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Emergency Declared Near Portland, Oregon for Measles Outbreak in Anti-Vaccine Hotspot

posted by mrpg on Thursday January 24 2019, @10:20AM   
from the smart-phones-but-no-smart-people dept.

upstart writes:

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. 

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Original Submission

• Re:friendly reminder (Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday January 24 2019, @11:37PM

  by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Thursday January 24 2019, @11:37PM (#791498)

  Measles affects about 20 million people a year, primarily in the developing areas of Africa and Asia.[6] No other vaccine-preventable disease causes as many deaths.[11] In 1980, 2.6 million people died of it,[6] and in 1990, 545,000 died; by 2014, global vaccination programs had reduced the number of deaths from measles to 73,000.[8][12] Rates of disease and deaths, however, increased in 2017 due to a decrease in immunization.

  That's from the Wikipedia article on Measles, so millions died before widespread vaccination.

  Also:

  Measles Deaths in Italy
  Among those measles deaths in Europe, there have been at least twelve measles deaths in Italy (five in 2017 and seven in 2018, among just 7,697 cases), all either unvaccinated or partially vaccinated, including:

  a 6-year-old boy with leukemia who caught measles from an intentionally unvaccinated sibling (2017)
  an intentionally unvaccinated 9-year-old girl with chromosomopathy, which is not a contraindication to getting vaccinated (2017)
  a 16-month-old girl with chronic medical problems who caught measles while hospitalized for persistent fever and a subsequent bleeding disorder (2017)
  a 27-year-old woman (2017)
  a young patient who died of measles encephalitis (December 2017)
  a 25-year-old unvaccinated mother
  a 10-month-old unvaccinated boy who likely caught measles when he had been hospitalized for an RSV infection
  a 38-year-old
  a 42-year-old unvaccinated man who was immunocompromised
  a 51-year-old in Sicily
  a 29-year-old in Sicily
  a 23-year-old with leukemia in Trieste who had received one dose of the measles vaccine (October 2018)

  From this piece, which indicates that Italy is vaccinating for measles. [vaxopedia.org]
  This is a good idea. Vaccination is good for everyone.

  Parent

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