And those that do survive often don’t do so unscathed. I count myself as incredibly lucky to still be here: I was too young for vaccination when I contracted it, and was still vaccinated for it later.
I mean, I suppose if you’re (generic you) okay with your kid dying, going blind or suffering brain damage from the inflammation (all possible outcomes), you could skip it, but that also makes you a horrible person.
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/sspe-a-deadly-and-not-that-rare-complication-of-measles/
This is the nightmare for survivors. Comes along years later, unpredictable, untreatable and uniformly fatal. Of course, also highly preventable, if facts meant anything to folks like this.
Fuck, I am lucky. I am not sure how much I burned through to come out okay. Seriously, I was six, maybe eight months old (and born 2 months early, on top of that) and somehow survived enough to be here.
But in no way should I be held up as an example of how it turns out fine. People survive flaming car wrecks, too, but that doesn’t mean we should all go out and crash our cars.
Never would I ask another their age, my mother taught me better. MMR vaccine came about in the mid 50s (1954?) but prior to that, measles was close to universal. And folks then knew damn well how dangerous it was. Since then, way too many have forgotten about it. I have been practicing pediatrics going on 30 years and have never, ever seen a case. I like it that way. The idea of jerks like tjis bringing it back is just terrifying.
Oh, the vaccine was available, I was just too young and (at the time) had other issues that the doctors hadn’t given it to me yet. My older sister had been vaccinated, which is why she never got it from me. Thankfully, my parents believed in modern medicine. Like I said, I ended up getting vaccinated after on the grounds of wanting to ensure the entire schedule was followed for everything. OTOH, it probably means that there was someone else around who hadn’t vaccinated their kid, which was how I got it.
That’s the truth, and why it is so vital, not just for the child who gets vaccinated, but tjose like you who cannot be vaccinated or who do not develop immunity after immunization. Ain’t nothing perfect, and about 3%-5% of kids do not respond to vaccination. Not a big deal unless the immunization rates drop below a critical level. For measles, this is about 90%. I am glad you were ok, but someone gave you the virus, which sucks.
If only there was a vaccine for the prophylaxis of onsets of massive stupidity.
(Yes, technically there is. Education. But we could do with something that can be sprayed around liberally like they did with DDT in the 1950ies.)
Anti-Vaxxers have their own news?
Good catch.
from https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/meas.pdf
● 1963—Live attenuated and inactivated “killed” vaccines
● 1965—Live further attenuated vaccine
● 1967—Killed vaccine withdrawn
● 1968—Live further attenuated vaccine (Edmonston-Enders strain)
● 1971—Licensure of measles- mumps-rubella vaccine
● 1989—Two dose schedule
● 2005—Licensure of measles- mumps-rubella-varicella vaccine
That’s US, of course. The UK Licensing schedule may have been different
Note the extreme swings before 1957. Measles is an opportunistic disease. Sometimes the stars align, and a vector travels from an infected population to a non infected population. Sometimes the vectors don’t travel as much.
(And sometimes the epidemics aren’t reported to epidemiologists)
The antivax community spreads around mortality statistics-- neglecting morbidity statistics. Newsflash: going to the doctor can improve your outcome-- at great expense and ,inconvenience.
Thanks. That’s what happens when I trust my memory.
from 1960.
Plus not all vaccines are given with needles. E.g., polio vaccine is given orally.
Not very sophisticated movies, no, but tremendously fun movies and IMO very good entertainment. There’s a reason both of them got a ton of sequels!
Antixvaxxers are impervious to new information. They are heavily invested in the idea that someone is to blame for their child’s developmental disorder and no statistics, immunology or developmental psychology is going to disabuse them of the notion that vaccines cause autism until a more likely culprit presents itself.
To that end, I am promoting a theory of my own, that autism is caused by the presence of firearms in the home. It’s early days and the data aren’t all in yet, but I can already say that in almost all homes where there is a firearm present, there is also a startling uniformity to the age at which developmental delays are first diagnosed. Nor does it seem to matter what type of firearm is in the home; the age of diagnosis remains fixed in the same two to three year window. Such regularity is strongly suggestive of the idea that the causative agent is something common to all firearms, possibly the barrel, or the trigger assembly, or a stabilizing agent in the cartridge primer.
My theory has been met with silence from firearm manufacturers and lobbying groups, but all of the doctors I’ve surveyed have said they are deeply concerned about the prevalence of firearms in American households. We can’t let the NRA sweep this under the rug any longer! If you’re as shocked as I am by the likely fact that autism is caused by guns, please join the cause and spread this theory far and wide.
…
TL;DR Antivaxxers are credulous twits, let’s use that to our advantage. Autism is caused by guns.
Autism is caused by guns in the home. I will definitely promote this, despite my complete lack of concern over guns or antivaxxers. Excellent.
Rossio may have written Pirates, but he certainly doesn’t realise that you can’t just use a bailing bucket when you’ve shot a cannon through your rowboat.
The desperation:
The mic drop:
I enjoyed the first “Pirates” movie, though its bizarrely over-complicated plot courtesy of Mr Rossio was the thing most people criticized about it. “Shrek”, well… it hasn’t held up. Lots of sequels, to be sure. Sometimes lowest-common-denominator films keep drawing crowds.
