SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Texas lawmaker says he's not worried about measles outbreak because of ‘antibiotics'
Texas state representative Bill Zedler says a resurgence of measles across the U.S. isn't worrying him.
Zedler, R-Arlington, is promoting legislation that would allow Texans to opt out of childhood vaccinations.
“They want to say people are dying of measles. Yeah, in Third World countries they’re dying of measles,” Zedler said, the Texas Observer reports. “Today, with antibiotics and that kind of stuff, they’re not dying in America.”
There is no treatment for measles, a highly contagious virus that can be fatal. Antibiotics treat bacterial infections and can't kill viruses.
It could be funny if it weren't so tragic.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Texas Lawmaker not Worried about Measles because of ‘Antibiotics'
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 114 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Could I have a drug overdose?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @05:24AM (28 children)
What a great reason to not vaccinate your kids. "Don't worry, we have good medicine so you probably won't die. Oh what's that? Your insurance lapsed? Best of luck!"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @05:49AM (23 children)
The original reason to vaccinate your kids was to work together to eradicate measles by 1967, not mess with the epidemiology of measles so every generation needed to pay a corporation to prevent an epidemic. When will they start talking about using vaccinations for their correct purpose instead of acting like pushers that rile up rabid idiots with propoganda?
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 28 2019, @11:50AM (22 children)
It's kind of obvious it hasn't been eradicated yet though, no?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @01:02PM (21 children)
Is that because the vaccine does not actually work like promised, or they figured out it is a money making scheme so purposefully keep the immunization rate just low enough to avoid eradication while maximizing profits? We know it isnt antivaxxers preventing eradication, there aren't enough of them.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Thursday February 28 2019, @01:38PM (11 children)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @01:49PM (10 children)
No, that cannot be the reason. Measles eradication in the US was promised by 1967, it isn't like they were unaware of Africa back then. It was not originally thought to require and endless series of vaccinations:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1919891/ [nih.gov]
After getting people on the vaccines though, the story changed:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1228954/ [nih.gov]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @05:06PM (2 children)
Pointing out an achievable goal is not "promised". "Mexico will pay for my great wall" is a promise. "We can eradicate measles by 1967" is a goal, so your "they promised us this and they didn't do it so now they are liars" line is hogwash.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @05:15PM
No, they believed and told people measles would be eradicated. They called it the "End Measles" campaign:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1919948/ [nih.gov]
http://digitalcollections.archives.nysed.gov/index.php/Detail/Object/Show/object_id/10232 [nysed.gov]
This is from 1980 from one of the authors:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6939399 [nih.gov]
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday February 28 2019, @07:58PM
"Mexico will pay for my great wall" is a promise.
However, Mexico CAN pay for a wall.... They're jut not gonna.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday February 28 2019, @07:55PM (1 child)
Unaware that antibiotics don't fix viruses and you clearly have difficulty reading. Did you forget to login as the Trump sockpuppet?
Here's a hint: what does the word "can" mean?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @08:33PM
Yep, I must be pretty dumb.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 01 2019, @03:25AM (4 children)
That is indeed the reason despite you not getting that pony in 1967. Measles comes from the endemic infections routine to the poorer, non-vaccinated parts of the world. That's why it's three orders of magnitude lower now in the US than in the years prior to the mass introduction of the vaccine. If we had global vaccination at the same level of efficacy, eradication would be a likely outcome. There apparently is no animal reservoir of measles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @03:31AM (3 children)
Are you saying pre-1967 CDC missed this? Did they know about it but not tell anyone when starting a "End Measles" campaign?
(I know you don't mean to imply one of those but that is what you are doing)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 01 2019, @09:50AM (2 children)
Point out where in the report you cited, they mention this at all. Yes, they missed it in that report.
Wouldn't be surprised that it was an inconvenient fact dropped from the narrative.
The problem here is that your argument is an insane ad hominem. It doesn't matter if the "End Measles" campaign bent the truth or worse. What matters is the relative difference in harm now, today, between our choices, not that someone promised too many ponies in 1967.
And here's what we have today. Measles is more dangerous, harmful, and costly than its vaccine, despite assertions to the contrary. Let's consider those for once.
First, you have the harm of the disease itself. Basically, an infected person, usually a child, has to be quarantined for a week or more, suffering all the while. That often means a parent gets to miss that much work as well. You have the various complications [cdc.gov] possible, which contrary to opinion are worse and more frequent than the complications [quebec.ca] from the vaccine. Note that a common complication from measles is ear infection (1 in 10). A common complication from the vaccine of similar frequency is: "Pain and redness at the injection site", "non contagious skin rash and moderate or high fever between the 5th and 12th day after vaccination", "irritability, drowsiness (sleepiness), conjunctivitis (red eyes)", and "joint pain in children".
That leads to the next big problem of measles - high use of antibiotics to fight secondary bacterial infections. One doesn't need antibiotics to fight off the common side effects of the vaccine! Antibiotics cost money and as has already been mentioned, the greater the use of antibiotics the more likely that antibiotic resistant bacterial diseases will evolve. The decade of prophylactic antibiotics is not sustainable in the long term.
So ultimately, that's where we're at. A dose of MMR vaccine (which covers more than just measles) for $75 (according [cdc.gov] to the CDC) plus a slight chance of complications that would actually require treatment. Or missing a week plus of the patient's life plus possibly that of caregivers, plus complications, plus medical treatment to avoid secondary infections, plus increased risk to society of antibiotic-resistant strains from antibiotic overuse.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @02:48PM (1 child)
Not sure where those numbers are coming from. I'd think this is a better source that reports much higher rates of various symptoms after vaccination:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6343620/ [nih.gov]
So we see about 10% reporting respiratory infections after the vaccine, no mention of ear infections in that paper though.
Before vaccinations in the UK the complication rate of measles was ~7%, with 6% being respiratory infections:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1815980/ [nih.gov]
The data the above paper references:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1815949/ [nih.gov]
So the rate of ear infections after measles was about 2.5%, much less than the unsourced 10% value from the layperson site.
There is an issue of what can be attributed to the vaccine/measles or not. For the vaccine study it was just total numbers of events for 43 days after vaccination. In the measles study they asked the doctors up about 6 weeks later who decided for themselves. Overall I don't see a big difference in the complications, the more common ones are rather minor and important ones very rare in either case. But it is hard to make a 1-1 comparison.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @03:45PM
Actually, that 6% value turned out to be 2.5% ear infections and 3.8% respiratory infections.
(Score: 5, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 28 2019, @01:47PM (3 children)
It's primarily because not all nations immunize everyone and some morons in this nation refuse to be. One decade with everyone in the world immunized and nobody would ever have to take the vaccine to avoid measles again.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @01:53PM (1 child)
See my response here: https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=30329&commentsort=0&mode=threadtos&threshold=-1&highlightthresh=-1&page=1&cid=808100#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
Your explanation is ahistorical.
Yes, this would be a better plan and was closer to the original, non-scammy plan. It shouldn't require an entire decade with everyone in the world though. A single year should be enough.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 01 2019, @09:52AM
It would be unprecedented to eradicate measles. Unprecedented things are by definition ahistorical.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday February 28 2019, @05:15PM
That's probably correct...but are you sure there's no animal that is a carrier? There doesn't appear to be any common animal, but how to you know that, say, tapirs don't carry it.
So it MIGHT be enough. The only way to find out (that I can think of) is to try. But even if it didn't work, it should eliminate most countries, and probably most continents.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday March 01 2019, @01:40AM (4 children)
Good Christ, no, it's not some massive conspiracy of pharma companies to vaccinate everyone forever.
I'm willing to believe a lot of bad stuff about the pharma industry, but if you took even a few moments among your apparent deep dives into random medical journal articles from decades ago, you'd know very well why measles hasn't been eradicated worldwide yet. (Officially, it has been eradicated in the U.S. for quite a few years, despite anti-vaxxers trying their damndest to get it to spread again.)
Anyhow, basically the difference between measles and smallpox or polio (the other disease aimed for in vaccinations) is the measles is a lot more contagious. It requires something more like 95% vaccination to get herd immunity and stop spreading, compared to 80-85% for smallpox and polio. And the characteristics of the vaccine make it harder to inoculate throughout random parts of the third world compared to polio (which takes a few drops orally, compared to measles which requires a reconsituted injection that goes bad quickly).
No, it's not a massive conspiracy to keep measles alive. Rather, there are massive ongoing campaigns to try to eradicate measles globally, since it still causes over 100,000 deaths per year globally, mostly in young children in developing nations.
I assume you're the AC bitching up and down this thread and posting links to ancient medical journal articles. Try reading some modern ones. You might learn something -- that is if you open your mind and stop assuming conspiracy theories and spouting anti-vaxxers rhetoric about the supposed (unproven) high incidence of serious vaccine complications. Despite the BS here, measles is a serious disease that causes serious side effects and deaths. There's no credible science that the vaccines against it have side effects that exceed that magnitude.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @02:12AM (3 children)
Well, it isn't just measles. It is every single thing on this list: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/vaccines-age.html [cdc.gov]
You are saying all of those vaccines/viruses have special properties that make them more difficult than polio and smallpox to eradicate?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 01 2019, @10:05AM
Apparently, not diphtheria, which is on your list - that had only 4500 reported cases in 2015. And given how hard it is to eradicate polio, I'm not surprised that we're taking a while with the other diseases that can be eradicated.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday March 01 2019, @01:03PM (1 child)
Do you have any freakin' clue how hard global eradication is? Read up on the history of smallpox eradication -- how much effort it took, how many rights were violated and people forcibly vaccinated against their will, how workers had to travel on foot to remote places and convince (sometimes coerce) people to allow them to be vaccinated while field methods had to be invented to make sure vaccination could still be effective in varying remote conditions...
It's astounding that it managed to succeed. For a disease as easily transmitted as measles, it's amazing we've gotten as far as we have. Read up on some history rather than just assuming someone waves a.magic wand and all of humanity around the global is vaccinated.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @02:54PM
Yes, if you are going to do something do it right. The original justification for eradication of measles was indeed because it would be a great achievement:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1522578/ [nih.gov]
That is a reason to do something, not a reason to stop trying. The 1960s were a better time I guess though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @10:40PM (3 children)
Actually, the insurance issue is the least of your worries. Antibiotics--indeed, any medication--has side effects, some of them quite nasty. (No, I'm not going to bother posting a link. Do your own google search!)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @10:56PM (2 children)
Not vaccines, they don't have side effects.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @03:23AM (1 child)
some vaccine, like the triple flu shot, have a 1 in 10 million risk of Guillain–Barré syndrome.
other make you feel like you have a cold for a few days.
but it's nothing compared to the disease they protect from
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @03:48AM
Actually the measles vaccine gives ~18% of children a 100 F fever, and 5% a measles-like rash. About 1.5% get "measles-like illness" which is a combination of those symptoms plus some other minor ones:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6343620/ [nih.gov]