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Measles Case on Cruise Ship Leads to Quarantine in St. Lucia

posted by martyb on Friday May 03 2019, @11:02AM   
from the problem-with-close-quarters dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

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.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/world/americas/measles-scientology-cruise-ship.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes

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Original Submission

• Re:Bigger scale picture Re:Bigger scale picture (Score: 2, Insightful) by Osamabobama on Friday May 03 2019, @06:29PM (4 children)

  by Osamabobama (5842) on Friday May 03 2019, @06:29PM (#838508)

  You neglected to mention the long term effects that could occur, including brain damage, hearing loss, and immune suppression.

  The amount of BS you managed to include in one post is impressive.

  I'm not impressed by your bullshit.

  --
  Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.

  Parent

  Starting Score:	1		point
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• Re:Bigger scale picture Re:Bigger scale picture (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @06:41PM (3 children)

  by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @06:41PM (#838516)

  You neglected to mention the long term effects that could occur, including brain damage, hearing loss, and immune suppression.

  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.

  When the present study was planned, measles was be- lieved to be associated with delayed excess mortality [2,3,10] and the study was initiated to identify the risk factors for severe disease and its long-term consequences. However, in the interim, reanalyses of other data set have made these assumptions untenable. When the analysis adjusted for immunisation status, measles infection was not associated with long-term excess mortality [10–14] nor was there any indication of persistent suppression of T-lymphocyte sub- sets [10,11]. Surprisingly, studies from Guinea-Bissau [10], Senegal [12], and Bangladesh [14] found that post-measles cases had lower mortality than children without measles infection. In epidemics with a high case fatality, the lower mortality after measles could be due to frail children having died of measles. However, measles immunisation is also associated with lower mortality that cannot be explained by prevention of acute measles infection and its long-term consequences [6] and measles immunisation may therefore be associated with a beneficial immune activation [6,15]. Available data are consistent with post-measles cases hav- ing a similar beneficial effect and we therefore predicted that the total impact of measles infection could be benefi- cial in areas with low acute measles mortality when there would be no selection of strong survivors because there was no acute mortality [12]. In rural Senegal, the measles case fatality for children under 7 years of age declined from 8% (97/1186) in 1983–1986 [11] to 1% (2/189) in 1992 [11,16]. We assessed long-term mortality after this epidemic to test the predicted beneficial effect of mild measles infection. We examined whether children who shared similar social conditions but had clinical measles had lower mortality than exposed children in the same families who did not develop clinical measles.

    [...]

    Though planned to examine the risk factors for excess mortality after measles [3,12], the study provided further support for the hypothesis that measles infection, like measles immunisation, may be associated with a beneficial effect. Measles infection was not associated with long-term excess mortality; among children exposed to measles at home, clinical measles cases had lower age-adjusted mor- tality than uninfected children.

  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12443670 [nih.gov]

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  • Re:Bigger scale picture (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @06:43PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @06:43PM (#838517)

    typo: "researchers misinterpreting their data to fit their pre-conceived [wtf is per-conceived autocorrect?] notions"

    Parent

  • Re:Bigger scale picture Re:Bigger scale picture (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 04 2019, @01:56AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 04 2019, @01:56AM (#838667)

    "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.

    Parent

    • Re:Bigger scale picture (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 04 2019, @03:18AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 04 2019, @03:18AM (#838693)

      And if you continue on to the next sentence:

      In epidemics with a high case fatality, the lower mortality after measles could be due to frail children having died of measles. However...

      Parent