Health officials on Thursday confirmed the country's first measles death since 2003, and they believe the victim was most likely exposed to the virus in a health facility in Washington state during an outbreak there. The woman died in the spring; a later autopsy confirmed that she had an undetected measles infection, the Washington State Department of Health said in a statement. The official cause of death was announced as "pneumonia due to measles."
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 178 people from 24 states and the District were reported to have measles from Jan. 1 through June 26 of this year. Two-thirds of the cases, the CDC noted, were "part of a large multi-state outbreak linked to an amusement park in California."
Measles were effectively eliminated in the United States in 2000, according to the CDC. Health officials have said that the disease made a comeback recently, in part because of a growing number of adults deciding to delay or abstain from vaccinating their children. Last year brought the highest number of recorded measles cases since 2000, according to the CDC. Earlier this year, President Obama acknowledged the concerns some have about effects of vaccines but said: "The science is pretty indisputable." "You should get your kids vaccinated — it's good for them," Obama said. "We should be able to get back to the point where measles effectively is not existing in this country."
takyon: Celebrity critics recently denounced California's new mandatory vaccine law.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 05 2015, @02:09AM
Same AC. According to the CDC the percent of children receiving zero vaccinations (as would be expected for anti-vaxxers) is under 1, a rounding error.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6334a1.htm [cdc.gov]
So this focus on anti-vaxxers is misguided. Who are these other 10% of unvaccinated? Poverty?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday July 05 2015, @05:38AM
Not the way I read it.....
This report describes national, regional, state, and selected local area vaccination coverage estimates for children born January 2010–May 2012, based on results from the 2013 NIS. In 2013, vaccination coverage achieved the 90% national Healthy People 2020 target* for ≥1 dose of measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine (MMR) (91.9%);
Then there is this:
NIS is a random-digit–dialed cellular§ and landline telephone survey of households with children aged 19–35 months in the 50 states,
So when a Government Agent calls an Anti-vaxer, and asks if their kids have all their shots, what do you spoze they say....?
It should be patently obvious that there would never have been an outbreak of measles at Disneyland if there was 99% coverage of the entire population.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 05 2015, @06:14AM
You think anti-vaxxers make up at least 10% of the US population, and further that we have no idea what percent of people are actually vaccinated for measles but 90% is an overestimate?
Possible, and very, very important if true. Do you have any supporting evidence for this?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday July 05 2015, @06:53AM
Using the same source as the AC I was responding to. Exact same link.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 05 2015, @08:33AM
That was me, the same AC. I'm not sure why I got modded funny. That makes the problem I brought up even worse. Do you know of any additional evidence that these polls the CDC is basing their decisions on are inaccurate. I have read that this data was inaccurate in the past, but thought they resolved that by now:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749379701002860 [sciencedirect.com]
You seem to be saying we still have no idea what percent of people are vaccinated, but we should take the phone survey results as an upper bound.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday July 05 2015, @04:55PM
I'm saying phone survey data can't be trusted at all.
You claimed only 1 percent were unvaccinated, and posted a link to back it up.
I was merely pointing out that YOUR OWN LINK says 90 only percent were vaccinated. (which doesn't even achieve herd immunity).
I copied and pasted from your own link.
You should maybe read links you post. And maybe stop posting as AC if you expect to carry on conversations.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 05 2015, @11:15PM
Perhaps we have a miscommunication. The CDC link said that ~90% of children received measles vaccinations, but over 99% received at least one vaccine. Since anti-vaxxers are against all vaccines, that indicated to me that anti-vaxxers are only a small minority of the 10% of children not vaccinated for measles.
You also pointed out that it is a phone survey, which "can't be trusted at all" and gave reasons that the survey would overestimate the percent of people vaccinated against measles. I agree, phone survey data is dubious and should not be used to influence public health policy, at least in the absence of supporting evidence.
If the only data available is the phone survey, it would appear we have no idea what percent of people are vaccinated. I'm not sure you realize how important that is.