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Measles Cases in Samoa More Than Double Over Past Week as Death Toll Rises

posted by martyb on Tuesday December 03 2019, @01:55AM   Printer-friendly
from the who-spotted-it? dept.

upstart writes in with a submission, via IRC for Runaway1956.

Measles cases in Samoa more than double over past week as death toll rises - National

The number of suspected cases of measles on the Pacific island of Samoa has more than doubled over the past week to 3,530 and deaths related to the outbreak rose to 48 from 20 a week ago, the country’s Ministry of Health said on Sunday.

Samoa has become vulnerable to measles outbreaks as the number of people becoming immunized has declined with the World Health Organisation (WHO) saying vaccine coverage is just about 31 per cent.

[...] The government started a mandatory vaccination program on Nov. 20 after declaring a state of emergency due to the outbreak. The health ministry said in its statement that 57,132 people have since been vaccinated.

Schools and universities have been closed and most public gatherings banned on the island state of just 200,000, located south of the equator and half way between Hawaii and New Zealand.

Of the 48 deaths, 44 where among children under the age of four. Since Saturday, there have been 173 new cases of measles recorded and four people have died.

Neighboring New Zealand and a number of other countries and organizations, including the U.N. agency UNICEF, have delivered thousands of vaccines, medical supplies and have sent medical personnel to help with the outbreak.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Mykl on Tuesday December 03 2019, @08:20AM (7 children)

    by Mykl (1112) on Tuesday December 03 2019, @08:20AM (#927578)

    Bzzzt. Sorry, Aristarchus, you fail hard this time. A small proportion of vaccinated people can be infected. But don't take my word for it, listen to the World Health Organisation [who.int]:

    ...A hypothetical example:

    "in a high school of 1,000 students, none has ever had measles. All but five of the students have had two doses of measles vaccine, and so are fully immunized. The entire student body is exposed to measles, and every susceptible student becomes infected. The five unvaccinated students will be infected, of course. But of the 995 who have been vaccinated, we would expect several not to respond to the vaccine. The efficacy rate for two doses of measles vaccine can be as high as >99%. In this class, seven students do not respond, and they, too, become infected. Therefore seven of 12, or about 58%, of the cases occur in students who have been fully vaccinated."

    As you can see, this doesn't prove the vaccine didn't work — only that most of the children in the class had been vaccinated, so those who were vaccinated and did not respond outnumbered those who had not been vaccinated. Looking at it another way, 100% of the children who had not been vaccinated got measles, compared with less than 1% of those who had been vaccinated. Measles vaccine protected most of the class; if nobody in the class had been vaccinated, there would probably have been 1,000 cases of measles.

    Important note: It's still far better to be vaccinated!

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  • (Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday December 03 2019, @11:05AM

    by sjames (2882) on Tuesday December 03 2019, @11:05AM (#927594) Journal

    Important note: It's still far better to be vaccinated!

    Absolutely. A 1% chance of being infected during an outbreak beats a near 100% chance! Also, usually when someone who has been vaccinated does get infected, the course of the disease is milder (Dengue vaccine is alleged to have the opposite effect).

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @11:16AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @11:16AM (#927596)

    Bzzzt. Sorry, Aristarchus, you fail hard this time. A small proportion of vaccinated people can be infected

    Which makes his point even more valid and important. Since effective vaccines are not 100% for same reasons that you can get measles multiple times for the same reason (your immune system fails to remember properly), it's even more important that everyone is vaccinated against these diseases. In case of measles, you need about 95+% vaccination rates to prevent disease from living in the population.

    Living in a population means it becomes endemic. Like before vaccines when millions of people got measles every year and thousands died and more had lifelong complications.

    The anti-vaxers are the main contributing factor to these disease outbreaks that can kill you or your children or elderly, even if you are vaccinated. That's just plain math. This is why these vaccines need to be made mandatory.

    • (Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Tuesday December 03 2019, @01:25PM (2 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday December 03 2019, @01:25PM (#927609) Journal

      Which makes his point even more valid and important.

      The harder he fails, the more valid his point? Is George Lucas writing these scripts?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @03:11PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @03:11PM (#927655)

        Actually there is an online internet action group (similar to JTRIG) with some pretty serious funding from industry. So yeah it might be George Lucus.

      • (Score: 1, Troll) by aristarchus on Tuesday December 03 2019, @08:52PM

        by aristarchus (2645) on Tuesday December 03 2019, @08:52PM (#927816) Journal

        "You can't win, Vader khallow!. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."

  • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday December 03 2019, @06:51PM (1 child)

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Tuesday December 03 2019, @06:51PM (#927762) Journal

    I don't think he was claiming there is zero chance of catching the measles when vaccinated. Everybody knows vaccines aren't 100% effective.

    He was rebutting this claim, by my reading: "the vaccine can mutate and give you measels."

    • (Score: 2) by Mykl on Tuesday December 03 2019, @10:38PM

      by Mykl (1112) on Tuesday December 03 2019, @10:38PM (#927870)

      I don't think he was claiming there is zero chance of catching the measles when vaccinated. Everybody knows vaccines aren't 100% effective

      Aristarchus did think that vaccines are 100% effective:

      So the issue is not, and never was, that those who were innoculated were at risk of contracting the contagion, they were not

      He goes on to say that the risk is only to those who were unvaccinated.

      This is the main problem with anti-vaxxers. If they were only endangering themselves and their families, that might be one thing. But their refusal to vaccinate can put my kids at risk even though they have been vaccinated. Anti-vaxxers are truly selfish parasites who rely on the efforts of others to protect themselves and their kids, while endangering everybody else in the process.