According to Forbes.com. the number of measles cases linked to the outbreak beginning at Disneyland has continued increasing, most recently to 52 as of Monday night, including a 22-month old girl in Mexico who visited the theme park during the exposure dates. And as expected, misinformation has proliferated online at the same rate as the disease (or perhaps a even more). So as you continue arguing in comment threads and on social media, make sure you have your talking points ready.
1) Two things are driving the spread of measles – and neither is undocumented immigrants.
Those two things are the extreme infectiousness of the disease and the low levels of herd immunity, or community immunity, in pockets of southern California. Measles infects 9 out of every 10 non-immune individuals it finds. It’s airborne and hangs around up to two hours after an infected person leaves the area. It doesn’t take much for this disease to spread through a population that isn’t immune from previous exposure or through vaccination. Or, to put it another way, in an unvaccinated population, each person infected with the measles will transmit the disease to 12 to 18 other people. If no one were vaccinated against measles, we would be up to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of cases by now. We aren’t because there are some levels of herd immunity, but it’s because herd immunity has been weakened that we’re seeing additional cases at all.
2) Everyone is at risk, but especially those unvaccinated. No vaccine can protect 100% of those who receive it. As I explainedlast year, vaccines can fail. The antibodies your body creates can wane, or your body may not have sufficiently responded to the vaccine in the first place. But those who are unvaccinated are at a greater risk by far. An unvaccinated person is 35 times more likely to catch measles than a vaccinated person.
3) If your child isn’t vaccinated, your child puts others at risk.So if unvaccinated people are 35 times more likely to catch measles than vaccinated ones, that means they’re also 35 times more likely to transmit the disease – and there are plenty of people they can transmit it to. Four of the cases in California are under 1 year old, according to the California Department of Public Health. That means those four children were too young to be vaccinated since the MMR is only administered starting at 12 months old. Any of the 5 million babies born in the U.S. each year is at risk if measles enters their community. Further, one dose of the measles vaccine offers 87%-95% protection, so all the children awaiting their second dose are also at a higher risk for catching measles than those who have received both doses.
4) The MMR vaccine against the measles is low risk and highly effective.
Protection against measles is delivered within the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine. The second dose of the vaccine brings its effectiveness up to 99%. It’s a live vaccine, which ramps up the fear factor for some people, but it’s a vaccine we’ve been using since 1971. We have nearly five decades of data with hundreds of millions of vaccinated individuals, and we know precisely what the possible side effects of the vaccine are. The most common ones are a fever in one of six people, a mild rash in one of 20 people, and swollen glands in the cheeks or neck in one of 75 people. In one of every 3,000 doses, a child can experience a seizure caused by high fever, but febrile seizures do not cause any long-lasting damage, and they can be caused by illness (including measles) as well. A condition of low platelets, called ITP, can also occur in one out of 30,000 doses but usually goes away on its own. Any other severe occurrences that have been reported after the vaccine are “so rare that it is hard to tell whether they are caused by the vaccine,” the CDC notes.
5) Measles is a dangerous disease – and it’s not curable (not even with vitamin A).
Let’s return to that 20,000 number and assume a conservative death rate at 1 per 5,000. That means four people would be dead – to say nothing of those who would be deaf, brain-damaged or still in the hospital suffering from pneumonia or encephalitis. Measles is not a harmless childhood disease. It can kill and leave others with lifelong disabilities. Even if a person has an uncomplicated course of the disease, it’s still just a downright miserable way to spend your time – a high fever, cough, sore throat and rash covering your entire body. The problem is, there’s not much anyone can do for you when you’re sick except to help keep you hydrated. You may have heard that large doses of vitamin A can treat measles. Vitamin A can reduce theseverity of some symptoms, primarily among those who are vitamin A-deficient, but it doesn’t cure the disease. It’s only supportive care, like providing hydration. There is no cure for measles. There is only prevention through immunization.Here's the link: http://www.forbes.com/sites/tarahaelle/2015/01/20/five-things-to-know-about-the-disneyland-measles-outbreak/
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