Infectious disease ping...
Well, at least the dead weren’t infected. :/
Had nothing to do with the wave of ‘immigration’ nor the big push lately for vaccinations I’m sure. Obviously no connection with any combo of those events at all.
I’ve had the measles at least twice. Yes, it can have serious effects. But, it doesn .... oh, wait, yes, I am dead. I said so yesterday.
Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.
The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.
So far the false positive rate is 100%.
At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.
*sigh* Such is life, and death...
Wonderful, an awesome victory for anti-vaxxers!
Measles is contagious before symptoms appear, and it is transmitted through the air. It remains airborne for up to 2 hours after a contagious person has been in the area, and it can transmit to people who are physically distant from the ill person.
Measles has a chance—about 1 in 300-500—of killing during the course of the illness, and another ~1 in 10,000 chance of killing between 7 to 10 years after the illness. It can also leave survivors deaf or mentally disabled. The death rate would be higher, but we have very good medical care, so the 1 in 5 who end up hospitalized because of measles usually survive, where they would have died before the advent of modern evidence-based-medicine. Measles has a very high death rate in countries without modern medicine.
In addition to the direct consequences of measles, recent research has shown that measles doubles the rate of death from all infectious disease for approximately 2 years after recovery from measles. When measles vaccination programs were implemented, public health officials noticed that the death rate from all infectious disease dropped by about half, but only recently have researchers begun to systematically explore why and started to come up with answers. Measles suppresses the immune system. Not only that, but it erases existing immunities to diseases. So, even if a child has been fully immunized against every other vaccine preventable disease, those immunizations are all negated if that child catches measles.
Isn’t measles great? /s
The thing is, measles is one of the handful of diseases that is possible to eliminate, forever. That is because measles does not infect animals, so when it is eliminated from people, it is gone forever. We can achieve this by immunizing everyone until there are no longer non-immune people to host the virus. And then no one will ever need to receive measles vaccine again.
Rinderpest is a related virus that used to infect animals. Through a diligent vaccination and surveillance program, the last case of Rinderpest occurred in 2001, and in 2011, the disease was officially declared eradicated.
/jump off soapbox
what’s with all the measles panic? When I was a kid, we all got measles, and none of us were very sick with it. Just a nuisance disease. Then my son got measles, same deal, an itchy inconvenience but he was toddling all over the house in a perfectly good mood.
Along came measles shots. Got my daughter inoculated. That shot made her sicker than she had ever been before or since.
Which lead to a lifetime of vaccine avoidance for me. I’m healthy as a horse and never come down with anything. Plus, I’m rather an old girl, one would reasonably expect more health problems than I’ve had.
But now, a case of measles causes HEADLINES. BigPharma is getting very rich on vaccines which I consider needless and perhaps even dangerous. MEDIA is complicit in creating faux STATE OF EMERGENCY/