Because I strongly suspect there is a tendency to increasing over-diagnosis as outbreak size grows. Most doctors will have seen few if any cases of measles, so if someone presents with a measles-like rash during an outbreak, then it is more likely to be diagnosed as measles than when there is no outbreak. I also know of one case where a child with a rash was taken to the doctor, who said, no, definitely not measles ... then noticed on the records that the child had not been noticed, and instantly changed the diagnosis (and declined to take a sample to test). As it turned out, it was not measles. I'd not argue with over-reporting being uncontroversial in general, but I question whether it is independent of outbreak size.

Indeed, it is the change that matters, in which case, why quote a figure which is known to be incorrect, rather than the best known figure (laboratory confirmations). However, since this year laboratory tests were suspended because the public health labs. could not keep up (nor were the untested samples kept for later analysis), we don't actually know what the change is.

The WSJ quotes the outbreak as 1219 to end July, this is similar to the figures in the UK press. To the beginning of May 850 had been tested, so even if *all* the remaining cases were positive, that would only give 370 + (1219-850) which is 739, which is *still* only 65%. In fact, around May the UK suspended mandatory testing since the public health laboratories were overloaded, so unless you have some additional information, I stand by a factor of 2 over diagnosis.

Because the figure is inflated. If measles outbreaks are a problem then they are a problem without inflating the figure (which was generally reported similarly in the UK press). Inflating the figures is not so different from the anti-vaccine people making unjustified claims.

In the UK vaccines are not government mandated, that's why some children are not vaccinated. And the shit didn't exactly hit the fan. One guy died, he had atypical measles, the doctor didn't diagnose and sent him home to go to bed and take some Paracetamol. So far as I'm aware nobody else had any long term problems. BTW, I'm intrigued, why "snob"? Because I use my brain?

No, I'm comparing the number of laboratory tests to the number of laboratory confirmations. Up to the start of May (by which time the outbreak had mostly run its course) there where 1170 notifications, of which 850 were tested .... of which only 370 confirmed measles. So the actual number of cases was more like 530 (1219 * 370/850).

From TFA and quoted by the poster: "A measles outbreak infected 1,219 people in southwest Wales between November 2012 and early July, compared with 105 cases in all of Wales in 2011." Wrong, see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/may/02/measles-epidemic-swansea-teenagers-targeted-vaccinations (May 2nd) "The headline total for measles across Wales is now at 1,170 cases. The number of laboratory confirmed cases in the outbreak stands at 370 out of a total of 850 samples tested." So the outbreak is exagerated by more than a factor of two.

Our power users are people who are good at selling you stuff you don't actually want. None of them are developers.

No. Well, not yet, but I don't expect that to change anytime soon.

In an ideal world the company would allow people to spend time looking at new technologies and stuff, otherwise you rely on employees doing it in their own time - in which case the company can't impose any direction - or on hiring new people - in which case the new people don't know about the company's business and systems. Of course, that generally doesn't happen because the bean counters are too stupid. Me, I'm self-employed, and some of the time I bill to clients is to cover looking at new stuff. I figure they are interested in what they get for my billing, and not precisely how I get there. No-one has compained yet.

OK. Lets do it. The Koran says that Jesus was a prophet (abliet rather a special one) and not the Son of God. That is blasphemy, so the Koran should be banned in all Christian countries. I may be an aetheist, but I know double standard where I see them.

This is technically true but grossly misleading: England also already has Jewish courts. They have exactly the same standing, which is they have no standing in law. They operate purely where the plaintiffs agree to abide by their judgement. Really, they are no different from say two people going to a mutual friend and asking the friend to adjudicate on a disagreement.

I detest Ruby and ROR as much as the next man, but I have to take issue with "active record" causing security holes. Its not active record, its using active record with mass assignment that is the problem. Though, active record can cause horrible performance. I blame the lets-hide-SQL-behind-an-ORM culture; nothing wrong with ORM *provided* you understand what happens behind the scenes (and how RDBMSs can be performance killed).

http://www.healthsentinel.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2654:united-states-disease-death-rates&catid=55:united-states-deaths-from-diseases&Itemid=55 By the time the measles vaccine was introduced in the US, the death rate was down to under 1 per 100,000. Since almost everyone would have contracted measles once, and assuming a population of 200 million with an average life expectancy of 50 years, then that's about 4 million births per year, or 40 deaths. You are free to argue for vaccines, but please don't selectively quote misleading statistics, even TFA does.

So? "Measles once infected four million people and killed 4,000 of them each year, mostly young children". What year and over what period? Four million in the US population sounds around the birth rate, so that's one death per 1000; if that's around 1988 then the UK was a lot healthier - one death per 35000, but I bet it was longer ago than that, I'd assume the US wasn't that must worse. Ditto the savings: if you don't have the dates then the information is worthless.