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walkitouthttp://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2015/02/04/383789385/most-people-getting-measles-are-adults-time-for-a-shot
This -- along with the global issue -- is where I went first with this outbreak. It is nice to see the media coming along.
h/t husband
ETA: The Disneyland outbreak is still smaller than the Ohio Amish outbreak a few months earlier.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/latest-measles-outbreak-is-a-wake-up-call/
"The Ohio outbreak accounted for more than half of the 644 measles cases reported last year."
In general, I feel like you should just leave that religious/philosophical exemption in place. But I really dislike a lot of conservative Anabaptist groups because of family experience in/with them. I was comforted to note that Christian Scientists are willing to comply with legally mandated vaccinations, so there is a cynical part of me that says, Go For It! But the practical me says, really counter productive, just don't go there.
I don't think I heard a peep about the Ohio outbreak.
California is considering eliminating the religious/personal belief exemption:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-considers-crackdown-on-vaccine-exemptions/
I don't know enough about California state legislature politics to have any idea whether this will pass. I do know that Mississippi was considering amending its law to loosen it up a bit, and that change failed to pass. My husband thinks that it will take months if ever to get rid of that exemption.
Taking a different, but still practical perspective, I do sort of feel like if this is really about a couple of elementary schools, blanketing the country with pro vaccination messages is not the kind of targeted information campaign generally considered to improve compliance when it is a local issue. But hey, I'm on the spectrum. What do I know about changing people's minds.
We're also starting to see some relative risk coverage. Apparently no one has died in the US from measles in over a decade, but people do die from pertussis. So, there's that.
The legislators introducing the bill in California are Ben Allen, pediatrician from Sacramento (which has a pocket of Russian immigrants that are anti vaccinations) and Richard Pan, who sat on the unified school board for Santa Monica-Malibu, which has a different group of parents that use the personal exemption. Both are Democrats. These are not people wandering into the vaccine issue without being well aware of what they are taking on politically.
Pan has been working the mandatory education angle successfully already:
"Under a measure authored by Dr. Pan in 2012, parents who exempt a child from school vaccinations must first talk with a licensed health care practitioner about the impacts to their child and community. In the first year the state law was implemented, 20 percent fewer parents used the personal belief exemption. However, in many communities across the state, over 10 percent of parents are using California’s personal belief exemption."
http://yubanet.com/california/Senators-Richard-Pan-and-Ben-Allen-to-Introduce-Legislation-to-End-California-s-Vaccine-Exemption-Loophole.php
It isn't clear whether Pan and Allen are going after _just_ the personal belief exemption, or personal belief + religion. If they go after both, they'd be going the Let's Be Like Mississippi and West Virginia. If they go after just personal belief exemption, they've got a ton of company.
This -- along with the global issue -- is where I went first with this outbreak. It is nice to see the media coming along.
h/t husband
ETA: The Disneyland outbreak is still smaller than the Ohio Amish outbreak a few months earlier.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/latest-measles-outbreak-is-a-wake-up-call/
"The Ohio outbreak accounted for more than half of the 644 measles cases reported last year."
In general, I feel like you should just leave that religious/philosophical exemption in place. But I really dislike a lot of conservative Anabaptist groups because of family experience in/with them. I was comforted to note that Christian Scientists are willing to comply with legally mandated vaccinations, so there is a cynical part of me that says, Go For It! But the practical me says, really counter productive, just don't go there.
I don't think I heard a peep about the Ohio outbreak.
California is considering eliminating the religious/personal belief exemption:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-considers-crackdown-on-vaccine-exemptions/
I don't know enough about California state legislature politics to have any idea whether this will pass. I do know that Mississippi was considering amending its law to loosen it up a bit, and that change failed to pass. My husband thinks that it will take months if ever to get rid of that exemption.
Taking a different, but still practical perspective, I do sort of feel like if this is really about a couple of elementary schools, blanketing the country with pro vaccination messages is not the kind of targeted information campaign generally considered to improve compliance when it is a local issue. But hey, I'm on the spectrum. What do I know about changing people's minds.
We're also starting to see some relative risk coverage. Apparently no one has died in the US from measles in over a decade, but people do die from pertussis. So, there's that.
The legislators introducing the bill in California are Ben Allen, pediatrician from Sacramento (which has a pocket of Russian immigrants that are anti vaccinations) and Richard Pan, who sat on the unified school board for Santa Monica-Malibu, which has a different group of parents that use the personal exemption. Both are Democrats. These are not people wandering into the vaccine issue without being well aware of what they are taking on politically.
Pan has been working the mandatory education angle successfully already:
"Under a measure authored by Dr. Pan in 2012, parents who exempt a child from school vaccinations must first talk with a licensed health care practitioner about the impacts to their child and community. In the first year the state law was implemented, 20 percent fewer parents used the personal belief exemption. However, in many communities across the state, over 10 percent of parents are using California’s personal belief exemption."
http://yubanet.com/california/Senators-Richard-Pan-and-Ben-Allen-to-Introduce-Legislation-to-End-California-s-Vaccine-Exemption-Loophole.php
It isn't clear whether Pan and Allen are going after _just_ the personal belief exemption, or personal belief + religion. If they go after both, they'd be going the Let's Be Like Mississippi and West Virginia. If they go after just personal belief exemption, they've got a ton of company.
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no subject
Date: 2015-02-05 06:49 pm (UTC)The coverage here gives some background on why the Santa Monica legislator is concerned:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2015/02/04/383788255/measles-low-vaccination-rates-big-headaches-for-schools
People were none-too-happy about an unscheduled 21-day school vacation and they seem to be alerting their friends.
And here's another wedge:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2015/02/04/383796532/pediatricians-pressured-to-drop-parents-who-wont-vaccinate
Are there Moms who would want to share a waiting room with an under-one-year-old with older, unvaccinated children potentially in with measles?
no subject
Date: 2015-02-05 07:02 pm (UTC)It was/has been eradicated in the US
Date: 2015-02-05 08:24 pm (UTC)http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/su48a7.htm
"Eradication has been defined in various ways -- as extinction of the disease pathogen (3), as elimination of the occurrence of a given disease, even in the absence of all preventive measures (4), as control of an infection to the point at which transmission ceased within a specified area (5), and as reduction of the worldwide incidence of a disease to zero as a result of deliberate efforts, obviating the necessity for further control measures (1). "
Obvs, extinction of the pathogen, elimination of the occurrence and reduction to zero have not happened. However, "control of an infection to the point at which transmission ceased within a specified area" does intermittently apply within the US (that is, all cases are imports). For example, malaria has been eradicated in the United States under this definition, even tho there are people in the United States who discover they have malaria for the first time while living here (but they got it somewhere else).
CDC preferred the term "eliminated".
http://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/faqs.html
"Q: What does "measles elimination" mean?
A: Measles elimination is defined as the absence of continuous disease transmission for 12 months or more in a specific geographic area. Measles is no longer endemic (constantly present) in the United States."
We can't get rid of it completely in any one area without either (a) walling that area off from everywhere else that the disease is or (b) getting rid of it everywhere.
I've been working as hard as I know how to avoid the "being brought in by poor brown foreigners" racist thing. It is possible that the act of pointing out that measles is still comparatively widespread in developing nations and that transmission by travel between those nations and nations which have otherwise eliminated racism is an ongoing problem is itself a racist act. But wanting to get rid of measles everywhere doesn't strike me as a particularly racist goal.
Re: It was/has been eradicated in the US
Date: 2015-02-05 10:43 pm (UTC)And of course the people I was thinking of were using eradication as an argument AGAINST getting the MMR, thus throwing away all the progress that had so recently been made.
Re: It was/has been eradicated in the US
Date: 2015-02-05 10:55 pm (UTC)I further agree that this is a terrible argument against getting the MMR. We cannot get rid of measles vaccination until we've gotten the cases a lot lower around the world. And with over a hundred thousand babies born annually with congenital rubella syndrome, we _really_ don't want to get rid of the R part of MMR for a long while yet.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs367/en/
Mumps _seems_ a lot less scary than the other M and the R, but I dunno. Swelling of reproductive organs seems super uncool.
Re: It was/has been eradicated in the US
Date: 2015-02-05 11:21 pm (UTC)Around that time a whole lot of people were arguing for non-combined immunizations, under the "don't overload the baby's immune system" theory, so I suppose the people I was talking to might have been okay with separate rubella and mumps shots.
no subject
Date: 2015-02-05 11:25 pm (UTC)mumps in 2006
Date: 2015-02-06 12:02 am (UTC)Shortly before that, or maybe after that -- I'm a little vague on the time line -- I was tested for serostatus on a number of things and ultimately got (after T. was born but before I was trying to get pregnant the second time) MMR boostered, mostly because I wasn't testing positive for measles OR rubella, IIRC. After both kids were born and A. was a few years old, the three of us got varicella vaxed, because I had had chicken pox when I was under 1 year old, and was testing seronegative. I was timing that one because of potential side effects on unvaxed people.
I do recognize that bad stuff can happen with mumps, but there are so many other terrifying things that cause meningitis in greater numbers that I can understand people de-prioritizing mumps. Except that whole swelling of the reproductive organs bit. That's just terrifying.
Oh, and if at any point anyone reads how I am talking about measles vaccination programs and concludes that I'm being racist, I am interested in getting better/less bad at talking about issues that involve (rich, majority white) developed nations trying to set public health goals for (poor, majority brown) developing nations. I am doing what I know to do, but I am prepared to learn if someone wants to point me at better resources.