5 ms·
In 2013, measles killed more kids than car accidents or AIDS
- transfire 12y ago> "In some particularly impoverished and malnourished areas, the disease has a fatality rate of 10 percent." You may want to feed them before worrying about giving them a shot.
- feld 12y agoor just maybe the poor don't have good healthcare.
- knowaveragejoe 12y agoYou would think they'd have died from starvation long before succumbing to measles if that were the case. The flippant attitude of this comment is... irritating, to say the least. It's as if you're unaware of the massive global effort to eradicate hunger. Perhaps you're one of those people who thinks it's "not enough", in which case please show us the multi-million and billion dollar checks you're writing every year for the cause.
- amalag 12y agoThey don't have to drop dead from starvation to be weak and more vulnerable to disease complications.
- lkbm 12y agoProviding effective healthcare does wonders for lifting people out of poverty. It's not that poor people are sitting around helplessly waiting for food--they're competent, productive people who work in order to be able to provide for themselves. Sick people, and people with sick kids, miss work. Food aid is a major component in fighting poverty, but if you don't also provide clean water, healthcare and education, you're severely limiting the positive impact you can achieve.
- mzs 12y agoIt costs a total of about three dollars for all rounds of infant immunization in those parts of the world, that's not going to get much food. Also then the people don't get sick and health care costs are lower, so the rest of the money can go farther for things like food and education.
- tokenadult 12y agoThis is good worldwide perspective on mortality risk for young children. The journal article in The Lancet[1] mentioned in this news article provides more details. [1] "Global, regional, and national age–sex specific all-cause and cause-specific mortality for 240 causes of death, 1990–2013: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013" http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(14)61682-2.pdf http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(... http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ S0140-6736(14)61682-2
- sebnukem2 12y agoLet us hope, that we are getting closer to discovering the vaccine for human idiocy. While one can argue and appreciate natural selection at work, the helpless children pay the steep price, not the stupid parents.
- CmonDev 12y ago"...stupid parents." - you mean poor = stupid or you just care about USA part?
- saiya-jin 12y agoI would presume stupid parents = rejecting vaccination for their kids because whatever... ain't it obvious?
- omaranto 12y agoThere are stupid people everywhere, not just the USA. There are also anti-vaccination movements in lots of places, not just the USA. There is a big one in Spain, for example.
- Symmetry 12y agoIt isn't in the US and Spain where tens of thousands of children are dying of measles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles#mediaviewer/File:Measles_vaccination_coverage_world.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles#mediaviewer/File:Measle...
- rebootthesystem 12y agoPoor people are not stupid.
- jkot 12y agoWhat sort of bacteria or virus causes idiocy?
- chopin 12y ago
- bdcravens 12y agoI think the anti-vaccine crowd is stupid, but this kind of journalism bugs me. The conclusion: measles kills too many children, some Americans don't vaccinate their kids, therefore those parents are the cause of the high number. The problem is that it uses global measles numbers, not US. How many of those numbers are in countries where vaccinations are unavailable, and factors like hygiene and clean water supplies come into play?
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- ritchiea 12y agoThe blogger never suggested that US anti-vaxers are the cause of the high number. I believe the intent of the post was to say "this is a deadly disease in some countries and yet there is still a movement to not vaccinate children against this disease."
- mzs 12y agoThe very first sentence has a link to the paper. That paper is really interesting, for example how the authors had to cull the data to get to usable factual data that had the true cause of death. For what you are interested in there is a in particular an excellent graph on page 143. I rather like science blog posts like this compared to what is more typical and this post mentions what your concern is in paragraph three of four. No where in those four paragraphs does it leap to the conclusion "therefore those parents are the cause of the high number."
- IgorPartola 12y agoWas watching an older episode of the Nightly Show the other day and they were talking about anti vaxxers. Had a woman there from the Thinking Moms Revolution [1]. Larry asked her if someone came out with a vaccine against autism would she give that to her kids. She said she would not because she wouldn't trust it. So the problem is not autism but trust. Another great insight from that show: this is about guilt and control. Something bad happens to your child => you feel guilty. You have the urge to do something about it, and while you cannot control lots of things, you can decide whether to vaccinate. This is similar to how people get eating disorders: food is often times the only thing they can control in their lives. This was interesting to me because I cannot fathom how you can stare facts in the face and stubbornly disagree, putting your own child at a huge risk. This in no way excuses it, but it does highlight how someone goes from "I want my child to be well" to "I will not vaccinate". [1] http://thinkingmomsrevolution.com/ http://thinkingmomsrevolution.com/
- wcbeard10 12y agoThe 'guilt and control' phenomenon also looks like it shows up in deciding whether to leave your children at home during a quick trip out. While a road accident may be much more likely than an accident alone at home, good luck explaining that to either the parents or the law. The desire to feel in control frequently seems to be very hard to reason against.
- IgorPartola 12y agoAre you saying you leave your kids home alone while going out because you are afraid of car accidents?
- MollyR 12y agoI know this is a little dark, but perhaps trust and desperation are related for humans. If everyone saw tons of kids dropping dead from measles, they would feel a type of desperation to save their kid, and the amount of "trust" needed for them to get their kid vaccinated drops.
- nasmorn 12y ago
- dnautics 12y agoThis is global. In the us, the measles death rate is less than a tenth of a percent, and the measles rate itself is quite low. In the US, in 2013, there were more school bus fatalities than measles fatalities.
- natecornell 12y agoAnyone else notice the irony that this study was published in the Lancet, which largely responsible for starting the anti-vax movement?