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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @06:20PM (2 children)
Where do you see me attribute any causality? The only info is person got measles (vaccine) then soon after they got pneumonia (brain damage).
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Friday January 25 2019, @01:25AM (1 child)
The only thing that would be interesting here is if the rate of brain injury / autism / pneumonia / Tourette's / sore finger differs between the vaccinated and unvaccinated population at the same age. This is the simplest argument for proving that the MMR vaccine doesn't cause autism - the autism rates are the same between vaccinated and unvaccinated people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @01:54AM
1) I assure you it does differ and would be detectable with sufficient sample size/etc. Whether that difference is interesting is an entirely other question.
2) I'm ignoring the autism because that is longer term. The pneumonia/encephalitis/meningitis appear quickly, the association in time with the measles/vaccination strengthens the relationship.
But anyway, there has never been a blinded measles vaccine RCT so better info on this will probably never be available. That is why I presented the info as-is in the form of correlations.