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: 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.