
U.S. records 75 new measles cases, 9.8% increase, as outbreak grows - SolaceQuantum
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-measles/u-s-records-75-new-measles-cases-9-8-increase-as-outbreak-grows-idUSKCN1SJ1EP
======
fwip
For those wondering about the 9.8% stat:

There were 75 cases of measles reported in the US last week, bringing the
total in 2019 to 839 [1]. 75 / (839-75) = 9.8%.

A more useful statistic is that the WHO reported earlier this year that
measles are up 300% from this time in 2018.

[1] [https://www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-
outbreaks.html](https://www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-outbreaks.html)

------
cs702
When I read most HN threads, whether about new technologies, new businesses,
or new societal trends, the stories and comments make me think that William
Gibson had it right when he uttered his famous quote: _" The future is already
here. It's just not very evenly distributed."_[a]

On the other hand, this post about the recent outbreak of a long-defeated
disease due to an anti-vaccination movement whose pseudo-intellectual roots
trace back the 1700's[b], makes me think of a different quote: _" The past is
never dead. It's not even past"_ \- William Faulkner[c]

\---

[a]
[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Gibson](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Gibson)

[b] The anti-vaccination movement has its roots in the 18th century:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6122668/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6122668/)

[c] [https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/12124-the-past-is-never-
dea...](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/12124-the-past-is-never-dead-it-s-
not-even-past)

------
yehosef
For those interested researching the reported adverse reactions: I created a
repo with the VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) dataset and some
tool for visualizing with Elasticsearch and Grafana.

You can see that that the MMR/MMRV is not as dangerous as many of the other
vaccinations, but there are risks.

[https://github.com/yehosef/vaers](https://github.com/yehosef/vaers)

~~~
spraak
Thank you for sharing this and creating it, I am quite interested to explore
and see how many assumptions or (un)commonly held positions are backed by the
(available) data.

~~~
yehosef
Thanks - I just put up site vizvax.com so people can play with these
visualizations. I'd be interested in feedback. One think I didn't set up yet
with the reverse proxy is seeing the raw document from Elasticsearch.

I'm planning to make a screencast to explain how to use the searches for
people that are not familiar with the data, Elasticsearch or Grafana

------
themodelplumber
Thank god it's still that low (< 1000 people it looks like). And I love that
we have so much data available these days.

Back when I was really suffering due to an autoimmune condition, I found that
following various data-fed sources, for example one of the U.S. Navy's Twitter
accounts which shared data on sick sailors, helped me make some pretty
educated guesses as to what the sickness-of-the-month was. Edit: Found it--
example at [0].

Being a part of the autoimmune community, I can also see why there's so much
push-back against vaccines. These people (that is, those who object due to
vaccine fears) aren't referential thinkers who are comfortable with broad
social measurement (objective science). They are often own-ideas driven,
analytical people (NIH, as we say in tech) who have yet to cross the subject-
object gap in their own methodology, but they have also typically made some
notable personal progress as self-reported.

The sad part is that people like this don't realize that decision-making
regarding their children is exactly why & where you'd want to apply more
objective thinking ("they are not me" is where social measurement / objective
science can shine some light).

Anyway, were I to try to combat this kind of thinking, I wouldn't do it via
emphasis on science. These are people who are conditioned to batten down the
hatches when confronted by science. I'd do it via social trend science, by
testing words, phrases, personalities and social clearinghouses (be it Youtube
channels, or whatever) that show possible social traction. Fringe social
groups are notoriously weak against such "social technologies," which can
quickly cause fracture. No numbers, no data, etc. Get that stuff out of here;
this is the completely wrong psychological match for such an approach.

0\.
[https://twitter.com/NH_RC/status/1112816699227635712](https://twitter.com/NH_RC/status/1112816699227635712)

------
3JPLW
This is terrifying as a parent of an unvaccinated child.

She'll get her vaccine as soon as she can (starting at the 1 year checkup),
but there are others out there that cannot get the vaccine for other medical
reasons.

~~~
cameldrv
I know the feeling... The CDC already recommends getting an MMR shot at 6
months for babies that will be traveling abroad. Unfortunately the measles
situation in the U.S. is now that of a third world country, so IMO it makes
sense to go ahead and get the shot at six months, especially if you're in an
area where there have been cases reported.

Unfortunately the effectiveness of a single dose of the vaccine at six months
is only something like 50%, but it's better than nothing.

~~~
3JPLW
Yeah, I've looked into the six-month option. At least some of those failures
are thought to be due to Mom's antibodies — through breastfeeding — fighting
the vaccine. So that's also a little bit of solace; we're not totally
unprotected as long as she's breastfeeding.

We're also not in a hotbed, but it's really crazy how contagious measles is.

------
wil421
Don’t blame anti-vaxxers alone. My wife realized she didn’t develop an
immunity to measles after a recent test. She’s had all her shots and verified
with 2 sources.

------
yters
With the first new measles case it was an oo% increase! This current rate of
increase is infinitely better. Good job everybody!

------
hannob
To everyone reading this: If you know you haven't had a measles vaccine or you
are not sure, please go see a doctor. It's an easy thing you can do to make us
all safer.

Yeah, antivaxxers are annoying. But there's also a large number of people who
weren't vaccinated for all kinds of reasons that just never cared.

~~~
schoen
You can also get the MMR vaccine at Walgreens for $99 in just a few minutes
with no appointment and no prescription (some insurance may also cover all or
part of it, and if you have an FSA, you can also use your FSA card).

Most pharmacy chains have it in stock and offer it to walk-in patients. If you
are sure you've never had any MMR vaccine at all, they may recommend two
shots, separated in time.

~~~
yellowapple
Is there any danger in getting re-vaccinated if you're not 100% sure you've
already been vaccinated?

~~~
schoen
I was sure of my childhood vaccination history and not sure whether I had
received an adult booster shot or not. The pharmacist was happy to give me the
shot. My doctor subsequently said that medical advice about this might depend
on one's particular situation (e.g. travel plans), since different people's
risk of either acquiring or spreading measles could vary.

Subsequent shots don't _decrease_ one's immunity, but they can still produce
the same side effects as the initial vaccination, which are usually mild. For
example, I experienced mild arm soreness for four to five days, which is the
most common MMR side effect.

Feel free to ask your own doctor or pharmacist! :-)

------
olliej
If only there was some kind of medicine that could prevent this. Some one shot
injection or something?

~~~
Confusion
Yeah, even if it had like a 1 in 10000 rate of nasty side effects, it would
still be a lot less risky than the measles.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Not _yet_. What's the US population? 300 million, say, roughly? 1 in 10000
rate of nasty side effects is 30,000 people. The measles outbreak isn't that
big... yet. If 75 cases is 9.8%, then the outbreak is about 750 people... so
far.

[Edit: The thing is (as most people here probably know), you can (mostly)
safely be unvaccinated if everyone else _is_ vaccinated, because you probably
won't ever be exposed. But when other people also aren't vaccinated, it's more
risky.]

~~~
llukas
In EU on medical leaflets risk for various side effects of drug is in form 1
in 10^N cases where N varies.

US leaflets contain useless word descriptions.

Hint: After reading EU style leaflet you know 1 in 10000 rate is very high for
nasty side effect. Rare is something like 1 in 1000000

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Hey, I didn't make that number up - Confusion did. I just used his/her number
to show that his/her conclusions didn't yet follow.

------
slig
Related: very informative video from Kurzgesagt: "The Side Effects of Vaccines
- How High is the Risk?" [1]

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBkVCpbNnkU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBkVCpbNnkU)

~~~
Townley
This is an unhelpful contribution to the narrative that vaccines are unsafe.
Consumers who don't have time or medical training shouldn't feel uneasy about
vaccination except in unlikely circumstances (in which case they're much
better off getting advice from doctors and not YouTube), and seeing a video
called "How High is the Risk?" adds to that uneasiness in ways that directly
harm public health.

EDIT: See comment below. As the video intends, I mistook it to be anti-
vaccination propaganda, when it's the opposite. I have minor concerns about
non-forthright information campaigns, but apologize for jumping the gun.

~~~
slig
I'm not sure I get what you mean. Did you watch the video? Obviously the title
was chosen deliberately to grab attention from people that believe in the
antivax conspiracy.

~~~
Townley
I hadn't: I jumped the gun thinking that you were sharing 10 minutes of anti-
vaccination propaganda, and offering up ammunition for people who think "Well
those guys over there say otherwise, so who knows?" My apologies for that.

My point was that planting the poison pill of "Are vaccines dangerous?" is
itself dangerous, and despite the video's good intentions might still apply
here.

As a popular video, it'll appear in sidebars more than it'll be watched. I
worry that in that capacity, it'll maybe snare a bunch of no-vaccination
believers in the honeypot, but will plant the safety question into the minds
of many more.

My concern is tempered by the understanding that the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation knows what it's doing here, but the choice to make an informative
campaign clandestine strikes me as an odd one with potential negative side
effects.

~~~
schoen
Kurzgesagt is a channel that makes engaging explainer videos about all sorts
of topics. It is run by a design consultancy in Germany. Most of the videos on
the channel are not on topics chosen by sponsors, but a few are.

In an article at

[https://medium.com/@Kurzgesagt/kurzgesagt-sponsorships-on-
yo...](https://medium.com/@Kurzgesagt/kurzgesagt-sponsorships-on-
youtube-3121a45b0fe9)

Philipp Dettmer, the founder of the channel, explains that he insists on
editorial independence when accepting sponsorships to create videos on
specific topics (including in this case, with the Gates sponsorship). This
seems to suggest that the Gates Foundation did _not_ choose how the video
would be titled or promoted on YouTube, just that it entered into an agreement
that it would sponsor the creation of an engaging video about vaccine risks
and benefits.

I don't know if anyone at the Gates Foundation specifically thought about the
question of whether simply mentioning this topic in a certain way would
encourage some viewers to think that the risks were worse than they are. Even
if so, it's not clear that they would have a veto according to their
sponsorship agreement.

(The article also indicates that people can also hire the team behind
Kurzgesagt to make videos to a customer's specifications. In this case, those
videos don't appear on the Kurzgesagt YouTube channel.)

------
yters
I see a fair number of people blame the anti-vaxxers for the current outbreak,
but is that really the case? It could also be due to immigration or other
sources of foreign contact, but I don't see anyone considering that angle.

~~~
iron0013
Wow you're right, I can't believe no one ever thought to look at who the
measles victims are or where they came from. We need to get you on the phone
to the CDC right away so that you can tell them all about your novel and
important ideas!

~~~
yters
An interesting study would be to take the population of unvaccinated and count
how many are that way due to antivax ideology and how many due to some other
cause.

Furthermore, it'd be interesting to examine the measles cases and see what
population they come from.

I see an article castigate the antivaxxers and then say most measles occur
among unvaccinated populations. Is the article saying the two populations are
the same? No solid link is offered, yet the two groups are mentioned together
leading a non-careful reader to conclude the antivaxxers are to blame.

~~~
3JPLW
It is, as with many things, a mix of all things. But the decrease in
vaccination rates is _definitely_ a huge contributing factor in many of the
outbreaks. See, e.g.,

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6122668/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6122668/)

------
Alex3917
"A vocal fringe of U.S. parents oppose the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine,
believing, contrary to scientific consensus, that it can cause autism."

No amount of scientific evidence can ever prove that MMR can't cause autism,
only that it isn't responsible for the autism epidemic. One wonders whether
Reuters is purposely trying to give credibility to the anti-vaxx movement.

~~~
yellowapple
> autism epidemic

Is it actually an _epidemic_? Everything I've read on the "rise" in autism
cases suggests it has a lot more to do with more accurate diagnoses (i.e.
autism would previously be entirely undiagnosed, or would be diagnosed as some
other disorder).

~~~
Alex3917
I mostly just phrased it that way because if you're going to argue that
vaccines are responsible for an autism epidemic than that pre-supposes that
there is an epidemic. I've read the same things, but I don't really follow the
issue especially closely enough to have any strong opinions on the issue.

