Measles is circulating in many parts of the country, because of low vaccine/MMR coverage. That means rubella is likely also circulating, but it's a much less dramatic disease and often overlooked. Over the next year we could see more babies with CRS, and some will have glaucoma. Be on the lookout.
I had measles as a child (before vaccine). I had to stay in a dark room until I was well. My great-aunt lost her hearing due to measles. It is a serious illness. .
Lots of kids go deaf as well from measles. First woman to swim the English Channel solo had hearing loss that led to deafness due to measles as a child.
I've had pressure on my brain from intracranial hypertension. Even though the only danger was to my optic nerves, not my life, the pressure in my head was torture. I can't imagine the horrors of it getting worse and worse until you lose consciousness. What a hellish death that has to be
Indeed. And SSPE is insidious, so the person is conscious for the early progression. There is some consolation that they are not thinking well at the end, but their family is.
In residency, I watched a young boy die of SSPE (he chewed his own tongue off and mercifully died of blood loss). I haven’t been the same (21 years later) since.
My aunty Mary Agnes died of measles convulsions in 1907. She took 5 days 3 hours to die in granddad's arms. He was a "hawker" or street seller, so had no money for a doctor. She was the first baby of ten children.
The US government are out of control.
I wish every antivaxxer had to read stories like this until they got it. The absolute privilege of living in an era where childhood disease is so rare because of vaccines and then not vaccinating. I can’t imagine what that did to your grandparents, and they weren’t a rare story.
It also wipes out your immune system memory, so all those antibodies your immune system has been creating your entire life are completely or partially destroyed and you get to spend the next several years getting sick from everything all over again, yay!
They only worked it out in retrospect, too. Deaths in kids went down so much more than they expected after the measles vaccine came in that they started hunting for a reason why. And then they realised that kids were not catching other dangerous diseases twice any more
There were 10 million cases of measles - adult and children -worldwide in 2023. Sure would be great to work towards eradication. Much more difficult now that the US is backing off on world health initiatives.
"Measles [...] in developing countries [,..] affects an estimated 30 million children a year, causes up to one million deaths annually. Measles blindness is the single leading cause of blindness among children in low income countries, accounting for an estimated 15K to 60K cases of blindness/year."
You don’t decide what is an acceptable use of numbers. As many others have pointed out, ALL of those cases were potentially preventable—it doesn’t matter what the denominator is. It’s weird that you’re nitpicking this and I’m not engaging with you any further.
I don't decide, but I learned how to present numbers in an mostly objective way, back then, at university. And blasting out a single number without any other reference numbers just is not serious.
"As recently as two decades ago, measles was understood to be the single leading cause of blindness in children in low-income countries, causing as many as 60,000 children to lose their vision annually."
What’s happening in America in re to measles is horrific . It just shows you that no country can ever afford to be lax about their vaccination programs
Thanks Charles . Point taken . It was more of a general statement that admittedly doesn’t fully acknowledge all the vaccine hesitancy / skepticism in our communities. A wicked problem indeed
I got measles when I went to the doctor for a well child visit.
There was a sick baby.
I went over to the sick baby and took her bottle and drank it.
We shared it back and forth.
I have no idea why my parents and her parents thought us sharing a bottle was ok?
My mom has no answer to that...
Comments
maga shit crazy
#iowarepublicans #mRNA #criminalizingvaccines
https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/history.html
Free, provided by my employer, because my travel is work-related. I just need to show up next to the needle at the appropriate moment.
Not to mention encephalitis, which causes up to 2/3 of deaths that are neither quick nor peaceful.
Hope your ICP is nice and normal these days!
I’m just glad it will affect unvaccinated populations more; but the sheer preventability of these and all immunization sickness is astounding to me
Sadly, the antivax parents have doubled down on idiocy!!
The US government are out of control.
There was a sick baby.
I went over to the sick baby and took her bottle and drank it.
We shared it back and forth.
I have no idea why my parents and her parents thought us sharing a bottle was ok?
My mom has no answer to that...
I was old enough to walk and young enough to want a bottle...
So glad to have you here helping educate us to educate others!
(link for citing)
https://www.aao.org/eye-health/tips-prevention/six-ways-measles-can-affect-eyes-2#:~:text=As%20many%20as%2060%2C000%20children,not%20vaccinated%20against%20the%20disease.