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Comment by tu7001 | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

> As far as I know measles is completely harmless disease

You're being downvoted because you're wrong. Measles can have serious complications: potentially leading to permanent damage to health, or even death.

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/measles/complications/

And then there's mumps, which the MMR vaccine also protects against. I have permanent very loud tinnitus and am deaf in one ear due to catching mumps as a teenager.

Well, I'm saying it from experience. Explanation of it cold be, in that times we got this disease in age around ten and, also we were in good health condition. In that case, this will be majority in developed countries, measles is harmless.

Measles is not a completely harmless disease. In most people, it runs like you say. In a small number, it leads to encephalitis or a number of other sometimes-fatal complications.

It's not something we'd want to be endemic again.

There was an absolutely heartbreaking account of a mother whose daughter was severely disabled by measles on BBC Radio 4 yesterday - hardly a "fun" event.

Roald Dahl's daughter Olivia caught measles when she was seven. His account of it always makes me cry:

"one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn't do anything.

'Are you feeling all right?' I asked her.

'I feel all sleepy,' she said.

In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead."

https://www.roalddahl.com/roald-dahl/timeline/1960s/november...

Measles is not "completely harmless". For every 1000 children with measles about 2 or 3 of them will die. And this is in developed countries. That's a lot of children when tens- or hundreds of thousands get infected. It's a virus disease, not bacterial, so there's not much you can do other than waiting for the body to fight it. Or not be able to fight it, as it were.

It's also highly contagious, i.e. it spreads like wildfire. The only way to contain it is to keep up a high vaccination rate. Those who don't vaccinate their children will ultimately be responsible for someone else's death(s), whether their own children are fine or not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles

In addition- diseases are not something static. They change. Usually for the worse. They get more efficient at infecting, acquire immunities to antibiotics. So even something harmless going round - has the potential to become dangerous.

It is not the same contracting it as a kid or an adult:

"Most measles-related deaths are caused by complications associated with the disease. Serious complications are more common in children under the age of 5, or adults over the age of 30. The most serious complications include blindness, encephalitis (an infection that causes brain swelling), severe diarrhoea and related dehydration, ear infections, or severe respiratory infections such as pneumonia."

Not sure what you mean by "antiscience"?

Are the statistics about the decline in vaccinations wrong?

Maybe look up the US measles fatality statistics at the CDC or Bureau of Vital Statistics?

Do you have something specific you want to say here?

For every 1,000 children who get measles, one or two will die from it.

https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/complications.html

https://www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-outbreaks.html

There's more than just the risk of immediate death. It also partially wipes your immune system and opens you up to a host of other illness, which can also be life threatening or cause various forms of morbidity.

Why is the measles harmless in developed countries, but in undeveloped countries it kills tens of thousands of people every year? -[YES, I know this isn’t true]

[Update]

Downvoted for asking a simple question to help someone think through their illogical reasoning?

Of course, the person to whom I responded who actually made the statement about developed and undeveloped countries was flagged killed so people think I’m making the statement...

Hilarious! I just leave this as a warning to future viewers. Don’t try to walk someone through their mistaken beliefs.

It isn't harmless anywhere, that's the thing.. it's just that in developed countries the "supportive care" is a bit better - there's no real treatment though, so people still die from it, every year, in western Europe.

Measles killed 72 children and adults in the European Region in 2018.

According to monthly country reports for January to December 2018 (received as of 01 February 2019), 82 596 people in 47 of 53 countries contracted measles. In countries reporting hospitalization data, nearly 2/3 (61%) of measles cases were hospitalized.

http://www.euro.who.int/en/media-centre/sections/press-relea...

You are downvoted for whining about downvotes.

> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

Probably not. I was downvote 3 times before I commented.

Look at my profile. I’ve been playing longer than you. Try to be a little more self-aware in the future.

Someone needs to burn some fu points explaining when people get it wrong.

I hope you appreciate the points I’m wasting on you.

> I’ve been playing

Well there’s your problem! The points do nothing, just like having a really old account. Nobody really cares.

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