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'It will take off like a wildfire': The unique dangers of the Washington state measles outbreak
[...] "You know what keeps me up at night?" said Clark County Public Health Director Alan Melnick. "Measles is exquisitely contagious. If you have an under-vaccinated population, and you introduce a measles case into that population, it will take off like a wildfire."
[...] Anti-vaccination activists, for their part, contend that state officials are twisting facts to stoke public fear.
"It shouldn't be called an outbreak," Seattle-area mother Bernadette Pajer, a co-founder of the state's main anti-vaccine group, Informed Choice Washington, said of the measles cases, arguing that the illness has spread only within a small, self-contained group. "I would refer to it as an in-break, within a community."
[...] Clements eventually changed her mind, deciding to give her kids the shots after a doctor at a vaccine workshop answered her questions for more than two hours, at one point drawing diagrams on a whiteboard to explain cell interaction. He was thoughtful, factual and also "still very warm," she said.
[...] In Washington, state lawmakers supporting tougher vaccine requirements are mounting their second effort in the past three years to make it harder for parents to opt out of vaccinations.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by PinkyGigglebrain on Friday February 08 2019, @09:51PM (1 child)
Did you hear about the "Camp Fire" [wikipedia.org] in California, the worst in the states history and worst in the USA since 1918? It started from a single spark and it grew from there into a conflagration that reduced a city of 26,000 people to smoking debris.
55 measles cases may not sound like many but if you ignore it there will be more. It would only take a mutation in a single active case to make it worse, that is why they have to treat even a small outbreak of a contagious pathogen as a potential "wildfire", not just because of how dangerous it is, but how dangerous it could be.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 0, Troll) by HiThere on Friday February 08 2019, @11:16PM
Yes, but MOST people live through it without permanent damage. Or at least not much.
I understand his concern, and I do feel that unvaccinated children should not be allowed in public or private schools, but it's not really comparable to a wildfire, which kills and destroys wholesale.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.