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Emergency Declared in NY over Measles: Unvaccinated Barred from Public Spaces:
Plagued by a tenacious outbreak of measles that began last October, New York's Rockland County declared a state of emergency Tuesday and issued a directive barring unvaccinated children from all public spaces.
Effective at midnight Wednesday, March 27, anyone aged 18 or younger who has not been vaccinated against the measles is prohibited from public spaces in Rockland for 30 days or until they get vaccinated. Public spaces are defined broadly in the directive as any places:
[W]here more than 10 persons are intended to congregate for purposes such as civic, governmental, social, or religious functions, or for recreation or shopping, or for food or drink consumption, or awaiting transportation, or for daycare or educational purposes, or for medical treatment. A place of public assembly shall also include public transportation vehicles, including but not limited to, publicly or privately owned buses or trains...
The directive follows an order from the county last December that barred unvaccinated children from schools that did not reach a minimum of 95 percent vaccination rate. That order—and the directive issued today—are intended to thwart the long-standing outbreak, which has sickened 153 people, mostly children.
What were they waiting for? A pox on them all?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @08:45PM (4 children)
You do not need to tell from a 3 word quote. I shared a quote from the guy responsible at the CDC (Alexander Langmuir) apologizing for it above.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @09:25PM (3 children)
Full article seems to be paid, but your quotes don't really say whether they expected to have measles disappear forever from the US just by vaccinating everyone inside the US for a few years and then stopping.
The specific parts you quote seem to be around the heavily underestimated infectiousness of measles.
That underestimation is the reason why people like me only got 1 dose of vaccine back in the 80s.
The 2 dose regime to my knowledge is sufficient to compensate for that.
But I don't see how that would have changed the situation that as long as the measles virus exists anywhere in the world you simply cannot stop vaccinating in the US, that would be a horribly irresponsible idea! I do not know for sure, but I really can't imagine that anyone ever imagined that.
As said, to my knowledge the plan was to extend vaccination until the whole world was covered and the virus eradicated. A plan which is under threat of completely falling apart due to the combination of anti-vaccination sentiments in America and Europe on the one hand and lack of progress in e.g. Africa and Asia on the other hand.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @09:58PM (2 children)
From here you can get the DOI: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6939399 [nih.gov]
Then paste it in like this: https://sci-hub.tw/10.1111/j.1749-6632.1980.tb18903.x [sci-hub.tw]
The domain changes every now and then... just google it. You also may be able to use the pubmed ID, but I use an addon that redirects the DOI links.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @11:38PM (1 child)
The paper mixes wrong assumptions and corrections wildly, so it's hard to make short convincing quotes
> If the immunity were steadily maintained at such a high level, no measles epidemic could arise.
This was a statement related to the original theory. I think it shows what I said: the assumption was from the start a high level of immunity via vaccination would be required for a prolonged time.
> Intrinsic in my personal thinking was the mistaken belief that once measles was eliminated from a community its reintroduction and beginning spread would lead to a spontaneous community response to immunize all susceptibles in the immediate vicinity and thus promptly snuff out the disease.
And at least here, too low vaccination rates are put up as a prime cause (though on this there seems no consistent line).
> Incidence further dropped to 50,000 in 1967 and to 25,000 in 1968 but since then has continued a fluctuating course
Going by this quote, where the author comes from is that incidents in the 10000s mean a failure of the eradication program. By that standard, measles is still eradicated in the US.
And going back to an earlier quote:
> An introduction From outside would possibly lead to a sputtering outbreak for a few generations but an epidemic could not ensue
The original plan actually anticipated the desired state to include occasional multi-generation outbreaks!
> It is clear however that airborne infection is sufficiently common and important to be a determining factor in the continuance of measles at the present time. It must receive due respect and weight in planning the future steps necessary for eradication.
I would claim that has been done, by raising the goals to something like 95% immune people (which I think actually means 98% of people being vaccinated twice).
I do not see a failure in the plan so far, only in the failure to enact it.
In the end, the paper was about the theory of how the diseases spread being utterly un-sound, the mathematics unreasonably simplified etc.
However the statistical behaviour that sufficient immunity will limit the spread of the disease and if global eliminate it has not been shown wrong.
And the practical results I also think still indicate that sufficient immunity via vaccinations is indeed achievable, though possibly not on voluntary basis. And with the current ambition level clearly not world-wide.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 28 2019, @03:32AM
Welcome to the real world where no one knows what they are doing. The only question is whether you are on the side of popular people who don't know what they are doing telling you what to do or not.