The Caribbean nation of St. Lucia has quarantined a cruise ship on the island after identifying a confirmed case of measles on board, a health official said.
Passengers and crew members aboard the large ship were not permitted to leave, Dr. Merlene Fredericks-James, the nation’s chief medical officer, said on Tuesday. The highly infectious disease, which can be mostly prevented by a common vaccination, is in the midst of its largest outbreak in a quarter-century in the United States, with more than 700 cases reported.
“Because of the risk of potential infection, not just from the confirmed measles case but from other persons who may be on the boat at the time, we thought it prudent to make a decision not to allow anyone to disembark,” she said in a statement.
Dr. Fredericks-James did not name the ship. But Victor Theodore, a St. Lucia Coast Guard sergeant, told NBC News that it was identified as “Freewinds,” which is reportedly owned and operated by the Church of Scientology. A ship by the same name was moored in St. Lucia on Thursday morning, according to online records.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday May 03 2019, @05:58PM (6 children)
The Measles vaccine is not that old. People older than 50 were not vaccinated as kids. In some countries, people in their 30s or 40s did not have it either available, or not on the mandatory vaccination schedule (many just ended up with the disease years ago as a result and are now immune).
Given that it mostly kills kids, what really matters is the vaccination rate for the under-20s crowd, which would be over 90% as required if the anti-vaxxers weren't so fucking good at ruining it for everyone.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @06:09PM (5 children)
How do people manage to just keep pumping out falsehoods about measles? It is ridiculous.
The vaccination rates in the US are already over 90%, every time a target is reached they have to move it up because the theory of "herd immunity" is based on flawed assumptions (every person is equally likely to meet every other person, measles spreads only via direct contact, etc).
Also, measles kills almost no children in developed counties, it is a rounding error (like 1/10k to 1/100k cases)
And measles only mostly affects children because you only get it once, and obviously the first time you get it is likely to be when you are young. In fact people used to have measles parties because they saw it was much worse when adults or teenagers got it.
The amount of BS you managed to include in one post is impressive.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Osamabobama on Friday May 03 2019, @06:29PM (4 children)
You neglected to mention the long term effects that could occur, including brain damage, hearing loss, and immune suppression.
I'm not impressed by your bullshit.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @06:41PM (3 children)
You neglected to mention these are also very rare, and actually measles improves the immune system. That is another case of medical researcherse misinterpreting their data to fit their per-conceived notions. Both the vaccine and wt measles lead to higher survival rates in at risk children.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12443670 [nih.gov]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @06:43PM
typo: "researchers misinterpreting their data to fit their pre-conceived [wtf is per-conceived autocorrect?] notions"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 04 2019, @01:56AM (1 child)
"Surprisingly, studies from Guinea-Bissau [10], Senegal [12], and Bangladesh [14] found that post-measles cases had lower mortality than children without measles infection."
Maybe measles killed off the weak.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 04 2019, @03:18AM
And if you continue on to the next sentence: