Posted on 05/06/2011 2:19:08 AM PDT by iowamark
America is on course to have its worst outbreak of measles in more than a decade.
At least 89 cases have been reported in the last four months alone, compared to an annual average of around 50.
Most of those are linked to a big outbreak in Europe, where more than 6,500 people across 33 countries have fallen victim to the disease.
Travellers are catching the highly contagious illness while on vacation, then bringing it back to the U.S. when they return home.
There have been particularly bad outbreaks in Utah, where nine children were infected after one spent time in Poland, and in Minnesota, where 21 fell ill after one child contracted the condition in Kenya.
American children have been vaccinated against the disease for more than 50 years.
But in Europe immunisation rates have fallen over the last decade after a discredited study linked the MMR vaccine to autism, sparking the outbreak.
Now international health officials are warning all travellers to get the recommended two doses of vaccine before they go abroad.
Dr Cuauhtemoc Ruiz Matus, an immunisation expert with the Pan American Health Organisation, said: 'The risk of getting infection is very high.'
Although health officials were reluctant to make predictions, they acknowledged the number of reported cases was unusually large.
Dr Greg Wallace, head of the measles, mumps, rubella and polio team at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said: 'It's hard to say, but we're certainly getting a lot.'...
Before routine vaccination began, measles epidemics used to sweep through America every two or three years.
As many as 500 people would die from the disease each year, but now 90 per cent of children are protected, dramatically reducing both the infection rate and the death toll...
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
At least 89 cases have been reported in the last four months alone, compared to an annual average of around 50.Yeah, well, there's poisonous toxic mercury in the vaccines, eeek! /s
there has been a lot of talk with the poisons in the vaccines.
Wakefield, the guy who started the hoopla over MMR/autism, had his paper pulled by the Lancet (which published it), and has since lost his medical license in the UK. Basically it was demonstrated that his paper was fraudulent. Not junk science, not in honest error, but truly fraudulent. Not-so-coincidentally, he was being paid at the time by a lawyer suing vaccine companies. Maybe he should go into the field of “climate science” and espouse the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming. He’d fit right in.
And how much of this can be blamed on those morons who claimed that vaccines will cause autism?
“And how much of this can be blamed on those morons who claimed that vaccines will cause autism?”
I would say all of it. I recall teaching in a private school a few years back. There were at least three families or more who refused to immunize their children in a school that did not require the kids to be vaccinated. I explained to them that childhood disease was the cause of a lot of deaths before immunizations, and their answer was always this nonsense about autism. Now, the inevitable is beginning to occur, and there will be serious consequences.
It started to really hit me at lunch time, 5th period, and by the time I got home after my 10th period class I thought I was gonna die. (I remember it like it was yesterday).
Another triumph for the anti-vaccination folks. I wonder how long before polio makes a comeback here.
But...but...I thought everybody was vaccinated!
Coverage has been spotty.
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