, and perhaps are. But IOT and Amazon Echo has made this almost obsolete.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.