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.
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Texas Lawmaker not Worried about Measles because of ‘Antibiotics'
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @04:12AM (8 children)
"It could be funny if it weren't so tragic."
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @04:23AM (7 children)
Applies just as well to the centuries before.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @05:22AM (6 children)
Maaaaybe, but with the advent of the telecommunications there is very little excuse for a lot of the bullshit. We've progressed technologically to a pretty high level yet we can't solve some of the most basic problems, like garbage. If we're not careful our great-grandchildren may have to have neighborhood rescue teams to get people out of garbage ambulanches.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @09:26AM (5 children)
Ambulanches???
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 28 2019, @11:48AM (2 children)
Is that like an avalanche of ambulances? I think I'd prefer snow.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday February 28 2019, @12:22PM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday February 28 2019, @04:00PM
No matter the delivery method, it'd hurt a lot more to get hit by an ambulance than a snow flake.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @03:35PM (1 child)
I see we have uncultured swine around here. Check out Idiocracy ,)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @10:35PM
Thanks for the reference. Is there a youtube clip you can post?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by black6host on Thursday February 28 2019, @04:22AM (1 child)
What I want to know is if this idiot has been vaccinated. If not, then he truly needs to experience the wonders of the antibiotics first hand! All my kids are vaccinated. I don't give a shit if they're all fucked up :)
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Thursday February 28 2019, @07:08AM
Careful what you wish for. He may have been vaccinated... and this was the very cause for him turning an idiot. (large grin)
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @05:20AM (38 children)
I am sure the moron parrots will be out in force but measles stopped being a feared disease due to antibiotics and sanitation. By the 1950s people in the US and and UK had serious consequences from measles about as common as vaccine harm happens today since pneumonia was easily treated.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @05:24AM (28 children)
What a great reason to not vaccinate your kids. "Don't worry, we have good medicine so you probably won't die. Oh what's that? Your insurance lapsed? Best of luck!"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @05:49AM (23 children)
The original reason to vaccinate your kids was to work together to eradicate measles by 1967, not mess with the epidemiology of measles so every generation needed to pay a corporation to prevent an epidemic. When will they start talking about using vaccinations for their correct purpose instead of acting like pushers that rile up rabid idiots with propoganda?
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 28 2019, @11:50AM (22 children)
It's kind of obvious it hasn't been eradicated yet though, no?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @01:02PM (21 children)
Is that because the vaccine does not actually work like promised, or they figured out it is a money making scheme so purposefully keep the immunization rate just low enough to avoid eradication while maximizing profits? We know it isnt antivaxxers preventing eradication, there aren't enough of them.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Thursday February 28 2019, @01:38PM (11 children)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @01:49PM (10 children)
No, that cannot be the reason. Measles eradication in the US was promised by 1967, it isn't like they were unaware of Africa back then. It was not originally thought to require and endless series of vaccinations:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1919891/ [nih.gov]
After getting people on the vaccines though, the story changed:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1228954/ [nih.gov]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @05:06PM (2 children)
Pointing out an achievable goal is not "promised". "Mexico will pay for my great wall" is a promise. "We can eradicate measles by 1967" is a goal, so your "they promised us this and they didn't do it so now they are liars" line is hogwash.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @05:15PM
No, they believed and told people measles would be eradicated. They called it the "End Measles" campaign:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1919948/ [nih.gov]
http://digitalcollections.archives.nysed.gov/index.php/Detail/Object/Show/object_id/10232 [nysed.gov]
This is from 1980 from one of the authors:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6939399 [nih.gov]
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday February 28 2019, @07:58PM
"Mexico will pay for my great wall" is a promise.
However, Mexico CAN pay for a wall.... They're jut not gonna.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday February 28 2019, @07:55PM (1 child)
Unaware that antibiotics don't fix viruses and you clearly have difficulty reading. Did you forget to login as the Trump sockpuppet?
Here's a hint: what does the word "can" mean?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @08:33PM
Yep, I must be pretty dumb.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 01 2019, @03:25AM (4 children)
That is indeed the reason despite you not getting that pony in 1967. Measles comes from the endemic infections routine to the poorer, non-vaccinated parts of the world. That's why it's three orders of magnitude lower now in the US than in the years prior to the mass introduction of the vaccine. If we had global vaccination at the same level of efficacy, eradication would be a likely outcome. There apparently is no animal reservoir of measles.
(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.
(Score: 5, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 28 2019, @01:47PM (3 children)
It's primarily because not all nations immunize everyone and some morons in this nation refuse to be. One decade with everyone in the world immunized and nobody would ever have to take the vaccine to avoid measles again.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @01:53PM (1 child)
See my response here: https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=30329&commentsort=0&mode=threadtos&threshold=-1&highlightthresh=-1&page=1&cid=808100#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
Your explanation is ahistorical.
Yes, this would be a better plan and was closer to the original, non-scammy plan. It shouldn't require an entire decade with everyone in the world though. A single year should be enough.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 01 2019, @09:52AM
It would be unprecedented to eradicate measles. Unprecedented things are by definition ahistorical.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday February 28 2019, @05:15PM
That's probably correct...but are you sure there's no animal that is a carrier? There doesn't appear to be any common animal, but how to you know that, say, tapirs don't carry it.
So it MIGHT be enough. The only way to find out (that I can think of) is to try. But even if it didn't work, it should eliminate most countries, and probably most continents.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday March 01 2019, @01:40AM (4 children)
Good Christ, no, it's not some massive conspiracy of pharma companies to vaccinate everyone forever.
I'm willing to believe a lot of bad stuff about the pharma industry, but if you took even a few moments among your apparent deep dives into random medical journal articles from decades ago, you'd know very well why measles hasn't been eradicated worldwide yet. (Officially, it has been eradicated in the U.S. for quite a few years, despite anti-vaxxers trying their damndest to get it to spread again.)
Anyhow, basically the difference between measles and smallpox or polio (the other disease aimed for in vaccinations) is the measles is a lot more contagious. It requires something more like 95% vaccination to get herd immunity and stop spreading, compared to 80-85% for smallpox and polio. And the characteristics of the vaccine make it harder to inoculate throughout random parts of the third world compared to polio (which takes a few drops orally, compared to measles which requires a reconsituted injection that goes bad quickly).
No, it's not a massive conspiracy to keep measles alive. Rather, there are massive ongoing campaigns to try to eradicate measles globally, since it still causes over 100,000 deaths per year globally, mostly in young children in developing nations.
I assume you're the AC bitching up and down this thread and posting links to ancient medical journal articles. Try reading some modern ones. You might learn something -- that is if you open your mind and stop assuming conspiracy theories and spouting anti-vaxxers rhetoric about the supposed (unproven) high incidence of serious vaccine complications. Despite the BS here, measles is a serious disease that causes serious side effects and deaths. There's no credible science that the vaccines against it have side effects that exceed that magnitude.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @02:12AM (3 children)
Well, it isn't just measles. It is every single thing on this list: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/vaccines-age.html [cdc.gov]
You are saying all of those vaccines/viruses have special properties that make them more difficult than polio and smallpox to eradicate?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 01 2019, @10:05AM
Apparently, not diphtheria, which is on your list - that had only 4500 reported cases in 2015. And given how hard it is to eradicate polio, I'm not surprised that we're taking a while with the other diseases that can be eradicated.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday March 01 2019, @01:03PM (1 child)
Do you have any freakin' clue how hard global eradication is? Read up on the history of smallpox eradication -- how much effort it took, how many rights were violated and people forcibly vaccinated against their will, how workers had to travel on foot to remote places and convince (sometimes coerce) people to allow them to be vaccinated while field methods had to be invented to make sure vaccination could still be effective in varying remote conditions...
It's astounding that it managed to succeed. For a disease as easily transmitted as measles, it's amazing we've gotten as far as we have. Read up on some history rather than just assuming someone waves a.magic wand and all of humanity around the global is vaccinated.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @02:54PM
Yes, if you are going to do something do it right. The original justification for eradication of measles was indeed because it would be a great achievement:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1522578/ [nih.gov]
That is a reason to do something, not a reason to stop trying. The 1960s were a better time I guess though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @10:40PM (3 children)
Actually, the insurance issue is the least of your worries. Antibiotics--indeed, any medication--has side effects, some of them quite nasty. (No, I'm not going to bother posting a link. Do your own google search!)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @10:56PM (2 children)
Not vaccines, they don't have side effects.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @03:23AM (1 child)
some vaccine, like the triple flu shot, have a 1 in 10 million risk of Guillain–Barré syndrome.
other make you feel like you have a cold for a few days.
but it's nothing compared to the disease they protect from
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @03:48AM
Actually the measles vaccine gives ~18% of children a 100 F fever, and 5% a measles-like rash. About 1.5% get "measles-like illness" which is a combination of those symptoms plus some other minor ones:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6343620/ [nih.gov]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @05:28AM (7 children)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20789272 [nih.gov]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @05:35AM (6 children)
Figure 1 shows mortality rates of ~.25 per 100k cases in the US by 1960 (.00025%):
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1522578/ [nih.gov]
People didn't get very sick and die from measles, it was secondary infections that could be treated with antibiotics.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @12:40PM (1 child)
You may notice that the worse affected are the kids under 2. Since they can't be vaccinated until that age, that's the population that really can die. It's like whooping cough. You get vaccinated so that the little kids don't die.
I know it's really hard for people to understand, but these diseases are deadly to the kids. Just like getting rubella is kind of really bad, for the unborn.
But yeah, the prolifer crowd kind of ignoring the real life problems like that.
That's like saying, it's not the high cholesterol or blood pressure or sugar that kills you, it's the heart death due to insufficient blood supply that gets you!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @01:24PM
False. They can be vaccinated just fine, there is no evidence of any danger. The reason vaccinations are delayed is that they don't work because the infant is already protected by maternal antibodies. A problem is that vaccinated mothers pass on weaker antibodies than those who had measles, so the infants need to be vaccinated at a younger age.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21133659 [nih.gov]
It is because people spread this myth that vaccines are dangerous to infants that we can't move up the vaccination age to protect the children.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by stormreaver on Thursday February 28 2019, @03:08PM (3 children)
What the vaccination promoters also like to ignore:
1) In the generations before the Measles vaccine was introduced, just about everyone got Measles as kids, and no one died from it. It's a benign disease, in and of itself, in developed countries. Everyone whose only infection was Measles recovered in a reasonably short time period, and then gained a lifetime immunity to it. As you said, it was the secondary infections that caused the problems, and we have treatments for those (many of which involve the use of antibiotics). The death rate from Measles in developed countries has been unchanged from the period before the vaccine up to now. The entirety of reduction in Measles mortality rate was achieved long before the Measles vaccine was introduced.
2) The Measles vaccine is not designed to protect again Measles transmission. Those who have been vaccinated are equally likely to spread Measles as those who are not vaccinated. The Measles vaccine only affects the person who receives it.
3) The relatively weak immunity gained from vaccination wanes over time (that period varies from months to about 20 years at most). After that time, the vaccinated individual has no immunity to Measles. There is also increasing evidence that vaccinations increase the lifetime risk of secondary illnesses not related to the vaccine, and reduces the effectiveness of subsequent boosters.
4) Measles is a cyclical disease. Its spread has peaks and valleys. Vaccines have never changed that. The only thing that has ramped up is the pharmaceutical propaganda machine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @03:35PM (2 children)
Source? I have seen that the antibody response wanes, but not that extreme:
https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/189/Supplement_1/S123/821041 [oup.com]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday February 28 2019, @05:21PM (1 child)
Also, the immunity wanes in everybody. Not just in those that were vaccinated. If you develop a stronger immunity to start with, of course, it takes longer to wane into ineffectiveness...but it still wanes.
FWIW, I've recently had a shingles vaccine, because the immunity to chicken pox wanes as you get older, but the secondary form is a lot worse than the original.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @05:45PM
The waning may also "speed up" (actually not be "boosted") if the person is never exposed to circulating measles:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22966129 [nih.gov]
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday March 01 2019, @07:53PM
Wrong. And that's all that needs to be said.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @05:39AM (8 children)
You know that stereotype that Republicans are willfully ignorant of science? Well, this didn't reduce it.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @05:56AM (5 children)
Well, this guy is saying historically and scientifically accurate stuff so I wonder what that says about you...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @06:45AM
Yup, marking facts as "troll". It doesn't get much more willfully ignorant than that.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Thursday February 28 2019, @08:39AM (3 children)
And did he mention anything about the way we're losing antibiotics through overuse?
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @01:29PM (2 children)
You are blaming that on measles?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @02:52PM (1 child)
nope. blaming idiots like this that think antibiotics can use used in everything to fix all problems
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Thursday February 28 2019, @09:46PM
Beat me to it.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @09:51AM
That sounds awfully specific, are you an American Democrat by any chance?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @10:44PM
Maybe he's a plant by the left to make them look stupid. Slick move, gotta admit.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Barenflimski on Thursday February 28 2019, @05:56AM (7 children)
Things have gotten so good for so many folks, they don't even remember what bad really was. Bad today is a cold. Bad today is a few rotten politicians. Bad today is someone stubbing their toe getting on and off an airplane. Ironically, all this progress has given people the room to disagree simply because they can disagree without the world ending for them. Not too long ago in the U.S., and currently in lands not so far away people still believe in witchcraft, because warding off the spirits is as good as anything else they've got. Like any good hive mind you have to have your detractrors to keep the rest of the mind pointed in the right direction and relatively healthy. People doing this are simply a symptom of success. If you really took away vaccines, it wouldn't be very many generations before that type of thinking succumbed to Darwin's "survival of the fittest" theory.
If the anti-vaxer movement proves anything its that reading things on the internet doesn't make them true. Interestingly, one could argue that these same folks would be better off not reading things on the internet because it confuses them.
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Thursday February 28 2019, @08:54AM (1 child)
To catch up with all knowledge accumulated by our ancestors each person needs a lot of time and work. Most are too lazy or too busy.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Thursday February 28 2019, @05:27PM
There's "not knowing" and there's "publicly expressing a strong opinion about matters in which you are ignorant". And if you're enacting laws based on that it's even worse.
FWIW, I don't believe that the neurological damage that some people received from measles could be prevented by anti-biotics, but it seems quite reasonable that fewer people would die if the symptoms (and secondary infections) were properly treated. So it could well be that the arguments on both sides, as explicitly stated in the above thread, are generally accurate. And this wouldn't change my opinion that children should not be allowed into public school without being vaccinated. It *MIGHT* change my opinion that failure to vaccinate should be counted as child abuse.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Thursday February 28 2019, @01:09PM (4 children)
I've been thinking that as life gets easier for an organism, the organism becomes less fit. No doubt someone has discovered and named this principle.
Saw a report on a scientific experiment in which flies were coddled so they didn't have to fly. In only a few generations, the flies degenerated to the point many of them were born with defective wings and could not fly.
This cuts more than one way. The anti-vaxxers have had life made so easy they can indulge this thinking, and not pay for it with the lives of their children. Or, inadvertently or purposefully, they're restoring their own fitness to survive measles by putting their kids through the disease. Don't need the brains to discern that the vaccine is the much better bet, if the consequences of choosing not to use it aren't that severe. And you can still win a poker too, by folding when you have a winning hand. Lot harder to win when you play like that, but not impossible.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @01:33PM (3 children)
This is a misunderstanding of the concept of fitness. The animal is only fit relative to their current environment. If flying around is not required for flies to reproduce then the flies that don't waste energy on this are fitter than those who do.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday February 28 2019, @02:35PM (2 children)
The key phrase is "current environment". What are the odds that a "current" environment will last a long enough time to make such quick genetic changes a good bet? Millions of years of flying, and then, just a few months of no flying required, and the flies responded that quickly?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @03:00PM
A few months (~90 days) to a fly is like 270 years for humans with 30 year generation time:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drosophila_melanogaster#Lifecycle_and_reproduction [wikipedia.org]
And who said the population can't gain back the ability to fly as fast as they lost it?
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday February 28 2019, @05:31PM
Yes. An example of this kind of evolutionary preference is the dodo, which started out at a kind of pigeon, but it got to an island where flying away was likely to get you drowned...or at least removed from the gene pool resident on the island. (Maybe you successfully made it back to the mainland, but you still were no longer ancestral to the remaining pigeons.) So the dodo lost the power of flight, as that made them more successful. Evolution has no foresight.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Thursday February 28 2019, @06:05AM (2 children)
If the measles goes around there, with their value of pi [wikipedia.org], it'll be an even longer round!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @07:55PM (1 child)
Last I checked 6 6.283
Otherwise it'd be a nice dig!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @08:02PM
or I'm an idiot, I thought they rounded it down to 3 not 3.2
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @06:30AM (15 children)
The antibiotic prophylaxis of bacterial complications of measles. 1959:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13611608 [nih.gov]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Whoever on Thursday February 28 2019, @06:43AM (1 child)
"low mortality ... complications of"
Low mortality is not zero. Unvaccinated people are more likely to die from measles or complications from measles. People actually die.
Some people genuinely can't be vaccinated. They should not be put at risk from morons who don't vaccinate their kids because of fears that were stoked by a con man who wanted to make money from his own vaccinations.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @06:51AM
The low rate of complications is actually even lower than the rate of complications from measles vaccines. Both are very low and not a reason for alarm though. Just saying it makes no sense to be concerned about the lower rate but not the higher.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday February 28 2019, @07:43AM (12 children)
Since 1959 some funny bugs evolved. Like the multidrug resistant tuberculosis. Or that Aureus.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @01:37PM (11 children)
The point is that antibiotics were very useful for measles, to the point that hospitals were getting shut down as unnecessary. The implication in the TFA (and many posts here) is that this guy didn't understand science because "you cant treat a virus with antibiotics."
He is right, TFA and the people who blindly believe what they read in the news are wrong.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @01:51PM (1 child)
FTFY.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @02:08PM
Do people still use antibiotics for pneumonia? Then they are still useful today.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @05:11PM (1 child)
Wow, it was only the measles that were keeping those hospitals open? To me that makes it sound like it was a LOT worse before and counters all your other arguments against vaccination.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @05:31PM
This makes no sense, I think you must have missed that all occurred before the vaccine. And what "other arguments against vaccination" are you referring to?
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday March 01 2019, @07:57PM (6 children)
Wrong. Measles is caused by a virus, rubeola. Antibiotics are not useful for viruses. Go back to freshman biology.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @10:02PM (5 children)
You're pretty slow on the uptake eh? Antibiotics were given for measles all the time.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1815980/ [nih.gov]
You can find quotes/links to other papers discussing this throughout the thread
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Saturday March 02 2019, @10:32AM (4 children)
Wrong.
First, I'm obviously faster on the uptake than you, AC.
Second, you say nothing about my point that antibiotics do not kill viruses directly. Thanks for tacitly acknowledging I'm right. Now you can also acknowledge that vaccines work.
Third, you are confusing secondary complications with the primary causative illness. Your conflation is that "Antibiotics were given for measles," when in fact antibiotics were given for secondary complications or co-morbidities of measles. Ones which would have been completely unnecessary with vaccination, as the secondary conditions would not have obtained without the measles first being present. Which could have been avoided by vaccination.
Fourth, let's say the facts of your citation are correct, which I do not concede. It does appear to be an opinion letter to me, not a peer-reviewed article. So fail in terms of using that as a source. I could be wrong in this, as I'm not taking further time to confirm your mistakes.
Finally, it doesn't matter a tinker's damn what was done in 1964, exactly one year after the Measles vaccine was developed. We have learned a few more things since then. So again, I invite you to go back to freshman biology and study such things as antibiotic resistance and supra- and super-infections and their distinctions, and you might learn why not having to resort to antibiotics at all is actually a good thing if one can avoid them.
I could go on, but I really don't think I'll bother since you seem to understand so little already.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 02 2019, @02:59PM (3 children)
Yes, the antibiotics do not kill the measles virus. No one ever claimed this was the case except the strawman in your head.
It is like you can't understand anything more complicated than "antibiotics don't kill virus".
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Sunday March 03 2019, @12:31AM (2 children)
And it's like you can't read past the first sentence or come to a logical conclusion. So, were we formally debating, you just conceded the rest of it to me. Thanks!
But since you're missing the logic here, I'll spell it out in the smallest words I can: Stop the virus from ever happening, you won't ever need the antibiotics to defend against the secondary infections opened up because you were stupid enough to allow a preventable virus to take hold. (Antibiotics which then allow other infections to form on top of the ones you just killed with the first round of antibis. Which then can form resistance if you don't get it all killed.)
Guess what the best, and to date only, way of stopping someone from getting the virus is???
So we'll send you back to basic logic in addition to elementary biology.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 03 2019, @06:20PM (1 child)
No one here ever claimed any of these things you are arguing against, its all strawmen made up by you. One after the other a new strawman pops into your head and you start arguing with it. It really looks like insanity.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday March 06 2019, @06:40PM
Logical consequences of the claim that "antibiotics were very useful for measles," which was wrong from the start. In fact it was a level of Luke Skywalker, "Amazing, every word of what you just said was wrong," level of wrongness about the post. Not anywhere approaching historically or medically accurate level of wrong.
So we can just let it go that the parent's post was insane. As is Bill Zedler.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @07:28AM (2 children)
How does a government function when people like these are at the helm?
(Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Thursday February 28 2019, @07:46AM
Self-evident answer, really. Badly, how else?
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by J_Darnley on Thursday February 28 2019, @02:17PM
Doesn't sounds far from the average person who wants antibiotics to beat a cold or flu. Government must be representative of the people.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @07:43AM (4 children)
The trouble with measles is that it knocks down your immune system for about 3 years. So, it's a bit like HIV in that aspect.
Antibiotics sure help with many of the things that would take advantage of your damaged immune system.
Bill Zedler is thus 100% correct, despite the fact that antibiotics don't directly stop measles. There is nothing funny or tragic about his statement.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday February 28 2019, @07:49AM
Catch some antibiotics resistant bugs within 3years and you are good to go then?
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @08:45AM
So instead of preventing the disease, it's better to just cure the symptoms. Sure, sure, that's how the big pharma would like it to go. That's the better business model.
I see Zedler's comment pretty fucking ignorant at best.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday February 28 2019, @12:31PM
Put some skin in the game - go down to the Pink Oyster Club had have a nice long session of barebacking tonight, and see how long you like having a reduced immune system in the coming years.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @03:01PM
you know also what kill diseases?! fire!! Lets burn then all instead of trying to avoid the disease in the first place! :D
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @12:41PM (14 children)
The moderations tell all. People here are not interested in historical or scientific facts, it is all about supporting a political team. Disgusting.
(Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Thursday February 28 2019, @02:14PM (13 children)
Here's a scientific fact [newscientist.com]
Now, try to think how pleasant would be to get bacterial infections until your immune system rebuilds its memory.
Balance the cost of a measles vaccine vs cost of 2-3 years worth of antibiotics.
What if, during this time, you get a bacteria strain with antibiotic resistance? You'd have some chances with a good immune system, but without it?
Which political team would that be?
'cause, as a non-US resident/citizen, I can't give a shit about your political teams, both are equally bad in my views.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @02:33PM (12 children)
That isn't a fact. The facts were a correlation incidence/mortality data for measles and other infectious disease.[1] Then they fit a mathematical model showing some model of immunomodulation could explain this. That is great as a first step (in the top 1% of what is getting published these days for sure), but someone needs to check the predictions of the model on new data. In science, you can't verify a model on the same data used to come up with it.
[1] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6235/694 [sciencemag.org]
We already know what this is like. It happened in the 1950s and 1960s before there was any vaccine. There are good records of the time. People in general were less scared of measles than they are of measles vaccines today: "if you're gunna get sick, can't beat the measles" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDb0ZS3vB9g [youtube.com]
See earlier posts in this thread for the "scientific" data regarding extremely low rates of pneumonia/mortality/etc once proper sanitary practices were in place and antibiotics became available.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Thursday February 28 2019, @03:59PM (11 children)
You are making the assumption of "our immunity is as good as our grandparents" in the above.
Which assumption is likely invalid if we look at the allergies prevalence - many sources indicate a growth of approx 50 percent between 1997 and 2011.
Among the likely causes:
1. less brest-feeding - as a way for antibodies transfer from mother to child
2. excessive use of antiseptics and disinfectants (kills 99.99% of germs... Ew [xkcd.com] (you were saying something about "proper sanitary practices"?)
3. food regulations and the raise of supermarket chains (with an emphasis on "product shelf life") practically eliminated foods with ferments. Anecdote: I tried one of those small bottles with "probiotics" from the supermarket, allegedly some strains of lactobacillus, in a cup of warm milk with half a teaspoon of sugar added. Nothing for 2 days, then the milk went bad from whatever wild ferment it caught. As I wanted some alive yogurt, I needed to rely on cultures bought on ebay: took 8 hours to colonize the milk and 16 hours to get my yogurt.
4. outdoor/risk adversity - I grew as a latchkey kid. Got home in the evening, often bruised and dusty, with scrapped knees or arms (great feeling to have learnt to ride a bike, in hindsight good opportunities to boost my immunity too). The last cultural reference I remember about that life style? Terminator 2.
Now, to the point: for a start, I'd like to see those things reverted before considering measles a sickness one doesn't need vaccines but just proper management. Before that, my gut instinct tells me it's risky.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @04:20PM (10 children)
Allergies are due to an overactive immune system. The immune system is too vigilant for the circumstances, like when you have a suburb with no crime so the police start creating problems for themselves to solve. So I would take that as evidence the immunity has not changed much at all while the environment has. But yea, no two situations are going to be exactly the same.
The point is though, do they still give antibiotics for pneumonia? There isn't anything special about measles-associated pneumonia afaik.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday February 28 2019, @04:53PM (9 children)
Yes and no.
Yes, it may have the same potential for defensive action.
No, it is ouit-of-whack, in extreme cases the potential slides into self-destructive actions.
Sorta, a genius child without proper education has higher chances to become a wacko than a mediocre but educated one.
Yes, but is it advantageous to do it?
With a non-amnesic immune system, even if not so well "measles educated", you may get only to a bronchitis or just a sore-throat level and the immune system does the rest (and gets better in the process).
With a blissfully ignorant immune system, antibiotics are very likely mandatory (and you'll pay for them every time, as opposed to a one or two off for the vaccine). And maybe your immune system learns something, maybe not. A thing is sure: if you catch measles after the age of 2, your mother won't breast-feed you again to educate your immune system at primary-school level.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @05:17PM (8 children)
Why would they give antibiotics otherwise?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday February 28 2019, @09:37PM (6 children)
Once the measles is on, can't do otherwise.
Before measles is on, you have the option of a vaccine. Will let your immune system with a weak lesson of measles but knowing everything it learnt about the rest and with a lower need of antibiotics.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @10:07PM (5 children)
Once the measles is on you still don't need any special care in 99% of cases. Even at its worst, only ~15% of cases ever even got reported to doctors.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday February 28 2019, @10:57PM (4 children)
Mate, let's set the things clear. The context is of a human that hasn't had measles and has a choice between to or to not vaccinate.
1. If you vaccinate, you immune system will know a weak form of measles but get to keep the memory of all the other enemies that it knows about. The result is a good chance of fighting off other germs and a reduced number of cases when antibiotics will be necessary
2. If you don't vaccinate and get measles, your immune system will know measles by heart but forget everything else. The result is most of subsequent infections with other germs will require antibiotics and you may get extremely unlucky and catch one resistant to antibiotics.
So, as a personal choice**, while it is true you may not need a vaccine to survive measles, it seems safer and more time/money efficient to have one. What motives would a politician have to not want that?
** not even got to introduce herd immunity consideration into the equation.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @12:23AM (3 children)
You scenario is just speculation based on post-hoc fit model. I looked at that paper here [soylentnews.org]. Nothing wrong with it other than no one ever checked any predictions it makes (and the authors are confused between pre-diction and post-diction which makes them way overconfident in it, but whatever since it is difficult to find real science these days so I give them a pass for at least coming up with a model).
Do you know about someone later verifying this model is capable of predicting something useful? Or do you just believe every random model that gets published? How do you decide what to believe? Because I assure you a contradictory model that fits all the same data is possible.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday March 01 2019, @12:34AM (1 child)
Nope.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @12:42AM
No, I'm not going to spend the time on this. But if you have ever modeled something you know it is not hard to get a fit to anything with enough adjustable parameters...
If I were to do it though, I would take their model (if it is actually available somewhere) and add in "dark measles" cases (the 85% unreported ones) that make it show what I want.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday March 01 2019, @05:50PM
Let's see. To do a double-blind study of this you would have to give measles to one group and not give measles to a control group without the subjects or the researcher knowing which group had measles.
I kind of suspect that it might rapidly become obvious which subjects were in one group or the other...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 01 2019, @09:24AM
Malpractice protection.