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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, @06:30AM (15 children)
The antibiotic prophylaxis of bacterial complications of measles. 1959:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13611608 [nih.gov]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Whoever on Thursday February 28 2019, @06:43AM (1 child)
"low mortality ... complications of"
Low mortality is not zero. Unvaccinated people are more likely to die from measles or complications from measles. People actually die.
Some people genuinely can't be vaccinated. They should not be put at risk from morons who don't vaccinate their kids because of fears that were stoked by a con man who wanted to make money from his own vaccinations.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @06:51AM
The low rate of complications is actually even lower than the rate of complications from measles vaccines. Both are very low and not a reason for alarm though. Just saying it makes no sense to be concerned about the lower rate but not the higher.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday February 28 2019, @07:43AM (12 children)
Since 1959 some funny bugs evolved. Like the multidrug resistant tuberculosis. Or that Aureus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @01:37PM (11 children)
The point is that antibiotics were very useful for measles, to the point that hospitals were getting shut down as unnecessary. The implication in the TFA (and many posts here) is that this guy didn't understand science because "you cant treat a virus with antibiotics."
He is right, TFA and the people who blindly believe what they read in the news are wrong.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @01:51PM (1 child)
FTFY.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @02:08PM
Do people still use antibiotics for pneumonia? Then they are still useful today.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @05:11PM (1 child)
Wow, it was only the measles that were keeping those hospitals open? To me that makes it sound like it was a LOT worse before and counters all your other arguments against vaccination.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @05:31PM
This makes no sense, I think you must have missed that all occurred before the vaccine. And what "other arguments against vaccination" are you referring to?
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday March 01 2019, @07:57PM (6 children)
Wrong. Measles is caused by a virus, rubeola. Antibiotics are not useful for viruses. Go back to freshman biology.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @10:02PM (5 children)
You're pretty slow on the uptake eh? Antibiotics were given for measles all the time.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1815980/ [nih.gov]
You can find quotes/links to other papers discussing this throughout the thread
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Saturday March 02 2019, @10:32AM (4 children)
Wrong.
First, I'm obviously faster on the uptake than you, AC.
Second, you say nothing about my point that antibiotics do not kill viruses directly. Thanks for tacitly acknowledging I'm right. Now you can also acknowledge that vaccines work.
Third, you are confusing secondary complications with the primary causative illness. Your conflation is that "Antibiotics were given for measles," when in fact antibiotics were given for secondary complications or co-morbidities of measles. Ones which would have been completely unnecessary with vaccination, as the secondary conditions would not have obtained without the measles first being present. Which could have been avoided by vaccination.
Fourth, let's say the facts of your citation are correct, which I do not concede. It does appear to be an opinion letter to me, not a peer-reviewed article. So fail in terms of using that as a source. I could be wrong in this, as I'm not taking further time to confirm your mistakes.
Finally, it doesn't matter a tinker's damn what was done in 1964, exactly one year after the Measles vaccine was developed. We have learned a few more things since then. So again, I invite you to go back to freshman biology and study such things as antibiotic resistance and supra- and super-infections and their distinctions, and you might learn why not having to resort to antibiotics at all is actually a good thing if one can avoid them.
I could go on, but I really don't think I'll bother since you seem to understand so little already.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 02 2019, @02:59PM (3 children)
Yes, the antibiotics do not kill the measles virus. No one ever claimed this was the case except the strawman in your head.
It is like you can't understand anything more complicated than "antibiotics don't kill virus".
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Sunday March 03 2019, @12:31AM (2 children)
And it's like you can't read past the first sentence or come to a logical conclusion. So, were we formally debating, you just conceded the rest of it to me. Thanks!
But since you're missing the logic here, I'll spell it out in the smallest words I can: Stop the virus from ever happening, you won't ever need the antibiotics to defend against the secondary infections opened up because you were stupid enough to allow a preventable virus to take hold. (Antibiotics which then allow other infections to form on top of the ones you just killed with the first round of antibis. Which then can form resistance if you don't get it all killed.)
Guess what the best, and to date only, way of stopping someone from getting the virus is???
So we'll send you back to basic logic in addition to elementary biology.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 03 2019, @06:20PM (1 child)
No one here ever claimed any of these things you are arguing against, its all strawmen made up by you. One after the other a new strawman pops into your head and you start arguing with it. It really looks like insanity.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday March 06 2019, @06:40PM
Logical consequences of the claim that "antibiotics were very useful for measles," which was wrong from the start. In fact it was a level of Luke Skywalker, "Amazing, every word of what you just said was wrong," level of wrongness about the post. Not anywhere approaching historically or medically accurate level of wrong.
So we can just let it go that the parent's post was insane. As is Bill Zedler.
This sig for rent.