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: 5, Insightful) by driverless on Wednesday March 27 2019, @12:39PM (33 children)
They're not anti-vaccination, they're pro-disease.
The sad thing is that they're not auto-darwinating, it's their children that they're doing it to.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @01:15PM (2 children)
um... technically the Darwin awards are given to those who take themselves out of the genepool.
I think you can argue that those who kill their kids qualify.
in all seriousness though, the problem is not that their (to be pitied) children get the disease. the problem is that they transmit it further on to others who could not get the vaccine for legitimate medical reasons (for instance they are below the age limit, I think it's 12 months).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @08:52PM
You aren't in the gene pool if none of your kids reach puberty.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday March 27 2019, @09:09PM
Unless they are sterilized, there remains they might have more children to pass their genes to.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @01:51PM (12 children)
It is very unlikely measles is going kill anyone, unless they are elderly whose immunity waned. Mortality rates before vaccines in the US/UK were like 1 in 100k:
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=30329&page=1&cid=807987#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=30329&commentsort=0&mode=threadtos&threshold=-1&highlightthresh=-1&page=1&cid=808691#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @05:18PM (11 children)
It would help human health a lot of people did not spread lies.
Mortality rates are 1-2 per 1000, not per 100k, and the risk groups are worse!
https://www.cdc.gov/measles/downloads/measlesdataandstatsslideset.pdf [cdc.gov]
Not to mention that hospitalization and permanent damage are not irrelevant either.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @07:37PM (10 children)
Well, there are a number of problems with those slides (eg attributing all of a drop in deaths due to measles 100% to the vaccine rather than giving credit to sanitation, anti-biotics, people not spreading measles on purpose, etc).
But for that 1 in 1k number they cite this page:
https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/complications.html [cdc.gov]
Which seems to cite this page where there is no source given:
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/meas.html#complications [cdc.gov]
I will stick with the numbers that have been associated with an actual dataset, but I expect wherever that number came from only looked at reported cases (which will tend to be especially bad) and ignored all the others.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @08:19PM (9 children)
The page you cite for 1 per 100k is PER YEAR!!! If people get 50 years old, that translates to about 1 in 2000 and is more or less in line with the other numbers.
That is what happens when relying on shittly written papers with no proper scales, suddenly you are a factor 50 to 80 of from reality (being > 100x off from official CDC numbers should have been a hint that something is wrong...)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @08:38PM (1 child)
No, because people only got measles once.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @08:49PM
How often people get measles is irrelevant, the graph was showing deaths per 100k POPULATION (not per infected, and not per previous uninfected population) per YEAR.
So a value of "1" means over a time of 50 years 50 people will have died per 100k population.
The fact that you can get measles only once just means that a relatively small portion of the population gets infected each year because most are immune.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @08:42PM (6 children)
In stats terminology, you are assuming the probability of a person dying from measles each year is independent of the last:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_(probability_theory)#Two_events [wikipedia.org]
This model is very wrong since once you had measles (usually before 5 years old) the probability dropped to near zero.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @08:57PM (5 children)
No I don't assume any such thing.
I just take the numbers, which say in a population of 100k, 1 dies of measles every year.
Which means that after 50 years 50 have died.
I.e. 50 out of 100k will have died, making it a 1 in 2k chance. There is no need to consider the probability distribution or independence for that calculation.
I do admit it is not exact though, since it does not take into account all the mess of people dying of other causes in those 50 years and new people being born (if that wasn't the case, the "you get measles only once" would of course mean the deaths per year number would drop like a stone over time).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @09:17PM (4 children)
This is not what the numbers represent because new people are being born who didn't get measles yet and old people are dying who were immune to measles. The "population" is in flux.
As shown in the link the math of 50 years * (1/100k people/yr) assumes independence. If you have an alternate derivation that works out to something near that for a population with births and deaths I would love to see it (no sarcasm).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @11:06PM (3 children)
Let me start by what I think is your mistake here. You seem to think I am somehow combining probabilities, calculating a joint probability or something.
That is not the case.
I just took the given simple fact of 1 disease death per 100k population per year. That is a given (approximated) fact from the tables.
If we assume the population is fixed at 100 million, that means every year 1000 people die from the disease. There surely is no question on that?
If every year 1000 people die from disease, surely it is also clear that after 50 years 50000 people died from disease?
If we want the probability for an individual person to die, all we have to do is to divide the number of people who died by the number of people overall.
This is where it gets complicated, but if approximate is good enough it's not so hard.
How many different people have lived during those 50 years? At least 100 million. At worst, 50 years would be 3 generations, so 300 million.
How many people can at most die of disease before everyone is dead of old age at 100 years after our original 50 years? 150000.
So now we have upper and lower limits of how many people ever existed in the time range, and upper and lower limits of how many of those died of disease.
At that point, calculating the probability is really nothing more than a division.
Giving 50000 / 300 million = 16 per 100k as lower limit and
150000 / 100 million = 150 per 100k as upper limit
Now a factor 10 is not really satisfactory, but it's enough to show that 1 per 100k and 1 per 100k PER YEAR are completely different.
The lower limit that assumes everyone has all their children before age 17 surely could be refined more.
Ok, I admit maybe for you the range 0.2 to 2 out of 1000 die isn't good enough to "confirm" the 1-2 out of 1000 from the CDC, for me it's good enough because either is utterly unacceptable to me, and nowhere remotely close to 1 out of 100k.
Also note that this also includes an unknown number of people who never got infected for example, or that showed no symptoms. So the "mortality of people showing symptoms" number will of course be higher.
Different, more hands-on but unrealistic approach:
The more concrete point that it is not NECESSARY to have independence to get the same ballpark value is easy to prove manually.
Let's switch to 1 in 100 instead of 1 in 100k for simplicity, and consider the most extreme case where everyone is infected in their birth year.
Constant 100 people population, start out immune.
Year 1: Number 1 dies of old age. 2 to 100 infected and now immune. Number 101 born and immediately dies of disease. Number 102 born and survives.
Year 2: Number 2 dies of old age. 3 to 102 infected and now immune. Number 103 born and immediately dies of disease. Number 104 born and survives.
...
Year 50: Number 50 dies of old age. 51 to 198 infected and now immune. Number 199 born and immediately dies of disease. Number 200 born and survives
Result: 50 dead of disease, 200 people overall. Makes a 1/4 probability over the time observed. Not the same as a simplistic 50(years) * (1 in 100 per year) = 1/2 but not massively off either.
Doing that with 100k and a realistic birth rate is left as an exercise to the reader ;)
Now proving that this all works the same if you have random subset infected and random ages of death gets too complicated for me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 28 2019, @12:04AM (2 children)
Yes.
No, it means the frequency with which that happened was 1/1000 for that year. The frequency is free to (and did) change by many orders of magnitude over the years.
The data does not say "every year x = 1000 people die from disease", it says x percent of people were dying from the disease and this has decreased over time (for some reason) to a much lower number.
If we were able to stop all measles vaccinations now, what would happen is nothing like the world just before it was introduced in the 1960s. There would be huge chaos.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 28 2019, @07:52AM (1 child)
I'm sorry, but at this point all I can say is that I have no clue what you think the numbers in the paper say or how they were derived.
They simply took the number of people who died in that year and divided it by the population in 100k.
Thus multiplying that probability by the population again gives the number of people that died/would die again.
If you can't agree to that all discussion is pointless. But feel free to get the exact absolute numbers for people who lived during that time and how many died from measles and do the calculation yourself. It's just basic arithmetic, no statistics required. Only relying on pre-converted data is what messes things up and makes it difficult.
And what is that nonsense about first agreeing to the approximated value of 1 and then disagreeing arguing that it fluctuated by an order of magnitude? How is anyone supposed to discuss with you when you say the opposite of before 2 sentences later?
If using the average is not acceptable, then giving an average makes no sense. It was not me who came up with that average. I only said the person quoting it was badly misleading by a factor > 20.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 28 2019, @05:39PM
Yes.
The number you are calculating by doing 50 years X (1/100K deaths/year) = 1/2000 is not the measles mortality rate. Does it help if I point out it has units of "deaths" rather than deaths/year?
This is the claim I took issue with:
This is your "other numbers":
You are comparing apples and oranges.
Just look figure 1 in the paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1522578/ [nih.gov]
Death rate was not constant. It was 10 per 100k in 1912 and 0.2 per 100k in 1960. This is two orders of magnitude.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Sourcery42 on Wednesday March 27 2019, @03:04PM (9 children)
It's not limited to anti-vaxxers or their children either. Those who are too young to be vaccinated or have legitimate medical reasons for not being vaccinated also benefit from herd immunity. Anti-vaxxers choices put them at risk too.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @03:23PM (3 children)
This is the most dangerous myth about vaccines out there. Please stop repeating it.
The "too young" children are not vaccinated because they are already protected by maternal antibodies. The problem is that if the mother was vaccinated these maternal antibodies wane faster. So the age of vaccination needs to be moved up, but it isnt socially acceptable because of people like you.
Just by the sheer numbers of people repeating this myth it is far worse than any effect a small number of "anti-vaxxers" could have. I repeat: You are putting children in danger by spreading this myth.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21133659 [nih.gov]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @05:15PM (1 child)
You do realize what you write says in order to be vaccinated you must be susceptible to measles?
Which means the first vaccination date will have to be AFTER the babies have lost the protection, ergo they are unprotected and at risk for some time in-between.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @06:01PM
Ideally they would individually test for maternal antibodies to drop below a certain level, but yea the goal is to minimize this time as much as possible. People who spread this myth are causing this time to be extended needlessly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @08:58PM
There is research in the area that suggests that difference (among other differences) is that an actual measles infection results in a latent infection. Similar to herpes or chicken pox, you don't completely fight off measles, but rather it self-limits and then your body gets it under control. It also makes sense that mothers who got measles would provide more antibodies, as a higher level is needed to keep the latent infection under control.
(Score: 1, Troll) by stormreaver on Wednesday March 27 2019, @04:51PM (3 children)
Which makes no sense whatsoever, once you understand that the vaccine does not protect against transmission. The only one affected by the vaccine is the one receiving it. The vaccinated and unvaccinated alike are both transmission vectors. The vaccinated are probably more likely to spread Measles since there is a 100% chance that they carry the virus for at least several days (and possibly much longer) after receiving the vaccine. While the unvaccinated have a lesser chance of carrying the virus, since they weren't purposely injected with it.
There's more, but this NY policy is a swing and a miss.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @05:13PM (2 children)
I can only hope someone downvotes this because it is complete nonsense.
While the virus used for vaccination is live, it is not only weakened but also not just any random strain. Even if transmission should be possible, you do NOT infect people with actual measles.
That would be like calling the bird flu H1N1 just because they are both a flu virus. Wrong and misleading.
(Score: 2) by stormreaver on Thursday March 28 2019, @01:16AM (1 child)
So Merck marketing people say. But they are known to have lied to protect Merck's vaccine profits at the expense of the public.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 28 2019, @02:13AM
According to their latest financial filing, MMR2 made up just under 1.42% of sales, and markedly less than that of profit. Yeah, in terms of raw dollars, the money they make in sales sounds like a lot, but compared to the tens of billions of dollars in profit, let alone raw sales, it is basically a rounding error. Plus, big companies care about profit margins and vaccines have almost none compared to the latest and greatest drugs they pump out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 28 2019, @03:41AM
Sadly, children under 1, the most vulnerable, used to be protected from measles by being breastfed by mothers with natural immunity. Vaccines put our most vulnerable in harms way.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @03:20PM (1 child)
They are stupid fucks, but they are anti-vax and not pro-disease. Your statement is a good joke, but the insightful mod makes me wary people think it's true. It is literally a false statement, but a good joke.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @04:19PM
If you actually think I'm trolling then we either have radically different definitions of "pro-" (intent vs outcome) or you're incredibly stupid.
(Score: 2) by exaeta on Wednesday March 27 2019, @03:33PM (3 children)
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 2, Insightful) by RandomFactor on Wednesday March 27 2019, @04:28PM (1 child)
If true, that wing of the movement sure is a heck of a lot quieter than the causes autism wing.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by exaeta on Wednesday March 27 2019, @07:09PM
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @04:41PM
If they were truly pro-life, they'd not be pro-disease among other issues. They are just pro-fetus. Once it's born, their concern stops.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @04:57PM
stfu, you stupid goddamn bitch.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @12:55PM (7 children)
Ultra Orthodox Jews are the cause:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-us-canada-47715169 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday March 27 2019, @01:09PM (1 child)
Oddly enough, the most virulent (LOL pun intended) criticism of anti-vax is in the furthest left areas, Reddit and such, where vax is essentially a religious sacrament to those people, along with "new urbanism" and "bicycle commuting" and "multiculturalism". So being anti-vax is essentially being anti-semitic for all practical purposes on average. Although, sure, in very limited isolated cases "Its the Jews!" might very well be accurate.
I miss the good old days when anti-vax meant fans of the PDP-10 and TOPS-10 and such. TOPS-10, now that was a fun OS. Everything 70s DEC became what shouldda been for 80s/90s home computer enthusiasts. Why did I have to use friggin Z80s and CP/M when the world already birthed the PDP-8, etc etc?
(Score: 2) by Nobuddy on Thursday March 28 2019, @02:05PM
Why would you lie about something so easy to prove wrong? Reddit does nothing but ridicule antivaxxers 24x7. Faceboo is where those idiots reside. Nowhere else will tolerate them.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @01:51PM (3 children)
That was the first thing I thought when I heard Rockland County.
There's a bunch of towns made up of disciples of several Jewish kings who hold court in Brooklyn, the ones who can't afford NYC live in Rockland County with their 20 children each.
They vote in block to strip all government services, like schools, that they would have to pay taxes for. But they do love welfare benefits.
I read the town of Mahwah NJ recently fired their mayor, who in their eyes wasn't doing enough to prevent their intended expansion there.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @02:25PM (2 children)
The world belongs to those who reproduce.
Think on that. The religions knew this thousands of years ago.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @05:34PM (1 child)
Well seeing as humans are pretty much genetically identical around the world except for superficial skin and hair colors I'd say your statement is incredibly ignorant. Oh look, it came from religions, it all makes sense now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 28 2019, @04:55AM
Human cultures and loyalties are not identical.
You are far too fixated on race to think clearly about this.
Do you know how politics works? Voting?
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday March 27 2019, @08:53PM
You don't have to Google it. Because it's right in the Beth Mole article. It's not the first one she's done about our New York Jews. Look at the one they ran in January. Why the crusade against our Jews? Anti-semitic!!!
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @01:39PM (39 children)
So at least 8% of the cases were vaccinated, but the population is ~95% vaccinated. Hmm, if only we could apply some math to figure out how effective the MMR vaccine really is. Nah, this is medicine.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @01:59PM (6 children)
How did they even get these numbers? If there are 153 cases 82.1% would be 125.613 children.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday March 27 2019, @08:57PM (5 children)
It's not 153 Cases like Beth says. It's 155. SPREADING LIKE WILDFIRE!!!!!!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @09:51PM (4 children)
Here are the results for +/- 50 cases:
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday March 27 2019, @10:13PM (3 children)
Beautiful spreadsheet, great job but they're not saying 82.1% right now. They're saying 82.6% and they're saying 155 cases. That's the latest from the D.O.H., the Department of Health. Not from Beth Mole. And I think that one works out O.K. Unlike what Beth put, what she has in her article.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @10:35PM (2 children)
Well where did 82.1 come from? That was a direct copy/paste.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday March 27 2019, @11:10PM (1 child)
The 82.1% isn't from Beth, it's not in her article. Ammonyous tweeted it and that, I assume, is where I saw it. The 153 is in her article. D.O.H., right now is saying 155. And, they're saying 82.6%. Possibly they said 82.1% before, and possibly they said 153 -- who knows? Sorry Beth, I'll make it up to you. As only a man can do!
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @11:17PM
I quoted that number accurately, I'll stake my reputation on it. Wayback machine it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @02:37PM (8 children)
More data:
http://rocklandgov.com/departments/health/measles-information/ [rocklandgov.com]
Not sure where they are getting these numbers from. Mine are:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1815949/ [nih.gov]
So their (unsourced) estimate of the complications are pretty close, but 2-5x too high for some issues.
Compare to the side effects of MMR (from ~1500 children):
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6343620/ [nih.gov]
And I wonder about the 100% of cases had a fever and rash assumption since pre-vaccine only ~15% of measles cases ever got reported. It would make sense if those were the most extreme/classic cases.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @03:03PM
Found ear infections after MMR:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6343620/ [nih.gov]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @03:17PM (3 children)
Wow, just comparing data from the medical literature and a lay medical site is "trolling" now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @03:32PM
Yeah, I was thinking the exact same thing. Maybe someone just hit the wrong button when doing their mod?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @05:04PM (1 child)
you must be new here. just mentioning thruths that are inconvenient to what these idiots think is counterculture (actually programmed into their slave brains by the establishment) is routinely modded as trolling.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 28 2019, @01:16AM
Which is, frankly, why I don't like this system of up/down modding comments her on SN (or that green site). If someone (dis)agrees with someone else's comment I would much rather they tell us why they (dis)agree along with giving us (hopefully) cogent arguments to bolster their case. With the modding of comments you too frequently have a bunch of dittoheads coming through to give us their pretty much useless opinions on the comments of others. Just my take.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @05:22PM (1 child)
The source for the first seems to be the slide set from CDC, it seems to have the same numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @07:01PM
Where did the CDC get them? Can they be traced back to a specific dataset?
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday March 28 2019, @06:02AM
There's also a sort of post-measles syndrome that causes the immune system to do a complete shutdown and reset, almost like short-term AIDS. So until either re-exposed or revaccinated, the post-measles patient is once again vulnerable to all sorts of "childhood diseases", even if they previously had good immunity.
[Too lazy to look up the source again but was from good research, and rather alarming.]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 5, Touché) by FatPhil on Wednesday March 27 2019, @02:51PM (5 children)
Your gibbering is so mathemeatically incoherent, I honestly can't work out what actual point you're trying to make. The fact that the only bit I could work out was just plain wrong (at least in all countries I know of) doesn't give me much faith there is a coherent argument anywhere.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @03:09PM (3 children)
Depends on the age of the child. During the interim the child is "properly" vaccinated. In the future "properly vaccinated" will likely mean three vaccinations btw, as the weaker antibodies begin to wane from the vaccinated generation.
I am not choosing any population. Where do you see me seem to choose one? They do not share that data with us.
Well if you see me "choosing populations" when I did no such thing I can see why you would think it was incoherent. But that problem lies with you making stuff up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @03:12PM
typo:
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday March 28 2019, @12:17AM (1 child)
Lack of actual response argument, apart from flailing wildly, noted.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 28 2019, @12:35AM
No, I really do not know how many students are in these schools who were "exposed". They chose to not tell us that for whatever reason.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 28 2019, @03:45AM
Read the MMR vaccine insert. The vaccine only provides temporary protection. If you want to be "fully" vaccinated you need to keep having the vaccine every few years.
Read the MMR vaccine insert. It's only effective in ~70% of people.
(Score: 2) by ilsa on Wednesday March 27 2019, @03:35PM (5 children)
Ok I've read your post 3 times and I still can't figure out what point you think you're making. According to the very stats you posted, only 4% of the population is properly vaccinated.
I can't even guess as to how you got " the population is ~95% vaccinated."
Considering that you posted AC, I'm guessing you're just another troll, but a particularly inept one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @03:56PM (2 children)
different AC, but -
4% of the INFECTED are fully vaccinated (suggesting ~95% efficacy)
~95% TOTAL POPULATION are fully vaccinated.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @06:11PM
I don't know how you came up with that "suggesting 95% efficacy", it seems completely bogus mathematics.
You cannot calculate the efficacy from the given numbers.
If we normalize the number of infected to 100 (with 4 being vaccinated) and assume that a fraction "f" of the population came in contact with the virus, equally between vaccinated and unvaccinated (unlikely, but we need some assumptions at least).
Then the total population "t" must be at least t >= 96/f (here already we have an error, some of those not vaccinated will be immune).
Now we have a vaccination rate "r", which for this area is UNKNOWN.
The number of vaccinated would thus be t*r >= (96/f)*r.
Applying the exposure fraction "f" to get those vaccinated and exposed would be >= 96*r.
As of those 4 got sick, so 4/(96*r) is the fraction of those vaccinated and exposed who got sick.
Which means efficacy of the vaccine would come out at 1 - 4/(96*r).
If you A PRIORY assume 95% vaccination rate, that would give a > 96% efficacy of the vaccination.
However it would be quite possible that half of those not vaccinated were already immune, in which case you would come out with a > 98% efficacy.
Or you could assume that those vaccinated belong to a different social circle and are less likely to be exposed, and then you get a lower efficacy.
So without clear data on the number of vaccinated people with exposure you can't calculate how effective the vaccination was.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday March 28 2019, @04:22AM
Actually the only thing it suggests is that the vaccine is not 100% effective (we already knew that). You would need to know how many fully vaccinated were exposed to measles and how many un-vaccinated were exposed to compute the effectiveness of the vaccine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @03:57PM
It says in the summary they target 95% vaccination rates. I took that as a rough estimate:
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Wednesday March 27 2019, @04:27PM
I am reading it as:
For the *confirmed cases*, there were only 4% that had the proper vaccinations.
Answer now is don't give in; aim for a new tomorrow.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @05:29PM (10 children)
Uh, that math is well known. The effectiveness of the vaccine is such that 1 vaccination is not sufficient to achieve herd immunity even if everyone was vaccinated.
Thus the need for 2 vaccinations, which with a > 96% (I think) vaccination rate in the population allows for herd immunity.
That is the reason why those exceptions are a MAJOR issue in cases of measles.
Btw. even if the vaccine had significant side effects, this would still at best be a "tragedy of the commons" case. With enough people being vaccinated we could eradicate measles like we did for other humans-only sicknesses, which means the anti-vaccination people could then live happily ever after. We'd just need to make the sacrifice ONCE, world-wide.
Instead it looks like we might be stuck with the suffering measles causes for all eternity. Millions and millions of dead people for essentially no reason. Can we call those refusing vaccinations mass murderers? (no, not really serious, but anyone refusing measles vaccination for themselves or their children is really, really VERY far from any moral high road)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @06:11PM (8 children)
Two vaccines are also clearly insufficient for herd immunity. If there was herd immunity the virus would die out.
Yes, this was the original goal of measles vaccinations. They didn't believe that measles could survive long in the air at the time so thought it would be much easier.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6939399 [nih.gov]
Soon after it was realized that the failure to eradicate meant people needed to pay for vaccines in perpetuity:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1228954/ [nih.gov]
But by the 1980s it was realized that actually "near eradication" is the worst possible thing you can do since it lets susceptibles build up until a massive epidemic gets triggered:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12176860 [nih.gov]
These tiny outbreaks are probably good in the long run actually, like a small release of pressure instead of a big explosion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @06:54PM (7 children)
I don't know where you get the claim that 2 vaccinations are not enough from.
Of course you can't get herd immunity from vaccinating 1 single person.
You need about 95% to 98% vaccination rate.
Which no doubt makes eradication hard.
The article you quoted is not really relevant, that was about "eradication" in the US only.
That was never going to work.
It needs to be world-wide.
Yes, that would need large scale and possibly non-voluntary vaccinations.
Yes, that would mean not being able to travel to or from certain countries unless you are vaccinated.
This might sound extreme, but 100s of thousands of deaths world wide are pretty harsh, too.
The response to measles and lack of true eradication efforts is completely out of whack compared to the disease's immense human cost.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @07:17PM (6 children)
Because the "herd" obviously is not "immune". Like many things having to do with vaccines, the definition of "herd immunity" has weakened to mean something vague like "virus spreads less". It is supposed to mean literally that the virus does not spread and is eradicated (another term that has been weakened).
This would be true if the population was "well-mixed" (everyone had equal chance of meeting everyone else). Otherwise, it depends.
You are basically saying measles vaccination campaign was based on lies then, because most people didn't care about measles but they sold it as the "end measles campaign":
http://digitalcollections.archives.nysed.gov/index.php/Detail/Object/Show/object_id/10232 [nysed.gov]
Personally, I do believe they thought it would work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @08:36PM (5 children)
> Because the "herd" obviously is not "immune"
Because we can't achieve the required vaccination rates!
> the definition of "herd immunity" has weakened to mean something vague like "virus spreads less".
As far as I know it still means "statistically an infection introduced will die out". It doesn't mean that nobody will get sick if you continue to introduce the virus from outside again and again!
I'll grant you that the required vaccination rate needed certainly depends on how many people the virus can effect, and there certainly is a risk that if this number increases the virus might not be controllable. However the fact that the virus has stayed confined to communities with low vaccination rates suggests that that is not actually the case so far.
> You are basically saying measles vaccination campaign was based on lies then, because most people didn't care about measles but they sold it as the "end measles campaign"
I can't tell from a 3 word slogan what they meant. But if you go back to the 60s I should probably amend it to "it was never going to work with the massive amounts of long-distance and international travel to regions where measles is epidemic and in a world where you do not need to have your vaccination pass to travel".
I would also add that many years ago there was the ambition of spreading vaccinations world-wide so that it would be eradicated world wide. But instead of in one go the idea was to go continent by continent. That has failed because America and Europe are now backsliding faster than India or Africa make progress on measles vaccination (and as said, 0 effort on preventing re-introduction of measles from affected countries).
"Nobody gives a shit" is the most accure description of why measles eradication is failing for now. I will though admit it is not a CERTAINTY that complete elimination is possible at all, but I don't see hard evidence it is not possible either.
(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.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday March 27 2019, @08:48PM
Can we call it murder when nobody dies? Very rare for somebody to die from the measles. And I'm sure if it happens, Beth Mole will tell us -- as loudly as possible.
And, you say, "oh let's Eradicate measles like we did for so many other diseases!" I don't think so. I don't think so. Eradicate, I think, is it's gone. Nobody catching it. Nobody having it. And they're so proud that they did that with smallpox. Something that, by the way, took 200 years. Congratulations on the smallpox but, what else? That's the only one they say, eradicated. You say diseases, it's not diseases, it's one disease.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @02:07PM (9 children)
Seriously? Does everyone 18 and under need to carry their vaccination records with them? Are the check-points?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @02:26PM
Yeah, confronting a bunch of jews, demanding to see their papers....I'm sure that'll go well!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @02:27PM
If it's a true emergency, then probably yes. And no pussyfooting around the Jews either. Since they know it's unvaccinated Hassidim driving the epidemic, in a true emergency they will stop every van where all the boys are wearing kippot to ask them for vaccination certs.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by looorg on Wednesday March 27 2019, @02:49PM (1 child)
While I'm not sure exactly how they would do it in Rockland county I would assume that children in school are required to have a note from a doctor that shows that they have received all their inoculations or else they won't be permitted.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @03:15PM
That won't affect the orthodox Jews, they have their brood in religious schools. Part of the government's plan will be to protect the kids from the herd idiocy they live in, they can't just operate through state schools.
(Score: 1, Troll) by FatPhil on Wednesday March 27 2019, @02:56PM (1 child)
I reckon that wearing yellow stars on armbands where the MMR jab would be done is a pretty good way of saying "I'm not vaccinated (but I don't wish to complain)".
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @05:07PM
civilized countries where dhimmis send their kids to the state to be raised as slaves like their parents.
(Score: 3, Informative) by EvilSS on Wednesday March 27 2019, @07:29PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by Taibhsear on Wednesday March 27 2019, @09:02PM
Same here. You needed to show medical records of what vaccinations you've had or the results of a titer test showing what antibodies you have corresponding to the vaccinations.
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday March 28 2019, @05:37AM
We just showed the smallpox scar where we were vaccinated. I believe that was the only pre-school vaccination. Later we got jabbed and a sugar cube at school, besides the polio, not sure what other vaccinations we even got. I've had measles, chicken pox, whooping cough and the mumps, which was normal back then. The only thing that almost killed me was tonsillitis.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by DannyB on Wednesday March 27 2019, @02:57PM (2 children)
If an emergency is declared, then doesn't this mean a wall must be built around parts of New York's Rockland County?
If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @05:37PM (1 child)
They have to wait till Christmas for maximum publicity effect. The soldiers don't mind the marching orders, I mean this IS an emergency!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday March 28 2019, @03:12PM
With a National Emergency in effect, some of those Wall Building funds should be diverted to reinforcing the swamp's drain to prevent leakage.
If you eat an entire cake without cutting it, you technically only had one piece.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday March 27 2019, @05:15PM
This doesn't sound like an emergency to me.
OTOH, it sounds like a quite reasonable public health measure. Perhaps they needed to call it an emergency to take the most reasonable action.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by Entropy on Wednesday March 27 2019, @07:31PM (11 children)
Measles vaccine? That one works.. And it works well. MMR in general is a good vaccine. Perfect example of a vaccine that is absolute nonsense? Flu vaccine. I wish everyone would stop lumping anti-Flu vaccine in with people that don't believe in Measles and other useful vaccines.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @07:46PM (7 children)
The flu kills thousands of people a year. DO NOT talk bad about the flu vaccine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @08:14PM (6 children)
The Flu vaccine is a guess, nothing more. If it was a meaningful vaccine, you'd get it in childhood and never think about it again, or get a booster shot every 10 years or if you step on a rusty nail, whichever is first.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @08:41PM (1 child)
Flu vaccine is a high cost/effort vaccine and no absolute protection. It still is quite effective though, despite the guessing involved.
You might not consider worth it with good reason, but that does not make it useless or nonsense.
And that is why it is a vaccination for risk groups and people who want it.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @09:21PM
The flu vaccine works perfectly if administered properly but people refuse to get injections straight to their eyeballs, anuses, or genitalia.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Taibhsear on Wednesday March 27 2019, @09:28PM (3 children)
Biochemist here, the flu vaccine isn't a random "guess," it's a prediction of what strains are likely to be most infectious for the upcoming flu season. They decide on 3 or 4 different strains that appear from trends to be on the rise. It takes a while to make the vaccine so they can't just pump out exactly the one they need whenever it strikes. The virus mutates like crazy too so you can't just get one vaccine in childhood and have it last forever. (They are working on that though!) If you've heard of the H1N1 flu those letters and numbers in its designation are based on the two targets of the virus. They are two parts that you make antibodies for and they mutate frequently. H stands for Hemaggluttinin [wikipedia.org], N stands for Neuraminidase, the numbers stand for the subtype number for each (18 known so far for H and 11 for N). Hemagglutinin binds to the receptors on the cell surface and essentially lets the virus genome into the cell. Neuraminidase lets the new virus particles detach from the cell. If you have antibodies for H1, it's less likely to infect your cells. If you have antibodies for N1, it's less likely for your infected cells to spread the virus. If you encounter, say, H1N3, you could have partial immunity to the virus if you have the antibodies for H1N1. So even if your previous flu shots didn't match up exactly with the currently most populous flu virus, you're still likely to have less serious symptoms or full immunity to future strains. Keep getting the shot every year and you're more likely to cover a broader array of flu virus strains and less likely to get sick as well as less likely to spread it to others. Remember, you're getting 3-4 possible strains in the vaccine and there are at least 198 possible subtype variations for flu strains... People die every year from the flu. Keep getting your shots!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @10:02PM (2 children)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 28 2019, @09:15AM
A guess: "Well, it might rain, or it might not rain. Let's toss a coin. Heads means take an umbrella."
A prediction: "There are dark clouds on the horizon. It might rain. Better take an umbrella."
(Score: 2) by Taibhsear on Friday March 29 2019, @05:31PM
Because unless the mutation fatally debilitates the virus it still functions the same way every year. You just have to make new antibody types for the newly mutated strains each time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 28 2019, @03:49AM (1 child)
From the studies mentionned in the MMR vaccine insert, the vaccine is only effective in ~70% of the population, removes breastfed protection for babies from mothers with natural immunity, and is only temporary and needs booster shots every few years for the 'dangerous' years. So, will never achieve herd immunity levels, leaves babies vulnerable, and needs to be constantly used. How exactly is this a good vaccine?
(Score: 2) by Taibhsear on Friday March 29 2019, @05:36PM
I think you are misunderstanding how that works. Regardless, it's a good vaccine because instead of everyone constantly suffering from mumps, measles, and rubella, 70+% of the populace doesn't have to. That's 70+% less people potentially spreading the infection to the rest of the populace that is susceptible to it. Don't throw out the baby with the bathtub.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Nobuddy on Thursday March 28 2019, @02:07PM
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
Hint: you are very wrong.