U.S. measles cases in 2013 may be most in 17 years

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/12/health/worst-measles-year/index.html

by tcoppi • 13 years ago

43 53 13 years ago

rdl3• 13 years ago

It seems difficult to fight this directly -- prosecuting anti-vaccinators would be viewed by supporters as persecution, and might actually make them more reluctant to vaccinate.

Publicizing deaths due to lack of vaccination can work, but that lags -- by the time enough of the population is unvaccinated for the disease to spread and kill babies, it's too late.

I'm in favor of quarantining Napa/Marin and certain LA suburbs, since that seems to be ground zero, at least in California, for this insanity.

Andrew Wakefield should have been forced to personally meet every parent of a measles-infected baby as part of his punishment for fraud.

noonespecial4• 13 years ago

I've been thinking we should treat it as a free-rider problem. Given that eradicating diseases like this really comes down to herd-immunity, what we really have is free-riders unfairly benefitting from the slight risk that others are taking through a certain medical intervention.

What gives a certain person the right to benefit from everyone else's vaccinations while refusing to subject their own children to the minimal risk? We don't need to prove that vaccines are "safe", just safer than a frikken measles epidemic... and then tax the snot out of everyone who choses to forgo that risk and expense by pushing it off onto others. Internalize that external cost and I bet you'll see a whole lot of zealotry dry right up in the cold face of monetary reality.

fitzhume• 13 years ago

I agree that if medical treatment for measles was put in a more punitive price range (depending on vaccination status, and economic background of course), I could imagine a significant drop in people who choose not to vaccinate. Use that extra money to immunize people who actually want it, but can't pay for it. Use it for programs that teach about the dangers of letting your child go unvaccinated, both for them and for other children.

mc322• 13 years ago

Maybe if people (physicians) can track down the patient zero child of a given outbreak, have downstream parents of affected children turn and sue the negligent parent(s) for tort, if it's proven they denied vaccination to their child(ren), then maybe this unfounded practice can be eradicated.

tlrobinson• 13 years ago

Would they actually have a case, or are you joking?

nostrademons2• 13 years ago

To be honest, I think it's fine to let evolution take care of this. Deaths from measles are disproportionately the unvaccinated, which means that over time they will either die off or wise up. Yes, there's some collateral damage in the form of newborns or other people who can't be vaccinated - but newborns are at risk for a lot of other things as well, and once they get past the critical first year of life you can take care of this problem on a personal level by vaccinating your own kids.

NateDad• 13 years ago

You obviously don't have kids. Also, the article said 92% of those that got measles were unvaccinated, meaning 8% had been vaccinated. And it's not just newborns... 40% of kids under 5 who get measles need to be hospitalized.

Finally, it's not the kids that are choosing to be unvaccinated, it's their idiot parents. It's not fair to punish the kids for their parents' behavior. If it was the parents getting the measles, I'd be all for it.

dobbsbob2• 13 years ago

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2013/08... .. 31 kids could've died because 1 religious zealot refused vaccinations.

For fuck's sake, get your vaccinations, and while I'm ranting stop drinking un-Pasteurized milk from dirt hippy stores illegally too. There is no elaborate conspiracy to keep nature down, it's to protect you from Salmonella, E. coli, and Listeria

hayksaakian• 13 years ago

While Vaccinations are certainly something you should get, let's not go down the slippery slope where we blindly consume physically refined food.

Don't let big pharma abuse your trust of actually necessary vaccines

jpatokal• 13 years ago

The big difference is that a consenting adult can drink raw milk and endanger himself without harming anybody else, while anti-vaccination nutjob parents endanger both their own offspring and everybody else's. (Feeding raw milk to your kids is halfway in between; at least it's not contagious.)

dobbsbob2• 13 years ago

True, but they arrested plenty of conmen peddling raw milk as safe to the same religoius communities that don't get vaccinated. It wasn't until an outbreak of E coli that killed a kid that they discovered a vast network of raw milk stores run by foaming at the mouth conspiracy theorists and neo hippies.

Diptheria also made a comeback, something even more terrifying than measles. What's wrong with people, damnit stop listening to Jenny McCarthy

throwawayyyz5• 13 years ago

We live in a crazy world where it is a federal crime to transport raw milk across state lines, yet cigarettes you can get at any corner shop kill 500,000 people every year, 50,000 of them from secondhand smoke. But yes, protect us all from the evil raw dairy.

derleth3• 13 years ago

When raw milk sellers list the potential of disease risk their product carries on their packaging, I'll consider them equivalent.

Oh, and any claims that raw milk is better for you must be backed up with real studies or else it's fraud. Agreed?

argonaut• 13 years ago

So... were you going to make an argument as to why it shouldn't be a crime to transport raw milk? Or is it just this irrelevant non sequitur? For all we know, dobbsbob also supports banning cigarettes AND raw milk.

sneak• 13 years ago

What've you got against natural selection?!

Alex39172• 13 years ago

31 kids could've died because 1 religious zealot refused vaccinations.

What about the 30 million people who have died of the AIDS epidemic, which is thought to have been started because of government vaccination programs?[1]

Similarly, what about the fact that the US government has been repeatedly caught giving out fake vaccinations?[2] Or the fact that the safety standards for medicine in the US are generally abysmal?[3]

All in all I think getting vaccinated is generally a good bet, but the idea that there are no rational arguments against vaccination is completely disingenuous.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_HIV/AIDS

[2] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vaccin...

[3] http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Pharma-Companies-Mislead-Patients/...

yuliyp• 13 years ago

Well sure there are some concerns that might be rational causes for concern, but to come to the conclusion that the pros of vaccination are exceeded by the cons is not anywhere close to rational.

nostrademons2• 13 years ago

Reading the Wikipedia article you cite for [1]:

1. That is hardly consensus theory: it is one hypothesis postulated by a small group of scientists, which is somewhat plausible but is very far from having a compelling body of evidence in support of it.

2. The theory is that vaccinations in the 19th century may have caused HIV due to unsterile injections given to many natives. Vaccination practice in the 21st century is much different from vaccination practice in the 19th century, and unsterile injections will cause all sorts of other problems.

darkarmani2• 13 years ago

You aren't talking about vaccines, you are talking about non-sterile vaccination practices in Africa in the early 20th century.

There are no longer any rational arguments against the most common vaccines.

patrickg_zill• 13 years ago

You are being a drama queen. Stop it.

And the issue of pasteurized milk is certainly a red herring in this case, and just makes you look as kooky as those you deride.

zedpm2• 13 years ago

Given that this is caused almost entirely by anti-vaccination hysteria, and that this in in turn caused mostly by a combination of ignorance and bizarre religious beliefs, it's hard to imagine an effective response. It's been said that you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into, and that seems apt here. Perhaps an attempt to shame people by presenting the young, innocent victims is best (e.g. little 8-month old Suzy died because XYZ Church members refused to vaccinate their children).

abstractbill• 13 years ago

...this in in turn caused mostly by a combination of ignorance and bizarre religious beliefs...

It's actually better/worse than that (depending on your perspective). People were mislead by a fraud. And not fraud with any kind of a noble purpose - it was for money.

rdl3• 13 years ago

Yeah - if it were just religious beliefs, those would be rare (although concentrated) enough to preserve herd immunity, I think. It's Jenny McCarthy and Andrew Wakefield who have turned this into a matter of national security.

zedpm2• 13 years ago

In addition to the secular anti-vaccination folks like McCarthy, there is also significant evidence of religion-based anti-vaccination movements, most recently seen in the measles outbreak in Texas which was traced back to a megachurch[1].

[1] http://www.npr.org/2013/09/01/217746942/texas-megachurch-at-...

qq66• 13 years ago

It's interesting that the vast human intelligence that created all of these vaccines may be neutralized by vast human stupidity.

noonespecial4• 13 years ago

It seems like stupidity but I suspect its actually greed. If everyone else is vaccinated and there is zero latent disease in a given area, it makes sense personally not to get the vaccine. If there is indeed zero chance of contracting the disease, then any risk at all associated with the vaccine is unnecessary. Bonus points for crackpot beliefs causing misestimation of the actual risks, but the fundamental equation is unchanged.

Refuse to get vaccinated? Congrats, you're the betrayer in the prisoner's dilemma. Your train stops at the tragedy of the commons.

wbeckler• 13 years ago

Let me play devil's advocate here. The article says nothing about how many people died of measles, it just gave an estimate of how dangerous some doctors think measles is. Maybe none died and that's why they don't give a solid number? If so, the danger of measles was overstated in that estimate. Meanwhile, there's nothing in the article mentioning the danger of the vaccine, which nobody claims is nonzero. Maybe the vaccine's danger is 1 in a million. So with several million refusers 1 or 2 kids' lives were saved. At the expense of how many kids dying of measles? Zero? We need more information here.

noonespecial4• 13 years ago

All we really need to know is how dangerous measles was and then count the cost of losing our herd immunity. Vaccines are not 100% effective (on an individual basis). Vaccines are a group effort that greatly diminishes in effectiveness if a large majority doesn't participate.

grannyg00se8• 13 years ago

Pre-vaccine, measles would kill or seriously mess up about 1500 people yearly in the U.S. I think the vaccination rate now is in the 70% range and deaths from vaccination are hard to find. So it seems like vaccination is a win there.

http://www.cdc.gov/measles/vaccination.html

On the other hand, 1500 serious cases out of 300+ million people every year is a pretty low percentage. Seems like the entire threat is highly overstated.

davidw• 13 years ago

1500 serious cases out of 300+ million people every year is a pretty low percentage

You're using the number of cases then with the population now if I'm not mistaken.

ars• 13 years ago

That's not just pre vaccine, but pre modern medical techniques.

With modern medicine the death rate is at 0.3% (compared to 30% in the past).

ibejoeb• 13 years ago

Just a week ago there was an outbrak of mumps in NJ: http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/05/health/new-jersey-mumps-outbre...

If you only give your child one vaccine, make it the MMR. It's a lot safer that measles, mumps, or rubella.

U.S. measles cases in 2013 may be most in 17 years

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