Measles on the rise worldwide

[Terrie]

1 hour ago, milkteeth said:

I know another person who got their titers checked and said it wasn't covered by insurance but cost them around 100 bucks out of pocket. 

Might be worth it, if measles comes here. Even if you got your vaccines, they are not 100%.

[elsiedindin]

A friend of mine who didn't get all her shots as a kid got them as an adult at the local health department for about $15 apiece. Pretty cheap way to save a life (as my grandmother and everyone else her age could have told you).

[Briefly]

I've read several reports of young people, mostly teens and early 20's, who were raised by anti-vaxxer parents and a lot of the teens/young adults are getting vaccinations on their own.  Most of them have parents who are very unhappy with them for doing so, but I applaud them for realizing that they are not bad and taking steps for their health and safety.

[Howl]

 

[Don'tlikekoolaid]

Vancouver BC had 9 new measles outbreaks today and they were children from various schools.  Health Dept. says out of 127 schools in the area only 27 had a vaccination rate of 90%.  Some of the sick kids were brought to the Hospital so they are expecting an outbreak because of it.  This anti vaccination trend started in the late 70’s so there are many unvaccinated adults out there as well, good luck to them.  I feel badly for the children, parents not so much.

[Briefly]

I found out this week that my brother was one of the Polio Pioneers in the early 50's.  He was part of the clinical trial where some kids were given placebos and some were given the new vaccine.  I'm sure because of the family history, my mom's sister had polio as a teenager and was "crippled" to use the terms of the time for life, that my parents were more than willing to allow my brother to be part of that in hopes that he would get the vaccine and not polio.  However, he most likely got the placebo. And then later he came down with what was probably polio but had a light case of it. In fact, he is one of the documented light cases of polio and made a full recovery.  He did get the vaccine later on.

Edited February 16, 2019 by Briefly

[Dandruff]

I just found my immunization record from childhood.  I got dead, then live, measles vaccine in 1963 so it looks like I should be safe.  I was pretty sure but feel better seeing it in writing.  I had both rubella and mumps before the vaccines for them came out, and had a rubella titer done as an adult showing immunity well within the normal range.

From cdc.gov:

Quote

If you received a measles vaccine in the 1960s, you may not need to be revaccinated. People who have documentation of receiving LIVE measles vaccine in the 1960s do not need to be revaccinated. People who were vaccinated prior to 1968 with either inactivated (killed) measles vaccine or measles vaccine of unknown type should be revaccinated with at least one dose of live attenuated measles vaccine. This recommendation is intended to protect those who may have received killed measles vaccine, which was available in 1963-1967 and was not effective.

ETA:  It looks like I also got a measles vaccine when I was in college...and I'm wondering why.

Edited February 17, 2019 by Dandruff

[Don'tlikekoolaid]

Only 37% of kids in BC are vaccinated according to Health Dept.. It was mandatory when I was in school and they are talking about bringing that back.  

So good, if you want your kid in public anything get them immunized.

[Chocolatedefrauded]

I’ve had the measles vaccine at least 4 times because my titers never show immunity for some reason. First as baby, then pre-college, as an adult & when pregnant at 40. I think I had it again a few years ago. It never bothered me.

My Mom had German measles when pregnant with me so they told her to would be born deaf. Nope. But her brother became sterile from the mumps at age 14.

Anti-vaxxers don’t understand the repercussions of the diseases. Delay the shots or spread them out - sounds good but I heard a lot of people don’t keep up with the shots later.

[TeaGrannie]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5022891

If they changed their views later why didn’t they get the kids vaccinated before the trip?

[PreciousPantsofDoom]

2 hours ago, Chocolatedefrauded said:

Delay the shots or spread them out - sounds good but I heard a lot of people don’t keep up with the shots later.

This immediately made me think of the father of the kid with the first case of measles in the current Vancouver outbreak is saying that although the reason that he and his ex wife decoded not to vaccinate their 3 kids was because of that whole stupid fear of it causing Autism.  He says that he DOES know that that theory was debunked, yet his kids still aren't vaccinated. Wtf.

Now his 11 year old has measles, probably contracted in a recent trip to Asia.  His kids go to school in the francophone school system in Vancouver, which is fairly small and separate from the much larger regular school system. All the other kids who have caught it so far have been from within the Francophone system, probably because they share school busses and some at the elementary schools may have siblings at the francophone high school. 

Fucking idiots. And they were in and out of the Emergency room trying to get a diagnosis, so it's only a matter of time before more people catch it. .

 

Eta: @TeaGrannie just posted the article I had read about this family, as I was writing this.  

Also, @Don'tlikekoolaid,  where are you getting your 37% vaccination rate for BC? I had a quick look and the rates look much higher than that, but maybe I'm not looking at the right info? 

Edited February 18, 2019 by PreciousPantsofDoom
I'm toooo sloooow

[Don'tlikekoolaid]

@PreciousPantsofDoom that’s what was reported last night on the 11 o’clock news on CBC.  Have they changed it since then?

[Ozlsn]

1 hour ago, TeaGrannie said:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5022891

If they changed their views later why didn’t they get the kids vaccinated before the trip?

Apparently they were vaccinated for other things but not measles (per the article). Guessing the vaccinations they got were required for visas and/or by the school and they didn't get the usual childhood ones at that time because they weren't specifically required and it was probably assumed they had had them. (I am guessing that may cause some schools to rethink their policy on what documentation is needed for overseas trips - not least because it could affect group travel insurance.) 

I think a lot of people are very unaware that measles (and other VPDs) is still circulating in a lot of places - I always cringe a bit when I see families taking very young babies to Bali for example. Somewhere like Vietnam most people would be thinking about the vaccines for the 'exotic' and therefore (in their minds) much more dangerous diseases than the one for the disease they consider a 'mild illness that no one gets any more'.

[PreciousPantsofDoom]

1 hour ago, Don'tlikekoolaid said:

@PreciousPantsofDoom that’s what was reported last night on the 11 o’clock news on CBC.  Have they changed it since then?

I still can't find anything that shows rates are anywhere near that low in BC. The CDC had vaccination rates varying from high 70s to above 90 depending on the region of the province. Needs to be 90-95% for herd immunity, so the places where it is in the 70s are still too fucking low, but not quite such a challenge as what you said they were reporting.  

There ARE quite a few schools in Vancouver which have rates under 90%, but even those are nowhere near as low as 37%.  I wish they would just go to mandatory immunization, but apparently they think it wouldn't stand up under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. 

To which I say that I think people have the Right to be Free from getting life threatening diseases just because people are morons. 

[Terrie]

Here's what I found for reports of vaccination rates in BC: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/british-columbia/article-bcs-vaccination-rate-is-too-low-to-prevent-diseases-officials/

 

[Alisamer]

On February 16, 2019 at 8:04 PM, Dandruff said:

ETA:  It looks like I also got a measles vaccine when I was in college...and I'm wondering why.

That may have been around the time I was in Junior High, and everybody had to have another vaccine (I think it was measles) booster for some reason. I don't remember the exact reason, but everyone over 11 or 12 maybe had to have it, if I remember correctly.

I'm sure that was not terribly helpful, LOL! But I was born in 74 and remember having to get a booster vaccine in Junior High, and it was an unusual thing for people of our age, not a standard part of the schedule.

[Briefly]

20 hours ago, Ozlsn said:

Apparently they were vaccinated for other things but not measles (per the article). Guessing the vaccinations they got were required for visas and/or by the school and they didn't get the usual childhood ones at that time because they weren't specifically required and it was probably assumed they had had them. (I am guessing that may cause some schools to rethink their policy on what documentation is needed for overseas trips - not least because it could affect group travel insurance.) 

I think a lot of people are very unaware that measles (and other VPDs) is still circulating in a lot of places - I always cringe a bit when I see families taking very young babies to Bali for example. Somewhere like Vietnam most people would be thinking about the vaccines for the 'exotic' and therefore (in their minds) much more dangerous diseases than the one for the disease they consider a 'mild illness that no one gets any more'.

I think a lot of schools probably don't check but just assume that the parents got the shots for the kids.  When we moved from Tulsa to a neighboring town and had to enroll the Briefly daughter in the new town's school, we discovered that we had missed one of her shots. I think it was part two or three of a two or three part inoculation. We thought she'd gotten all of them, but we moved right before school started and couldn't enroll her until we were actually living in the district, so we had a last minute fast run to the Tulsa county health department to get the shot for her.  Without it, she would not have been able to start school.  If we had realized it when she was due for it originally then we would have gotten it.  But she went to two schools in Tulsa and none of them ever actually checked her records even though I provided copies.

[Jigsaw3]

19 hours ago, PreciousPantsofDoom said:

There ARE quite a few schools in Vancouver which have rates under 90%, but even those are nowhere near as low as 37%.  I wish they would just go to mandatory immunization, but apparently they think it wouldn't stand up under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. 

To which I say that I think people have the Right to be Free from getting life threatening diseases just because people are morons. 

Ontario requires mandatory immunization, so I don't buy that: the Charter applies to the whole country.  The public school boards here sent out a batch of suspension letters just after Christmas to kids who didn't have proof of vaccination.  (This had been announced long in advance, so plenty of time to catch the kids up!)

When I was in university there was a mumps outbreak, and you'd better believe that a ton of unvaccinated university students got their vaccine updates -- especially the men. The threat of sterility (or painfully swollen balls) was a great incentive.

[Dandruff]

3 hours ago, Alisamer said:

That may have been around the time I was in Junior High, and everybody had to have another vaccine (I think it was measles) booster for some reason. I don't remember the exact reason, but everyone over 11 or 12 maybe had to have it, if I remember correctly.

I'm sure that was not terribly helpful, LOL! But I was born in 74 and remember having to get a booster vaccine in Junior High, and it was an unusual thing for people of our age, not a standard part of the schedule.

I got my last measles vaccine in 1980.  Maybe it decided, around that time, that everyone needed to have gotten two live versions?  I imagine you got the MMR vaccine, then the booster later on.  According to Wikipedia:

Quote

Maurice Hilleman at Merck & Co., a pioneer in the development of vaccinations, developed the MMR vaccine in 1971, which treats measles, mumps and rubella in a single shot followed by a booster.

Do you know if you got one booster, or two?

[PlentyOfJesusFishInTheSea]

On 2/17/2019 at 3:16 PM, Don'tlikekoolaid said:

Only 37% of kids in BC are vaccinated according to Health Dept..

Jesus H. Christ. Get it together, BC.

[PreciousPantsofDoom]

14 hours ago, PlentyOfJesusFishInTheSea said:

Jesus H. Christ. Get it together, BC.

Absolutely agree, but let's not repeat that misreportedly low rate now that @Terrie has posted a link that shows much higher rates. Her article shows rates  taken from CDC data.  Those rates are still not high enough, but it's more a case of getting through to the resistant groups than the whole place being a shit show. 

Having (pedantically) said all that, we still need to get it together!  

[Alisamer]

15 hours ago, Dandruff said:

I got my last measles vaccine in 1980.  Maybe it decided, around that time, that everyone needed to have gotten two live versions?  I imagine you got the MMR vaccine, then the booster later on.  According to Wikipedia:

Do you know if you got one booster, or two?

I think it was two boosters - one at the normal time as a young kid, and the second one in Junior High. I think I remember in Junior High they sent out notes, and it may have even been on the news, that for some reason everybody had to have another booster. I don't remember if there was an outbreak of something threatening, or they'd discovered a bad batch of vaccine had been given at some point and were covering everyone who might have got it, or what, but I remember it was unusual and not a normal part of the schedule. I'll try to ask my mom if she remembers that next time I see her. My brain is bringing up an image of being lined up in the Jr. High school gym when I remember this, and also talking about it riding in the car - maybe the vaccine was given in the gym at school? I can remember dumb things but not important stuff like that!

[Buzzard]

Serious question - Has there ever been a documented case of a person developing autism after age 5?  After age 10?  I get (but think they're stupid) these people that want to space out vaccines because they know better than scientists, but if a baby is now a child, then why not vaccinate your school aged child?

IMHO vaccines should be mandatory unless you are medically unable to be vaccinated, but until I'm president and can declare a national emergency I guess we'll all have to just hope and pray.

[meee]

1 hour ago, Buzzard said:

Serious question - Has there ever been a documented case of a person developing autism after age 5?  After age 10?  I get (but think they're stupid) these people that want to space out vaccines because they know better than scientists, but if a baby is now a child, then why not vaccinate your school aged child?

IMHO vaccines should be mandatory unless you are medically unable to be vaccinated, but until I'm president and can declare a national emergency I guess we'll all have to just hope and pray.

Well, sort of. It seems people are being diagnosed as autistic later and later because criteria have changed. (That's my understanding based on what I hear from my friends about their kids; I'm not a medical professional.)

But autism isn't the only thing antivaxxers worry about. The ones I know worry about autoimmune diseases and immune suppression and things like that. Personally, I'd rather have allergies (which I don't) or a weak immune system (which I don't) than suffer through measles and wait ten years to know I'm free from SSPE, or die of diphtheria, or become paralyzed from polio. 

[Terrie]

Diagnosed? Sure. Anthony Hopkins was diagnosed in his 70s. Developing it? No. It's a considered a condition of developmental delay. On you're developed, you can't really have a delay in your development.