Posted on 07/02/2015 7:49:16 PM PDT by Alter Kaker
SEATTLE (AP) — A Washington woman died from measles in the spring — the first measles death in the U.S. since 2003 and the first in the state since 1990, health officials said Thursday.
The woman lacked some of the measles' common symptoms, such as a rash, so the infection was not discovered until an autopsy, Washington State Department of Health spokesman Donn Moyer said.
This is the 11th case of measles in Washington — and the sixth in Clallam County — this year, Moyer said.
(Excerpt) Read more at huffingtonpost.com ...
I was born in 1932.
We got all of the diseases.
I never heard of anyone who died from Measles.
.
You mean the vaccine MMR, in which I still got measles 8 months later?
Think about how much 1 out of 10,000 or 1 out of 12,000 is. You could statistically have thousands infected to get one person dead or crippled from measles. It would be hard to find, unless someone really close to you died of it.
I have yet to find someone who was voluntarily unvaccinated. The unvaccinated people I have known are those who had childhood cancer and chemotherapy, which is an honest excuse not to be. The only other factor was that there appears to be a variable protection time for the vaccine to actually work. I got measles less than a year after being vaccinated, so for some odd reason, either the doctor lied to me and gave me a placebo or for some odd reason it stopped working within a year of me getting it. Whatever the case, time to move on and move forward.
Early in the Revolutionary War smallpox prevented Benedict Arnold from capturing Quebec, which likely is a case of G*d working in strange ways to protect us. George Washington ordered the entire Continental Army variolated as the best option science then had available to minimize the risk of smallpox. Variolation involved exposing people to the full strength smallpox virus in a way that then seemed to minimize its risk. About 1% died from variolation, but that risk seemed less than the risk of the natural disease (which George had survived). Modern science can explain how variolation takes longer than natural exposure for a generalized infection to develop yet gets the immune system involved early to fight back. They knew none of that. Vaccination with the relatively safe cowpox virus hadn't yet been discovered. They went with the best knowledge available. The soldiers weren't given a choice. And in the end deaths in smallpox for the war were about 1%, an historically low rate. There are some decisions you have to accept having made, by society, in your name, as a price for being part of that society. All you can do regarding those decisions is try to make the decision making process as good and honest as then present knowledge allows and can afford. If society has really done its best, you are stuck with the consequences even if a generation later they are lamented.
The Framers staked their lives, fortunes and sacred honor on improving their system of governance. They didn't want anarchy. They didn't want tyranny. They were trying to achieve a sweet spot with the most freedom possible given they were working with imperfect human beings. And they didn't get it right the first time. The Articles of Confederation didn't have enough of a federal government to work, so they had to add more with the Constitution. We have added so much unconstitutional junk to our government since the Constitution that we forget its first lesson: you can have too little government… even with that group of venerated sages trying to run it. No doubt we have a long road of cutting junk back to travel before we'll often trip over that lesson; still, we must not forget it.
Cats are much younger than measles, so yeah, cars would look safe being only a little over 100 years old. However, when you fairly compare the time periods of say, the last decade, or even just the 1950s or 1960s, cars were more deadly than measles during any of those time periods. We could talk about the 12th century if you like, but we ended that century. Long time ago.
“It would be hard to find, unless someone really close to you died of it.”
-
Very true but even the adults on those days didn’t fear measles.
Scarlet fever and polio were the big fears.
.
Thanks for that bit of history.
Okay, so if the variolation only had a 1% death rate, versus the 30% death rate of actually getting small pox, why did they only force it on the soldiers and not require it for the whole citizenry?
You could just be one of the 5% for whom the vaccine does not work. Or, you could be one of the people who, even after having measles, don’t develop an immunity to it and can get it again. Wouldn’t that be the pits.
In the pre-vaccination era smallpox and measles were normal childhood diseases… and the overall childhood mortality rate was staggering by current standards. The more deadly diseases, most notably smallpox, would cause periodic epidemics. At the end of an epidemic pretty much everyone there would have had smallpox, either then or in an earlier epidemic. With nearly all immune smallpox died off locally and couldn't be spread there. Over time a new generation of susceptible children would be born, waiting for a contagious traveller to spark the next epidemic. Most that died were children, because the adults had all survived it as children. However children actually fared better than non-immune adults. They are designed to respond rapidly and strongly to any new infections. Adults fight back well against infections for which they were trained as a child, but don't respond nearly as fast or well to new ones.
When smallpox or measles was introduced to populations where no one had ever had it the death rates were catastrophic. New England's native population pre-Pilgrims, Mexico after Cortez, Hawaii and Easter Island were all but wiped out by mainly those two novel diseases. Death rates of up to 90% were reported. Today's anti-vaxed kids, who never had a natural chance to develop natural immunity through omnipresent childhood infections, if they meet up with imported measles as adults, spread through their now adult anti-vax circle of friends are going to react like Montezuma's warriors. Even if they're in perfect health their age makes them a higher risk of serious complications. Supportive care is better now; we'll save more than Montezuma's priests could, but we'll still lose some.
That’s because in relative risk, scarlet fever was worse. Also, polio is scary because it is a stealth disease. Most people who get polio carry polio without severe symptoms, which made it a sick lottery draw of sorts, since a person could easily spread polio without realizing that they even had it in the first place.
Like I said, the medieval time is long since past. Although I wouldn’t mind drinking cowpox out of cow milk though.
Being someone who received the vaccine but got it anyway within a year of vaccination, it could very well have been me, who unknowingly gave it to her, as pissed as I am at the likes of Jenny McCarthy, I can’t say I know the exact details.
There was a significantly increased risk for spreading contagious diseases within armies living together than in the more dispersed civilian population so the motivation was higher. That had been well known for centuries. The virtues of variolation were relatively new knowledge in the colonies, having been popularized in Boston by Cotton Mather who actually learned of it from his his African slave in 1706, then from medical literature out of Turkey in 1714, then was able to try in during an epidemic in 1721. Subsequent experience convinced most Bostonians and the practice gradually spread. Revolutionary War successes spread the process further. Jenner’s discovery gradually replaced it, but even that was slow to become automatic. Abe Lincoln, who never was vaccinated, delivered the Gettysburg Address during the prodrome of smallpox, became ill the next day and nearly died. He was essentially comatose for over a week. The medical history of smallpox is fascinating; I wish we could be certain it’s all written.
I know that this isn’t necessarily a good idea, but sometimes I wish they would destroy the stored smallpox virus that the government and the WHO had in possession, just to be sure that smallpox is extinct.
But you haven’t answered my question. In the name of public safety, why didn’t the original gov’t force everyone to be vaccinated? Of course the men in the military were more susceptible because of close quarters, but there were still outbreaks in the cities and many deaths could have been prevented.
Tell ISIS. They want to take us back there, or further. Friends of theirs are the only reason polio isn't eradicated yet. Although if they're more clever than I grant they might accept a campaign against measles. Research suggests Measles hadn't evolved from Rinderpest into a form that could infect humans until a couple hundred years after the prophet. Perhaps they'd be against it as too modern a disease and treat it like HIV. Throw enough disease sufferers off roofs and you'll decrease its incidence.
I want to keep my modern technology. ALL OF IT. And keep improving it as best we can. Improved, safer, smallpox vaccines have been created since its eradication. The only component of my generations' routine childhood vaccines to have anywhere near common significant side effects was Pertussis. The DPT now has been improved to include an acellular 'P' component that removes most of that problem. Yet we have had frequent Pertussis outbreaks in our schools from lack of vaccination for it. Vaccines would probably be better yet by now had Bill not let Hillary play with the system back in the 90s. Vaccination is amongst the best studied of all medical interventions and has an enviable cost benefit ratio. Stop using 7th century, or any other century, superstition against it. History and medical logic says the old bad, non-eradicated diseases will come back if we let up. Maybe we could prevent some of the deaths with a few days of ICU care, but I'd rather be vaccinated and spend the difference on a new car. Vaccines are cheap. Vaccines are effective, as proven in part by all the anti-vax folks saying they can't remember cases of what the record clearly shows to have been common problems before the vaccine era. If G*d thinks you deserve to be Zotted with a 1/million problem He'll find a way whether or not you've had a vaccination for an excuse.
I was talking about keeping focuses about the here and near future. Yeah, measles killed so many millions of people centuries ago. But at the same time, I don’t give a $&@; about the media fearmomgering on disease. Should I worry about the fact that I came two days away from giving measles from a failed vaccine to me to my seven year old cancerous sister, or just move on, because she died anyways. That’s exactly what I did, I moved forward from that, and my mother even more. I also weigh out risks, and frankly, with 95 percent of the population vaccinated, and a fraction of 1 percent not getting vaccinated for reasons other than health. Like I said, I weigh the risks, and measles now is less dangerous than antibiotic-resistant bugs or cancer. That’s here, that’s now. And I don’t like the fearmomgering antivaccine people who blow the negatives out of proportion anymore than the fearmomgering nuts who tell me everyone will die of measles.
George Washington certainly didn't control all the cities to enforce such even if he wished and was rather too busy with other priorities to try enforcing that where he could. The evidence for variolation was both new and empirical and science as a driver of medicine was also quite new. The better option of vaccination was 30 years away and fought then because its seeming oddity. IIRC the first important use of medical statistics was Lind proving something in lemon juice prevented Scurvy c. 1760. Microscopic organisms as a mechanism of disease were only proven for one problem, a Dermatologic one. The scabies mite had been identified. Bacteria and viruses were well in the future. Any theory as to how vaccination might work was further off. The science couldn't show how someone not receiving variolation might harm their neighbor, but empirically it could show that not treating a soldier would make him less likely to remain fit to fight and thus hurt the army. Ever an adequate kind of excuse to an army.
Wiki reports mandatory vaccination first appeared in the US in 1850 in MA when they instituted mandatory public education (a better target for Freeper ire.) The argument used was concern that concentrating the children would encourage outbreaks of disease. It took quite awhile for the practice to become widespread as laws and longer for people to comply with them. Gradually the science became compelling and nearly everyone accepted vaccination as common sense. That didn't change significantly IMHO until two things happened. One was liberals overgrew government to the point that a significant population reflexively distrusted everything government said. Second was the intentional fraud (in hindsight paid for by trial shysters trying to drum up business) done to the science itself with the false claim that MMR caused autism. Even after it was refuted the fact a well respected science journal had lied and subsequent ongoing evidence of liberal driven scientific fraud on many other fronts, weakened the faith in science that had been widespread up through the Apollo program. Liberalism broke that. It needs to be removed and good science put back instead. Then we won't have enough folks wanting to opt out to interfere with the overall results.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.