Vintage Diseases Making a Comeback 403
An anonymous reader writes "MSNBC has a piece on a recent resurgence in some old-timey diseases. Mumps, Whooping Cough, and Rickets are making a comeback, back in style like it's 1955." From the article: "Public-health officials certainly weren't expecting to get 'bitten' by mumps this year. Although the virus has been circulating in British kids since 2000, it hadn't caused much trouble in the United States since an outbreak in Kansas 18 years ago. The Midwest is the epicenter again, but the victims are primarily college students, not children. Once a childhood disease, the virus has now taken hold in university towns. That's partly because crowded dorms and cafeterias are breeding grounds for germs that are spread by sneezing and coughing."
Re:Wait, whatever happened to MMR? (Score:3, Insightful)
1 blank the vacciene (like we know the flu bug does)
2 increases the inucubation period
3 ramps the bug to LETHAL
4 includes the "airborne vector"
A number of issues (Score:3, Insightful)
What is needed is a program that is designed to track kids and even require them to get into schools. Until then, we will see more and more outbreaks.
Re:Border control (Score:2, Insightful)
Nice biassed theory, don't let reality stop you from quoting it...
Re:Innoculations? (Score:5, Insightful)
A population is considered protected if greater than a certain percentage of people are immune, because beyond that point an outbreak will tend to die out as people get better faster than others are infected. If the vaccine fails in 10% of people, it shouldn't really matter. However, worries (and tabloid scares) about side effects lead to too many people refusing the vaccine, which starts to put a lot of people in danger.
Not really. (Score:3, Insightful)
new age (Score:0, Insightful)
that's the new term for farking like rabbits?
there's a reason this is huge in university towns.
(not that i'm some prude against such acts, but come on, in this day in age you got to be reasonable)
this could be good (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe this will persuade university authorities to get off their backsides and do something about the shambles that is university accomodation - at my university it's four to a flat - I understand that people have seperate rooms, but that such a thing is not the case everywhere
Re:Holy hell.. (Score:3, Insightful)
But here in the US everyone (more or less) gets MMR vaccines. In most places you often can't get into middle/highschool without it. The few people who were born and grew up in this country who didn't get it (and were children of citizens) didn't get it because their parent were nuts or hyper-suggestable (there is a 0.001% chance that taking vaccine X will enhance the possibility your kid will get Y by 7%, we better not give it to him).
But with immigrants, we don't know. With legal immigrants they may get the same same (either in their home country they came from, were forced to when they moved here, etc) but if you come from some country where vaccination is not common, you may slip by (I don't think I had to prove I had my vaccinations to go to college).
This is only made worse by many illegal immigrants being afraid of hospitals/doctors/police/etc because they think they may get reported and sent back (not all are like this, and while unfortunate I can understand the fear).
This is just one more issue in the immigration debate. It's a smaller one (I think the drain on the tax, medicaid, and other systems are bigger), but it is still something. When someone sneaks in, we don't know what they have, what they don't have, what they are vaccinated against, etc.
Re:A number of issues (Score:2, Insightful)
4. the New-ager/Far Left wing hippie types that believe the gov and science is out to get them. So they do not vacinate, even though it is irresonsible on their part.
I keep hearing about "mercury levels" and Thimerosal on the radio from the "organic foods," chiropractic, and "alternative medicine" types that think vaccines are some kind of conspiracy put forth by the eeeevil medical establishment to make you treatably, but not curably ill, so they can continue to make money treating you.
Re:Wait, whatever happened to MMR? (Score:3, Insightful)
Whatever gave you that idea? Vaccination was not invented in USA, nor where USA first out to have vaccination programs.
Re:Innoculations? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Special Report: "Disease, unwanted import" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Innoculations? (Score:1, Insightful)
And the reason for that is that there's no evidence whatsoever that vaccines cause autism (but there are a whole lot of studies disproving it). False, unfounded beliefs should be met with derision.
many other problems though (Score:2, Insightful)
Without the benefit of technology or even neurons, the immune system must somehow learn to attack the right things. Don't destroy the skin. Don't destroy the ear. Destroy the mumps virus. Don't destroy the pancreas. Destroy bacteria in the heart. Keep the intestinal bacteria from getting out, but don't destroy the intestines while doing so.
Now, you poke this unstable beast. Most likely you get the desired result. There is a decent chance that nothing happens at all. Sometimes, the unstable beast goes into a fit of rage and decides that nerve cells are evil, maybe because there was a nerve cell found at the injection site or, well, "just because". Maybe it decides that the liver is an alien parasite growing in your chest.
There are plenty of military examples. The famous one was a female Apache pilot. (bias? no, of course this never happens to males...) She never flew again.
A vaccine is only good if the benefit exceeds the risk. Risk depends on your exposure to the disease and your general health. A kid in a low-cost L.A. daycare center has far more risk than a kid growing up in an isolated community of people who value personal space and extreme sanitation, but far less risk than a malnourished kid in a refugee camp. Evaluate your risk.
It's a side-effect of illegal immigration (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:Holy hell.. (Score:1, Insightful)
I saw the original downmodded post mentioned by the parent within the first couple minutes this story was up. Regardless of the posters intention, it had almost instantly been modded way down, and that was way before anyone put any thought into the implications brought up by his post.
Doing what the original poster suggested, and what the parent of this post did, raises an interesting question: Is there a correlation between higher illegal immigrant populations and the spread of these outbreaks?
The resulting data shows that often there are higher populations of illegal immigrants in the affected outbreak areas.
This in no way suggests that Mexicans or any other race are inferior in any way. However, it brings to light the idea that these illegal immigrants (we'll assume they're from Mexico for arguments sake) come from a country where immunizations against these diseases are not as commonplace and regulated as they are here. As a result, their presence in the affected areas could very likely be a contributing factor to the spread of these diseases.
Please don't mod posts without thinking first. Thanks, I owe ya one.
Scare story of the month... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not that the stories themselves are complete nonsense, it's the way that they are handled. It's as if each one is the focus of world attention for a few weeks, then COMPLETELY disappearing when the ratings drop. Then a short intermission, and the next one comes along with more hype than the last.
I sure am glad that asteroids and bird flu aren't a threat anymore (who fixed them, BTW?), and I can focus on being scared by this new thing.
Re:Illegal Aliens (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly, you have heard of it before--it's a potentially VERY deadly consequence of immigration, ask the Native Americans--if you can find one. So it should come as no surprise that when some disease that is relatively unheard of in this country has an outbreak, the first thought should be that it was brought in from a foreign country. Not necessarily an illegal alien, it could have been a visitor. I haven't been paying attention lately, but the early guesses was that it came from someone visiting from England. That's the key for the initial vector. For how it spread, well, that's been talked about with regularity on this thread.
Now, among other things, this is one of the better reasons to be against illegal immigration--see Typhoid Mary for what could happen with a legal one. Heck, for some it may be a good enough reason for some to want to really restrict LEGAL immigration.
Re:Innoculations? (Score:0, Insightful)
I'm so happy they don't. The day people are forced to pump stuff into their body in order to get an education will be a sad day indeed.
And to actually learn something... (Score:3, Insightful)
What does your claim tell us? That you don't care to look at actual facts. You have your set of preconceptions, and are on the lookout for facts that confirm it.
fear mongering (Score:3, Insightful)
Insects alone inject so many different proteins into you during your lifetime that if each exposure to a new protein carried a big risk, everybody would have immune system problems. In reality, malfunctions of the immune system tend to be due to specific defects, not some sort of general instability, as you claim.
A vaccine is only good if the benefit exceeds the risk.
Except when there are known medical reasons against vaccination, the benefit always exceeds the risk for childhood vaccinations. That's no accident, it's the result of a long approval process that looks at exactly this question in detail.
Re:A number of issues (Score:4, Insightful)
It is not that we, at least in the US, do not try to immunize everyone. Every child who attends school must be immunized. No exceptions. I do not believe that health providers, unless the fucked up congress has done something lately, need to ask about anything before giving a shot. These shots are so critical to our public health that we ought to just be giving them away for free to every child. I mean the cost of the shot versus the cost of treating the illness and all. There is no reason to track kids. Just make sure they have shots before putting them in closed groups. Colleges should do the same.
Again, the issue is people not understanding the security implications. Before vaccine, the number of cases and deaths were measured in thousands every year. Two generations ago Polio paralyzed at least 20,000 people per year, and now we are worried about a few hundrend with autism allegedly caused by the vaccine? Would these kids have been strong enough to survive without the vacine anyway? Sure we should make it as safe as possible, but get some perspective. In the case of mumps, there were a few hundred thousand people a years that got mumps, and perhaps a hundred died. Now the number of cases are a few thousand, with perhaps no one dies. Which world do you want to live in? It is like all thes fanatics wanting a simpler world, but who many woulg give up the air conditioning, car, fast food, non-wood stove, or TV?
I am sure that the left and right wing wackos will be the first to complain when an outbreak occurs, but it will be their fault. There is no absolute security, but vaccines has certainly seem to make the world an overall safer place. Whether it is good to have children who would have died under normal circumstances live is up for debate, but what is not is that vaccines seem to help us all.
On a last note, in this case it may be that the virus has outgrown the vaccine, and certainly the overuse of antibiotics and anti-viral agents, especially hand sanitizer, will help create a supervirus that could destroy us all. But vaccines are not there to kiil the virus, just to prepare our bodies for the eventual attack.
Re:Holy hell.. (Score:3, Insightful)
By the way, you can't be fiscally conservative and in favor of a free market without being in favor of open immigration policies. Well, at least without being a hypocrite. Economic conservatives would be against tariffs or quotas for capital equipment or raw materials. Why do they support quotas on the import of the other input of production? Doing so keeps our markets from clearing, hurts our ability to compete internationally, and prevents our economy from operating at its full potential. Why do people support this? Politics politics politics...
Re:A number of issues (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's just one problem. Start with a healthy kid. He gets a vaccine. He falls into the small percentage of kids who get the side effects. Maybe he just gets sick. Or has seizures. Or even dies. The problem is that he was healthy, then the parents did what they were mandated to do by the government, and their kid suffered these things and is now disabled/dead.
The only responsible thing to do is to evaluate your own risk. We need to be free to make the choice. We can't be potential sacrifices for the greater good.
Re:Holy hell.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally I'd like to see them all deported and then have to apply to get back into the country. They broke the law and came here illegally and should have to suffer the punishment.
That said, I also realized that for dozens of reasons that is COMPLETELY unworkable. I'm a hard-core republican but I have to break with my party on this one. There was that proposal (I think it came from Kennedy and a few others) that these aliens could pay backed taxes, learn English, and pay a fine. I think that (combined with fixes to keep new aliens from streaming in like better fencing, more visas, and a guest worker program) are the best we can do.
They blatantly ignored our laws. I'm as mad about that as anyone else. But saying "too bad, leave the country and then come back" ignores problems like the one you mentioned (no tax revenue) because very few people will do that.
That said, I think these protests that are scheduled for tomorrow are a very serious mistake and will only hurt support for their cause (like the Spanish Star Spangled Banner did), but that's another topic.
Re:They broke the law (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:They broke the law (Score:2, Insightful)
Hard as you try, you can't just wish them away. Mass deportations just aren't going to happen as long as intelligent people remain mayors of cities like New York and Los Angeles, so you're just going to have to learn to accept the fact--obvious to everyone who lives in these cities, but perhaps not so obvious to morons like you--that the people who are here illegally are essential to the nation's economy, and more importantly, they're people just like you and me.
clearly: ban all travel to and from the USA !!! (Score:3, Insightful)
"According to a special investigative report [washingtontimes.com] by the "Washington Times", "Contagious diseases are entering the United States because of immigrants, illegal aliens , refugees and travelers, and World Health Organization officials say the worst could be yet to come"." (my bolds)
Clearly then the solution is easy. Ban all travel to and from the USA and everybody will be safe.