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‘It Will Take Off Like a Wildfire’: The Unique Dangers of the Washington State Measles Outbreak

posted by mrpg on Friday February 08 2019, @05:50PM   
from the will-this-end? dept.

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

'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.

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Original Submission

• Re:think about it (Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 09 2019, @02:09PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 09 2019, @02:09PM (#798817)

  Read ingredients, and select less harmful versions.

  This is what is referred to as paranoia or border line delusional schizophrenia. In a world where you are surrounded by chemicals of all sorts, that you eat and breathe or otherwise absorb, you are worried about a mass-fucking-produced tiny vaccine that has been checked and verified for safety? You are seriously worried about "harmful ingredients" there?? But I guess you are also one of these people that doesn't buckle seat belts because they will trap you in a burning wreck and prevent your miraculous escape?

  Rational fucking thinking - go get some.

  Don't immunise against low risk illnesses (e.g., the flu, if you're not going to die from having it)

  Except the flu is not a vaccine that actually works well, so you picked the worse fucking example. And every disease is low-risk, until it kills you.

  Parent

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