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Measles

The Disneyland Measles Scare – What are the REAL Numbers?

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Disney measles outbreak
jovanmandic / Dollar Photo Club

Things have since settled down, but there is no doubt that fear and misinformation reigned supreme for the first part of 2015 in regards to the measles.

I can’t possibly see how you didn’t hear about it, but just in case you’ve been living in a cave for 2015, here’s the rundown.  In December, a yet-to-be-identified person was in Disneyland who was contagious with the measles.  Testing has determined that this particular person may likely have been infected with the same strain that caused a large outbreak in the Philippines last year.

Despite the mainstream press and pretty much every pro-vaccine person out there stating that the “outbreak” started because of bad, evil parents not vaccinating their kids, without knowing who the first case was, we really have NO IDEA whether or not this person was vaccinated.

Disneyland/California Adventure gets some 24 million visitors per year (estimates), which, broken down daily, would be almost 66,000 per day.  And of course, even though December is the busy season, you can still get the idea:  it’s a LOT of people.

And the measles virus can survive up to two hours just hanging out in the air.  Do the rough math.  It is likely that several thousand people may have been exposed.  Or, at the very, very least, hundreds.

I have read many media reports and medical opinions stating that all unvaccinated people exposed to the measles virus will contract the measles, although not a single one of these opinions were backed up by any research that I was able to find.

So how many thousands were infected at Disney?  Was it more like hundreds?  While the exact number of primary cases that came out of Disneyland is hard to find, it seems like the actual number was 51.

Fifty-one out of potentially thousands exposed.

This reminds me of the fear spread on 2009 of the swine flu “pandemic” in Mexico City.  When the dust settled there were 103 deaths from H1N1.  This number may initially sound scary until you realize that the greater Mexico City area has a population of over 21 million (equal to 4.9 X 10-4 percent).  To put this number into perspective, 650 children die each year in the US alone from car accidents (with 48.8 million children, this is 1.33 X 10-3 percent, a full magnitude more–ANNUALLY) .  Yet there has never been an uproar over this statistic.

The number of deaths associated with the Disneyland outbreak?  A big fat zero.  The total number infected that were directly related to Disney?  131.

It’s funny, but writing this blog article now, almost 2 months after the news media frenzy, it is difficult to find any new news of the “epidemic.”  This includes new information from the CDC or MMWR.  The topic pretty much dropped off the face of the country.

What has not died off, however, is the strong push across the states for a tighter and more difficult to obtain immunization exemptions.  Personal liberty be damned–after the near extinction of all life on this planet after the Disneyland epidemic, we NEED everyone to get immunized, regardless of the individual risks. The herd is all that is important.

What has stumped me the most about the entire “vaccinate your child or else you’re being a stupid, selfish parents and community member” attitude is how much it has been fueled by the constant repetition that this outbreak was spread by unvaccinated kids.  But, according the CDC in their own review, these numbers are more consistent with fuzzy math than truth:

  • Among the 110 California patients, 49 (45%) were unvaccinated.
  • 47 (43%) had unknown or undocumented vaccination status (but, statistically, were more likely to have been vaccinated).
  • Among the unvaccinated, 12 were infants too young to be vaccinated.
  • Among the 37 remaining vaccine-eligible patients, 28 (25% of the entire group) were intentionally unvaccinated because of personal beliefs.
  • Among these 28 intentionally unvaccinated patients, 18 were children (aged <18 years), and 10 were adults.

So, to sum it up (since the entire scare debate was about vaccinating kids and very few adults who are pushing legislatively to get kids vaccinated are not, themselves, vaccinated), there were 18 out of 110 patients who were unvaccinated children.  That’s 16% for the math wizzes out there claiming that this outbreak was directly the fault of unvaccinated children.

I am aware that, working with Keegan’s 3rd grade homework, Common Core math is really screwed up, but I do still believe that 16% is not greater than 50% (a number past which you could MAYBE argue that this whole debacle was due to the unvaccinated heathens).

One last little tidbit that seems to have been glossed over by those with a near-rapid determination to label anti-vaccinating parents as evil has to do with the safety of the MMR vaccination.  The Cochrane Collaboration did a review of the current available research data on the safety of the MMR vaccine.  Their summary?

“The design and reporting of safety outcomes in MMR vaccine studies, both pre- and post-marketing, are largely inadequate. The evidence of adverse events following immunisation with the MMR vaccine cannot be separated from its role in preventing the target diseases.”

So what does this mean?  Despite all the studies done on the MMR vaccination, we really cannot say with a high degree of confidence, that the vaccination is safe.

 

Early Measles Infection Linked to Inflammatory Bowel Disease – (08-03-00)

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Early Measles Infection Linked to Inflammatory Bowel Disease

More information on the link between measles and other diseases than don’t show up until much later in life. Although the researchers were hesitant to suggest a link with the measles vaccine, the link does seem to come up again and again in research circles.

Am J Gastroenterol 2000;95:1480-1485 Early measles infection may increase the risk of developing Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, according to researchers from the Mayo Clinic. In the study, they identified individuals who had been diagnosed with measles before the age of 5 years from 1950 to 1966 through the Mayo Clinic and the Rochester Epidemiology Project. Of this initial group of 1,164 eligible cases, 662 completed a questionnaire to determine if the patient had subsequently developed Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis, or symptoms of undiagnosed disease. Overall, the researchers found six cases of Crohn’s disease and six cases of ulcerative colitis that could be confirmed by the patients’ physicians. Based on the incidence of cases in Olmsted County, Minnesota, they would have expected significantly fewer cases: 1.9 for Crohn’s disease and 2.0 for ulcerative colitis. Seventy-five percent of the cases had measles before the age of 2 years, the authors note, but this did not reach statistical significance. The investigators also emphasized that their study did not consider the effect of measles vaccination, and “unless more compelling data become available to implicate measles vaccine as a risk factor for inflammatory bowel disease, we fully support the current recommendation for universal vaccination against measles.”

Measles Presence in Some Patients With IBD, Autistic Enterocolitis – (08-03-00)

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Measles Presence in Some Patients With IBD, Autistic Enterocolitis

There has been much controversy about whether the MMR vaccine can lead to autism in suseptable persons. This is another study that begins to add weight to this theory.

Dig Dis Sci 2000;45:723-729 Japanese and UK-based scientists have detected measles virus sequences in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from patients with Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis and autistic enterocolitis — the recently described syndrome purportedly associated with measles-mumps-rubella vaccination. Dr. Hisashi Kawashima from Tokyo Medical University and colleagues there and in London explain that previous studies have suggested that measles virus may be present in the intestine of Crohn’s disease patients. They also allude to the reported association between measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccination and some cases of autistic enterocolitis, a syndrome of gastrointestinal symptoms and developmental regression in children leading to autism (See Reuters Health report, February 27, 1998). Numerous other reports, however, have discounted that association.

Natural Immunity to Measles Stronger Than Vaccination – (10-02-00)

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Natural Immunity to Measles Stronger Than Vaccination

Certain concerns with the widespread use of vaccinations are coming to light. There are issues previously mentioned in these newsletters with the links between chronic health complaints and certain vaccines. Now, we are starting to see that the body’s immunity after measles infection is stronger than one derived from vaccination. Some researchers are concerned that this reduced immune response with vaccination could have the potential for a devastating infection sometime in the future.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/1096-9071(200009)62:1%3C91::AID-JMV14%3E3.0.CO;2-B/abstract

Failure to Vaccinate May Explain Measles Outbreak in Germany – (04-22-02)

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Failure to Vaccinate May Explain Measles Outbreak in Germany

If articles like this were not taken so seriously I would actually be amused by the content of this article in light of its title. First of all, “less than five” doctors are apparently responsibly for this massive outbreak. What an accomplishment for these five doctors!! The title of this article would lead one to believe that a large number of doctors in Germany are not giving the measles vaccine and this has singlehandedly led to an outbreak. Reading into the article, one finds that the accuser in this case really has little supporting evidence. Math was never my strongest subject, but somehow 5 doctors in a district in Germany spreading an epidemic seems a little far fetched. And, if the large majority of children are indeed vaccinated, shouldn’t they be free of fear and let those who decided not to be immunized suffer? The truth is that a large number of vaccinated children also get the disease.

Doctors opposed to vaccinating children against measles might be at least partly responsible for a measles epidemic in southern Germany, according to a regional division of AOK, one of Germany’s largest public health insurance groups. The measles outbreak has struck the district of Coburg in the German state of Bavaria. The district has a population of less than 100,000, but more than 1000 people, mostly children, have contracted measles since November. Markus Braun, a spokesman for the AOK Bavaria, said today that AOK believes there is a link between the measles epidemic and opposition from “a few doctors” in the area to the combined MMR vaccine (measles, mumps and rubella). A number of people with measles have been admitted to hospitals, which is much more costly than immunising with MMR, which costs around 100 euros in Germany for the two-injection vaccine, he said. Braun declined to say how many doctors in the Coburg area were thought to be opposed to giving children the MMR vaccine, saying only that it was “less than five.” He held out the possibility that AOK would seek monetary damages from doctors opposed to the MMR vaccine. “That is not ruled out, but at the moment it is not under discussion,” he said. AOK has made its concerns known to the KBV, the Bavarian organization that represents physicians accredited with the public health insurance system. Martin Eulitz, spokesman for the KBV, told Reuters Health that leadership of the KBV was strongly in favor of the MMR vaccine, and encouraged all members to use it. However, he said that German law does not require doctors to give the vaccine. Referring to the doctors opposed to using the MMR vaccine, he said: “We can talk to them and try to convince them the vaccine is necessary. But there is nothing else we can do. We can only kick them out [of the KBV] if they do not follow the rules.” Eulitz also declined to say how many doctors in the Coburg area are opposed to the MMR vaccine. But he said that none of these doctors have spoken out publicly against the MMR vaccine. They have spoken only “behind closed doors” to the parents of patients. “The only people who speak out publicly against the vaccine are the parents,” he said. Eulitz said that since November 1, 2001, some 1140 cases of measles have been reported in the Coburn area, with 90% of those cases in children 14 years old or younger. Children with measles have been admitted to the hospital, but he did not know how many. In the Coburg district, 76% of children have been vaccinated, which compares with a rate of 88% in the whole state of Bavaria, he said. When asked if the lower vaccination rate might have been a trigger for the measles epidemic, Eulitz said: “That might be one of the reasons.” Dr. Waltraud Knipping, head of the Bavarian branch of Germany’s Professional Association of Pediatricians (BVKJ), told Reuters Health in late February that as the number of opponents to MMR vaccination has risen, the readiness of parents in Bavaria to have their children vaccinated has declined. She said at least 90% of all children need to be immunized to prevent measles epidemics.

Does vaccination provide full long term coverage – (05-13-04)

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Measles Outbreak in a Boarding School

An interesting factoid in this report is that the source patient had been fully vaccinated for measles and yet this child caught the measles and gave it too the others. Vaccination rarely provides full long term coverage against the disease, and this protection pales in comparison to immunity from getting the disease.

Measles Outbreak in a Boarding School — Pennsylvania, 2003 –

Read entire article here

MEASLES VACCINATION OF INFANTS INCREASES RISK OF DEATH – (12-15-04)

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IMMUNE MODULATION AFTER MEASLES VACCINATION OF 6–9 MONTH OLDS

“Administration of high titre measles vaccines before 7 months of age led to increased overall mortality.” I understand that measles in developing nations can be a serious and life threatening disease. But here in the US deaths from measles are virtually unheard of. So, in the spirit of “first do no harm,” the forcing of vaccinations to newborns here in the US does not fit the mold.

Might the American public, who blindly vaccinate their infants because that’s what they’ve been told they need to do, rethink this policy if they knew their child might be MORE likely to die if they get this vaccine?

Read entire article here

 

WIDESPREAD VACCINATION OF ALL INFANTS TO PREVENT MEASLES – (08-11-04)

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Why is measles still endemic in Japan? At first glance, this article would seem to support widespread vaccination of all infants. However, looking at the statistics, 88 out of 200,000 children died of the measles in Japan in 2000. That is 0.044%. Now, I am sure if we examined these 88 children that did succumb to the virus we would find that many, if not all, were immunocomprimised or otherwise did not seek proper medical attention when the disease did not resolve as expected. This is exactly what we saw this past year with the “deadly” flu epidemic. So I would suggest that this percentage could be drastically reduced lower than it already is with proper education. The point of all this? If we focused 1/10 the energy on getting patients to avoid refined carbs as we do vaccinating them, the impact on the health of our country would be staggering when compared to the measles virus.

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