(Update: If you’re interested in measles, and its behavior pre- and post-vaccination, I have a fairly detailed five-part series on the subject starting here.)
 |
| Susano-o no Mikoto making pact with spirits of measles and other diseases (Katsushika Hokusa / Soga, 1860.) © The Trustees of the British Museum |
It’s happening again; vaccinations have been so successful that Americans are becoming complacent and forget what “disease” is. Snake-oil pedlars and profiteers are selling alarmism, people decide not to vaccinate, and, guess what, diseases surge back. The latest preventable outbreak is measles;1 there are already over 130 measles cases in the first half of this year, twice the annual average for the past decade. And these are local cases, not imports; for the first time in years, most of these cases, some 85%, are not imported.2
These cases are being spread by the unvaccinated; by people who, from fear, apathy, or ignorance, have avoided getting their child vaccinated.
What did measles look like before vaccination? Here’s a chart showing case numbers before and after vaccination in the mid-1960s. Note the scale, in hundreds of thousands of annual cases.
But measles is an amusing and harmless childhood disease, isn’t it?
That’s not showing the permanently brain-damaged survivors (about twice as many as deaths), or the thousands of hospitalizations.
Of the 131 cases in this year’s outbreaks, “112 (91%) were unvaccinated or had unknown vaccination status. Among these 112 patients, 95 (85%) were eligible for vaccination, and 63 (66%) of those were unvaccinated because of philosophical or religious beliefs.”1
I don’t know about those 63 peoples’ parents, but personally I’m philosophically opposed to having my children risk a lifetime of brain damage.
- Update: Measles — United States, January–July 2008. MMWR August 22, 2008 57(33);893-896 [↩][↩]
- Though imported measles cases were the origin of most of the outbreaks, brought in from abroad and spreading through unvaccinated Americans.[↩]
6 Comments
It’s not just complacency that is at play. The truth is that pediatricians are having to spend more time convincing parents the shot is safe. A growing number of parents are actually rejecting vaccination because of these lingering medical questions and are simply not convinced that the slight risk is worth taking.
How convenient for you to leave out the data for all the years before the measles vaccine was introduced. Had you shown the full picture people wouldn’t be tricked into believing this nonsense. Had this author shown the complete statistics on measles people could see that cases prior to 1950 were much MUCH higher. The CDC has all of this data put typically chooses not to print it in articles. Meaning that measles cases has already dropped 98% by the time the vaccine was used routinely in 1968.
And then this nice little lie “Of the 131 cases in this year’s outbreaks, “112 (91%) were unvaccinated or had unknown vaccination status.” is flagrant. Your reference does not even say such a statement and has no data to even derive such a statement. When referencing research or another article you should actually REFERENCE the article rather than make up your own statistics.
Your reference does not even say such a statement and has no data to even derive such a statement.
Are you illiterate, or simply depending on the “big lie” approach? Click on the reference link I gave you and do a text search. It says, “Among the 131 measles patients, 123 were U.S. residents, of whom 99 (80%) were aged <20 years (Table). Five (4%) of the 123 patients had received 1 dose of MMR vaccine, six (5%) had received 2 doses of MMR vaccine, and 112 (91%) were unvaccinated or had unknown vaccination status.”
Typical anti-vaccine loon. Can’t even lie convincingly.
Typical vaccination loon. He would rather have the good people in the drug business shoot his child up with potential brain damage than take the miniscule chance that his child will be brain damaged by disease. These charts are like the stock brokers who show you the charts of the stock market between 1980 and 2000 to convince you it always goes up. If you show long term death charts from the turn of the century to today the effect of vaccines is not evident at all.
Mitch – apparently you’re another who’s been fooled by the lie that deaths were already dropping pre-vaccine. I show long-term death rates here (http://www.iayork.com/MysteryRays/2009/09/02/measles-deaths-pre-vaccine/) — with references that I encourage you to check for yourself — that clearly show that death rates were more or less constant for over 100 years pre-vaccine, and then dropped spectacularly within a couple years of widespread vaccination.
The anti-vaccine loon that made the chart you are probably thinking of (showing a drop in measles pre-vaccine) is lying. The references he gives don’t even remotely support his claim. You are being lied to by the anti-vaccine loons who are counting on you to be gullible. I give publicly-accessible references demonstrating this. Check for yourself.
THIS GRAPH MAKES NO SENCE WHAT SO EVER. YOUR SARCASM MAKES THIS HARD TO UNDERSTAND.
4 Trackbacks
[...] outbreaks. If Jenny succeeds, the measles can really go to town in a manner not seen since the pre-vaccine era of early 1960s! After all: Measles is one of the first diseases to reappear when vaccination coverage rates fall. [...]
[...] Measles and vaccination [...]
[...] The effect of measles vaccination in the USA, 1950-2007 [...]
[...] The effect of measles vaccination in the USA, 1950-2007 [...]