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.
(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.