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Measles surge in Utah sparks fears US could undo decades of progress
- ahmedfromtunis 5mo agoWith the World Cup starting in the coming days, this can spiral out of control very fast. Football fans can get infected and spread the virus in their home countries if they get exposed.
- soneca 5mo agoThe World Cup already started. But there are no games played in Utah
- mistersquid 5mo ago> The World Cup already started. But there are no games played in Utah For now, Utahns can travel freely to US states where World Cup games are played.
- SoftTalker 5mo agoRelatively nobody in the US cares about soccer, much less travels for it.
- 9eLeven 5mo agoDid people from outside the US travel here to see the world cup?
- fhdkweig 5mo agoThey didn't travel to Utah to see the world cup. Of all the things in the world worth worrying about, this isn't one of them.
- wincy 5mo agoI live in the suburbs of Kansas City where the World Cup is happening, and the only way it’s affected me is it’s really annoying to take my disabled kid to the children’s hospital downtown because there’s so much traffic. I know exactly one person out of my friends that is going to one World Cup game, and he’s well known as the guy who likes soccer. My wife has enjoyed the TikToks of Europeans coming to Kansas City and reacting to stuff that’s totally normal to us, like the Bass Pro Shop and Tornado Shelter signs.
- mistersquid 5mo ago> Relatively nobody in the US cares about soccer, much less travels for it. Utahns travel to US states with World Cup games for reasons other than the World Cup. Its Summer in the Northern Hemisphere. Utahns do travel, for example, to the San Francisco Bay Area for graduation ceremonies, to visit family, and for sightseeing. These Utahns may mingle with foreign visitors. I’m not making a case that transmission of measles from a Utahn to a foreign visitor is likely, but the failure to consider possible routes of transmission is exactly why vaccination is so important.
- onraglanroad 5mo agoWhy don't you check the figures rather than confidently spouting nonsense? Soccer rates as either the fourth or fifth largest sports in the USA depending on how you count it.
- fhdkweig 5mo agoThe Olympics happen every two years and aren't the cause of such issues. I doubt the World Cup will be any different.
- joshuahaglund 5mo agohttps://www.sciencedirect.com/org/science/article/pii/S236929602200059X https://www.sciencedirect.com/org/science/article/pii/S23692... It was enough of a concern before the most contagious virus resurfaced (measles) that researchers have been looking at sporting events as mass vector events for years. "The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) via DHS provided $625 million in grant funding to the 11 U.S. cities in hosting states to enhance security and preparedness efforts for the “safe execution” of tournament events" https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antimicrobial-stewardship-and-healthcare-epidemiology/article/sports-fever-getting-the-ball-rolling-to-prevent-infections-at-the-world-cup-and-beyond/DA92F515F40CE1C201E7D89456850DED https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antimicrobial-stewar...
- iJohnDoe 5mo agoThe World Cup aspect is still incredibly important to point out. The World Cup appeals to a very large demographic and so many traveling around could spell disaster.
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- farceSpherule 5mo ago[dead]
- BowBun 5mo ago[flagged]
- throw83939494 5mo agoEverything is a tradeoff. If big pharma had their way, we would get shot every second week (bi yearly shots for flu and covid, some tropical malaria, ebola, mad cow disease...) Preventable disseases can be prevented by enforcing basic hygiene, but most people do not like that.
- pstuart 5mo agoBig pharma would rather sell you medicine as an ongoing thing vs a one-off vaccine. > Preventable disseases can be prevented by enforcing basic hygiene, but most people do not like that. We're talking about measles here: you're completely wrong in your assumption in regards to measles.
- BowBun 5mo agoIt's odd to me that you found the need to use a throwaway here. You're missing my point I think. I'm talking about _eradicated_ diseases, not the flu and covid. Those are not 'preventable' diseases in the sense that there is no known cure, including the vaccines. The vaccines for _those_ are clear that they have limitations and don't work 100% of the time. Measles has _not_ been an issue for a long time because we spent a lot of resources trying to get rid of it. CDC's site boasts over 20 years of 'elimination status'. - https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/history.html https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/history.html The direct and _only_ cause for the eradication of Measles in the US was due to vaccinations. The fact that it is ressurging in conservative communities (I insist on the political connection, as it was this same group that showed clear anti-vaccination sentiments throughout COVID) indicates that they are choosing not to take a vaccine that has been known to save lives for decades. This directly contributes to preventable deaths. This has nothing to do with washing your hands or big pharma wanting you to get shots every week. It simply has to do with science and clear historical precedent.
- arjie 5mo agoQuite interesting to see that measles is coming back. I suppose there is a notion of generational memory. Two generations out, people forget what the world was like. Forgetting like this on a civilizational level is probably adaptive unless it’s catastrophic and a measles epidemic is eminently survivable as a civilization if incredibly tragic for the families affected. I had measles as a child, too. Fortunately, my parents are doctors and I was well cared for and nature was good to me as well. So here I am, pretty much fine. I’d rather have not had the disease, all things told. Incredibly contagious disease. I was in the room with the other sick child for only a few moments.
- chasil 5mo agoIt erases immune memory, taking away antibodies to recently exposed diseases. It's best not to get it.
- selectodude 5mo agoAnd there’s a non-zero chance that it lives dormant in your brain and you die several years later. Absolutely bonkers.
- throwa356262 5mo agoWait, measles erases antibody memory? First of all, this is scary. Secondly, I wonder if it hase the same effect on autoimmune disease?
- mrtesthah 5mo agoMeasles infections can trigger the following autoimmune diseases: * Type 1 diabetes * Multiple sclerosis * Rheumatoid arthritis
- madaxe_again 5mo agoIt can. It’s not common, from what I understand, but there are cases where it has put various autoimmune disorders into remission, either temporary, or permanent. That said, you become far more likely to end up sick with a whole bunch of other stuff, which can then eliminate any benefits for the autoimmune disorders. Oh, and there’s also a chance it will give you an autoimmune disorder. Absolute bastard, if you ask me.
- jdw64 5mo agoWhy do problems caused by anti scientific behavior occur in a country like the United States, which has so many outstanding scientists? From a third party perspective, I wonder if it's because, as stratification has progressed in the US, distrust of the social class that scientists belong to has led people to deny even their achievements. Why does distrust arise toward the institutions and hierarchies that speak for science? There is distrust of the universities, government agencies, media, pharmaceutical companies, and big tech that those scientists belong to. And that distrust turns science from a matter of conclusion into a matter of identity, based on 'who said it' rather than what the evidence shows. In fact, 42% of US graduate degree holders trust scientists, but only 21% of high school graduates do [1] But when you think about it, governments, state agencies, and even universities themselves are not actively trying to improve this. Maybe humans are beings who create hierarchies and live within identities regardless of the truth. Some people think humans built civilization because farming created a need for labor, but I sometimes wonder if instead, people gathered around a certain identity (whether religious or otherwise), and then farming began in order to feed that labor force. That ideal I always heard as a child, a world where all people become one, without class, race, or discrimination, might just be something that the human species can never truly possess. [1]https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20244/public-perceptions-of-science-and-technology https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20244/public-perceptions-of-sc...
- coryrc 5mo ago> But when you think about it, governments, state agencies, and even universities themselves are not actively trying to improve this They are, all the time, doing outreach. It's just as Isaac Asimov said: Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.' The origin story the government brainwashes everyone through public schools is partly to blame. There are people challenging it, but mostly they end up pushing for a different form of anti-intellectualism :(.
- jdw64 5mo agoI disagree with Isaac Asimov on that point. The reason is that professors and universities have failed to communicate that knowledge persuasively to the public. In other words, it's establishment science. They ignore opinions that oppose corporations, and they give grants to research that suits corporate tastes. This pattern keeps appearing in the United States. So it seems that public experience and word of mouth have created opposition to scientists. I know a few examples of this. The 'lead' crisis is one such case. In fact, some academic societies are deeply tied to corporations and operate in alignment with their direct interests. I think the accumulation of such cases has led to public distrust. I don't think it's any single party's fault. Both sides are just doing what feels right within their own identities. Scientists resist corporations to fulfill their own self actualization and curiosity, and the public simply hates those corrupt corporations. I'm not saying that all scientists are on the side of corporations. It's just that when the achievements of certain scientists are publicized, the ones with the megaphone are the corporate scientists. It's a complicated issue
- pstuart 5mo agoPro tip for my fellow graybeards: get a measles booster if you were born before 1976! Even then, it might not hurt if you are in an area where the risk is high. Disclaimer: I am an internet rando -- talk to your doctor.
- lanstin 5mo agoI asked for that and they gave me an antibody titre, and I still have enough to be safe from measles.
- bethekidyouwant 5mo ago“marking the latest and longest-lasting series of measles outbreaks in the US since last year as health officials panic.“ Having trouble parsing this one.
- wnevets 5mo agoAccording this administration forever chemicals are good but vaccines for deadly diseases are bad.
- thomastjeffery 5mo agoAny position you take that gets people to argue with you. Engagement is the currency of politics, today more than ever.
- inigyou 5mo agoI never saw it through this lens before but you might be right.
- thomastjeffery 5mo agoThere's a fantastic web series that explains the whole dynamic: the alt-right playbook. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJA_jUddXvY7v0VkYRbANnTnzkA_HMFtQ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJA_jUddXvY7v0VkYRbAN...
- JumpCrisscross 5mo agoIt’s reductive to frame this as an alt-right only phenomenon. As long as we’re subject to modern ad-fueled social media, this is the basis for all non-retail politics.
- Retric 5mo agoThe alt right playbook isn’t identical to other political movements because it’s facing different pressures. Right now it’s dealing with second generation propaganda where much of the leadership believes the narrative rather than the underlying justification for that narrative. This is mitigating by the older generation retaining a great deal of power, but it creates some IMO really interesting dynamics.
- yieldcrv 5mo ago“What did children do before vaccines!?” They died, Kayleigh. There were just 9 other siblings to see who survived
- inigyou 5mo agoWell, good news to that, birth control might be outlawed soon...
- arghandugh 5mo ago[dead]
- gigatexal 5mo agoWhile both sides of the political spectrum have crazies in them that are skeptical of vaccines let it be known that this latest insanity is being promulgated by red states and red politicians who are showing themselves to be just the biggest science denying idiots the world has ever seen
- jeffbee 5mo agoHorseshoe theory enters the chat. I associate vaccine refusal with the ultra-crunchy Marin County unschoolers and other sequelae of the 1960s. Of course, I understand these people to be reactionary conservatives, but they describe themselves as progressives. This time series suggests, however, that Marin has handed the torch to its MAGA neighbors. https://vax.edsource.org/school?schoolCode=6988448&schoolName=Marin%2520Waldorf%2520School https://vax.edsource.org/school?schoolCode=6988448&schoolNam...
- nosioptar 5mo agoWhat's craziest to me is that I know lifelong Mormons that left the church because the last CEO, a surgeon, was pro vaccine.
- jmyeet 5mo agoThe CDC has a measles tracker that includes the number of annual cases since 1985 [1]. Measles was officially "eliminated" in the US in 2000. Technically it still has that status but outbreaks like this caused by low vaccination rates are threatening it [2], which is what the article is referring to. I'm old enough to have lived with Y2K. It's not really talked about much nowadays and I suspect a good number of people don't even know about it but leading up to 2000, everybody knew about it. By 1998 it was something you'd see on the news. Anyway, a ton of work went into eliminating Y2K issues and when 2000 happened, everything kinda kept on working. Lots of people looked at that and unironically said that Y2K was a hoax. I actually wonder if this was a significant contribution to the distrust in authority that contributed to the rise of anti-vaxxers. To be fair, that did start before 2000. The disgraced former doctor Andrew Wakefield blew up in the late 1990s over the UK's triple jab and his effort to sell an alternative, which failed. Polio (effedtively eliminated in most countries), smallpox, measles, Guinea worm (due for elimination in the coming years), etc didn't disappear on their own. Australia is on track to eliminate cervical cancer by 2035 due to the widespread adoption of the HPV vaccine [3]. Sometimes it's hard not to feel like we live on the dumbest timeline. [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html [2]: https://www.kff.org/other-health/measles-elimination-status-what-it-is-and-how-the-u-s-could-lose-it/ https://www.kff.org/other-health/measles-elimination-status-... [3]: https://www.health.gov.au/ministers/the-hon-rebecca-white-mp/media/australia-on-track-to-eliminate-cervical-cancer-by-2035?language=en https://www.health.gov.au/ministers/the-hon-rebecca-white-mp...
- fluoridation 5mo ago>Lots of people looked at that and unironically said that Y2K was a hoax. You're committing a fallacy of equivocation. "Y2K" has two distinct meanings: 1. A software bug related to date handling that could cause incorrect behavior that was unpredictable in the specifics but bounded in the kind and extent of damage it could cause. 2. A software bug that could cause the collapse of society. You might or might not remember this, but prior to the turn of the millennium there were plenty of people regularly talking about Y2K using the latter meaning. When people say that Y2K was a hoax, they're saying that the second meaning was not something that was ever within the realm of possibility, not that Y2K would not have caused any problems whatsoever.
- cineticdaffodil 5mo ago[flagged]
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago> time, to accept the retardation, as a permanent fixture. Every 3 generations Why? Previous generations didn’t have to accept this. This is entirely a product of ad-fueled social media.
- vlovich123 5mo agoGo look up how people reacted to the Spanish flu. Or various religious death cults that pop up with regularity. This isn’t a modern thing - most people rely on their social network about what is true and those social networks can be infected with cultural disease and rot and die just like the body. The problem is that cultural diseases have impacts to the entire species since we’re social creatures and technology has further shrunk the distance between cultures and the time disease takes to spread making it difficult to contain.
- JumpCrisscross 5mo ago> Go look up how people reacted to the Spanish flu “The Anti-Mask League was an organization formed in San Francisco, California, United States to protest an ordinance which required people in that city to wear masks during the 1918 influenza pandemic. The ordinance it protested lasted less than one month before being repealed. Due to the short period of the league's existence, its exact membership is difficult to determine; however, an estimated 4,500 citizens showed up to a meeting to protest the second ordinance in January 1919” [1]. I’m not seeing anything comparable, or as epidimeogically relevant, as what we have today. Organic social spread is slow and controllable. Online social media is instant wildfire everywhere. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Mask_League_of_San_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Mask_League_of_San_Franci...
- cineticdaffodil 5mo ago
- blipvert 5mo agoSome brass neck coming from the Daily Mail who championed Andrew Wakefield.
- BurningFrog 5mo agoAround 20% of people have a fear of needles. Around 4% have a clinical phobia, often intense enough to induce fainting. I suspect a lot of "vaccine skepticism" is just an expression of such needle phobia. Maybe developing more needle free vaccine delivery mechanisms would solve a lot of this problem. I have much doubt about arguing people out of phobias.
- driverdan 5mo agoIt's not. It's scientific ignorance combined with lies (Wakefield) and misinformation. There may be some small percentage of people who completely avoid injections but most people who understand vaccines accept the benefits outweigh the short term fear / pain of needles.
- tzs 5mo agoI don't see any evidence that the level of fear of needles is different now from what it was 10, 20, 30 or more years ago, so it is hard to see how it could be a significant factor in falling vaccination rates now.
- daft_pink 5mo agoBut what about the stolen legos?
- m463 5mo agoThe most severe direct complications from measles are pneumonia, encephalitis, and blindness. One to three out of every 1,000 children who become infected with measles will die from respiratory and neurological complications. also... Suppression of the immune system by measles lasts about two years and has been epidemiologically implicated in an increase in childhood mortality from other infectious diseases during this period. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles#Complications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles#Complications
- johnea 5mo agoVaccines are the devil! People should use alcohol, tobacco and firearms, like the little baby jesus intended...