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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.
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Texas Lawmaker not Worried about Measles because of ‘Antibiotics'
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @05:28AM (7 children)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20789272 [nih.gov]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @05:35AM (6 children)
Figure 1 shows mortality rates of ~.25 per 100k cases in the US by 1960 (.00025%):
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1522578/ [nih.gov]
People didn't get very sick and die from measles, it was secondary infections that could be treated with antibiotics.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @12:40PM (1 child)
You may notice that the worse affected are the kids under 2. Since they can't be vaccinated until that age, that's the population that really can die. It's like whooping cough. You get vaccinated so that the little kids don't die.
I know it's really hard for people to understand, but these diseases are deadly to the kids. Just like getting rubella is kind of really bad, for the unborn.
But yeah, the prolifer crowd kind of ignoring the real life problems like that.
That's like saying, it's not the high cholesterol or blood pressure or sugar that kills you, it's the heart death due to insufficient blood supply that gets you!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @01:24PM
False. They can be vaccinated just fine, there is no evidence of any danger. The reason vaccinations are delayed is that they don't work because the infant is already protected by maternal antibodies. A problem is that vaccinated mothers pass on weaker antibodies than those who had measles, so the infants need to be vaccinated at a younger age.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21133659 [nih.gov]
It is because people spread this myth that vaccines are dangerous to infants that we can't move up the vaccination age to protect the children.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by stormreaver on Thursday February 28 2019, @03:08PM (3 children)
What the vaccination promoters also like to ignore:
1) In the generations before the Measles vaccine was introduced, just about everyone got Measles as kids, and no one died from it. It's a benign disease, in and of itself, in developed countries. Everyone whose only infection was Measles recovered in a reasonably short time period, and then gained a lifetime immunity to it. As you said, it was the secondary infections that caused the problems, and we have treatments for those (many of which involve the use of antibiotics). The death rate from Measles in developed countries has been unchanged from the period before the vaccine up to now. The entirety of reduction in Measles mortality rate was achieved long before the Measles vaccine was introduced.
2) The Measles vaccine is not designed to protect again Measles transmission. Those who have been vaccinated are equally likely to spread Measles as those who are not vaccinated. The Measles vaccine only affects the person who receives it.
3) The relatively weak immunity gained from vaccination wanes over time (that period varies from months to about 20 years at most). After that time, the vaccinated individual has no immunity to Measles. There is also increasing evidence that vaccinations increase the lifetime risk of secondary illnesses not related to the vaccine, and reduces the effectiveness of subsequent boosters.
4) Measles is a cyclical disease. Its spread has peaks and valleys. Vaccines have never changed that. The only thing that has ramped up is the pharmaceutical propaganda machine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @03:35PM (2 children)
Source? I have seen that the antibody response wanes, but not that extreme:
https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/189/Supplement_1/S123/821041 [oup.com]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday February 28 2019, @05:21PM (1 child)
Also, the immunity wanes in everybody. Not just in those that were vaccinated. If you develop a stronger immunity to start with, of course, it takes longer to wane into ineffectiveness...but it still wanes.
FWIW, I've recently had a shingles vaccine, because the immunity to chicken pox wanes as you get older, but the secondary form is a lot worse than the original.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @05:45PM
The waning may also "speed up" (actually not be "boosted") if the person is never exposed to circulating measles:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22966129 [nih.gov]