Measles: Four European nations lose eradication status | Hacker News Reader

Measles: Four European nations lose eradication status

bbc.com

136 pointspseudolus127 comments

The four nations are Albania, the Czech Republic, Greece and the UK.

Three failed states with endemic poverty problems, and the Czech Republic.

"All regions of the world showed an increase in measles bar the Americas, which saw a minor decline - although the US registered its highest number of cases in 25 years."

This surprised me, I thought the US was the epicenter of the anti-vax movement? Or is it just how things appear because of the constant news topics?

"'The Americas' is lower, USA is higher" is perfectly consistent with the US being the epicenter of the anti-vax movement, no?

Ah that makes sense.

It surprised me too, and it's unclear what their basis is for saying this.

This WHO page [1] on measles statistics claims a 60% increase for the Americas. Maybe the BBC interpreted a <100% increase as a decrease, or maybe I'm misinterpreting it, since I don't see the raw numbers.

1: https://www.who.int/immunization/newsroom/measles-data-2019/...

Conceivably "the Americas" could mean "the western hemisphere minus the US". It's an awkward way to put it, but it's an awkward concept.

The US is the epicentre of the disinformation movement surrounding vaccinations, but like any effective virus (hah, there's some irony), it spread. You will find that most anti-vaxxer rhetoric in other countries closely mimics the US material.

Medical professionals are effectively pitched in a fierce battle against a very successful meme.

It's just a perception because of what is shown on the news. The "vaccines cause autism" idea was first started by a UK doctor.

Everyone knows the reason for this, but no one is allowed to say it. This is quite a comedy.

Not really. The reason (dropping vaccination rates caused by an increase in disinformation) is both well-known and heavily debated and criticized.

In at least one of these four countries (the UK) there is absolutely no ban on talking about this problem, and it has seen solid coverage in the media for years.

Yeah that is not it

Europe and America are quite different in that regard. In Europe, the homeopathic practitioners took up the mission of spreading propaganda disinformation about the risks of vaccines for years. It's not a mainly internet phenomenon like in the US.

In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act

This isn't mentioned in the article, but the UK at least was only declared to have eradicated measles in 2017 - it was a very short-lived "eradication" that might just have been based on a temporary drop in the number of measles cases (they went up again quite substantially in 2017-2018): https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2019/08/19/measles-i... Also, measles didn't exactly return here, we had quite a few outbreaks even during the period where it was supposedly eliminated, there just wasn't evidence it was endemic to the UK during that time period.

What struck me about the map of Europe was not how many countries had lost the eradicated status but the number who have never had it. That seems more shocking to me than a possibly temporary loss of that status.

The map is actually on the Daily Mail! https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7403803/Four-coun...

Vaccines never used to be mandatory because mandatory medical treatment has a very bad track record. Medical treatment requires informed consent to be ethical.

Unfortunately, there is a new viral threat - or rather, a memetic one. A meme that encourages people to immunocompromise themselves and their children. We're not so good at vaccinating against lethal memes, but perhaps this is the pandemic of the 21st century.

It's not just an internet phenomenon; the originator was Andrew Wakefield, with the help of lots of traditional sensationalist poor quality news publications.

Edit: this is more controversial than I was expecting .. I don't normally ask for explanations of downvotes, and I know it's frowned upon, and normally when I get downvoted I know exactly which audience I'm offending and why. But I don't understand it here.

Its not just that mandatory medical treatments are ethically fraught (but not unheard of. Mental health is the most obvious example, but there are also mechanisms to force treatment on non consenting minors with their gaurdian's approval).

The other reason we didn't have mandatory vaccinations is that there was just no need. Vaccines are about as close to a miracle drug as you can get. With virtual no side effects, a 1 minute procedure makes you immune to illness that would previously have devastated society.

If you took vaccines back in time and told people what they did, but claimed the had every side effect they are accused of having, there would still have been lines out the door.

Pasteur had to do quite a lot of work convincing people of the safety and efficacy of vaccines originally. It wasn't an uncontroversial instant success. The versions of vaccines we have now are excellent, but there's still some which aren't side effect free - BCG leaves a scar most of the time!

> A meme that encourages people to immunocompromise themselves and their children.

Being unvaccinated is not immunocompromised. They're almost orthogonal and indeed someone can be both vaccinated and immunocompromised (and actually immunocompromised from vaccine injury).

> It's not just an internet phenomenon; the originator was Andrew Wakefield

Maybe in recent times? But there seems to have been people against vaccination since its origin.

Andrew Wakefield was simply an expert in gut health he didnt even want into the vaccine debate. He did very fair research that proved a link between between what he found in the gut and autism at the request of parents bringing their kids to him that was signed off as fully accurate by 12 scientists that assisted the research. It scared a pharma sponsor and got pulled from publication. That's all his story was and it turned into the all time anti vaxxer conspiracy somehow.

He spent years promoting the idea, and achieved a level of misconduct that got him disqualified from practicing medicine. Relevant chunk of Wikipedia:

> After the publication of the paper, other researchers were unable to reproduce Wakefield's findings or confirm his hypothesis of an association between the MMR vaccine and autism,[8] or autism and gastrointestinal disease.[9] A 2004 investigation by Sunday Times reporter Brian Deer identified undisclosed financial conflicts of interest on Wakefield's part,[10] and most of his co-authors then withdrew their support for the study's interpretations.[11] The British General Medical Council (GMC) conducted an inquiry into allegations of misconduct against Wakefield and two former colleagues.[12] The investigation centred on Deer's findings, including that children with autism were subjected to unnecessary invasive medical procedures such as colonoscopies and lumbar punctures,[13] and that Wakefield acted without the required ethical approval from an institutional review board.

> On 28 January 2010, a five-member statutory tribunal of the GMC found three dozen charges proved, including four counts of dishonesty and twelve counts involving the abuse of developmentally delayed children.[14] The panel ruled that Wakefield had "failed in his duties as a responsible consultant", acted against the interests of his patients, and acted "dishonestly and irresponsibly" in his published research.[15][16][17] The Lancet fully retracted the 1998 publication on the basis of the GMC's findings, noting that elements of the manuscript had been falsified.[18] The Lancet's editor-in-chief Richard Horton said the paper was "utterly false" and that the journal had been "deceived".[19] Three months following The Lancet's retraction, Wakefield was struck off the UK medical register, with a statement identifying deliberate falsification in the research published in The Lancet,[20] and was thereby barred from practising medicine in the UK.[21] A British Administrative Court Justice noted in a related decision—"There is now no respectable body of opinion which supports (Dr. Wakefield's) hypothesis, that MMR vaccine and autism/enterocolitis are causally linked".[22]

Fair enough. His conduct afterward could be looked at (though going beyond wikipedia may be necessary). But the original hysteria definitely painted a huge target on his back with a lot of misinformation. I don't think that's deniable

Liar. Fuck off.

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/?s=wakefield

Not sure why you are getting downvoted. It is probably quite helpful to look at the spread of vaccination misinformation as a meme (or rather, a memetic virus), and to attempt to formulate strategies against it.

There are few hypotheses as closely scrutinised and solidly disproven as the theory that (measles) vaccines cause autism, but a quick glance at the material spreading online shows that as one of the all-time favourites of the army of trolls and the misinformed.

I suspect you’re getting downvotes because your paragraph about a meme leading to people being immunocompromised could be interpreted either:

as being opposed to the meme that vaccines should be mandatory, or:

as being opposed to the meme that vaccines immunocompromise people.

I initially read it as the former, because your first sentence was critical of mandatory vaccines. Then I read your other posts, and realized you were likely making an argument about how this is a subtle problem, where we had an effective cultural/medical system before which avoided making anything mandatory, which is good because it’s better to not be authoritarian when we can avoid it, but a meme broke that effective system.

Is that right?

Basically yes. I'm opposed to vaccines being mandatory unless it's "absolutely necessary" - but it appears to be becoming necessary because the false meme "vaccines cause autism" is very infectious. But making vaccination mandatory doesn't stop the spread of the meme. So political pressure is going to build against vaccination, and that will have all sorts of weird and ugly side effects of making anti-science parties more popular.

I'm also saying we need to develop better public health methods against dangerous memes. Whether that's vaccination of the mind or breaking off a few pump handles.

On a population scale, anti-vax movement is self-regulating. People are anti-vax now because they have the privilege to be. When disease becomes a real threat to the survival of you and your family, watch how quickly this movement dies.

The problem is, on the path to this equilibrium, people die unnecessarily.

I can't understand why vaccinations aren't mandatory for non-allergic, non-immunocompromised children at this point. You shouldn't have the option to kill your kid, and especially others' kids.

My guess is that enough people did it without requiring a law. Laws can be costly to implement (additional bureaucracy) and are prone to edge cases. Better to just let it be while it works.

But now it does not and we may require laws unless the misinformation can be quenched soon.

You could fit it in with child abuse laws already?

I'm in the UK that has lost eradication status. Before I could claim my children weren't in danger because its eradicated. Now it isn't and am now exposing my children to a clear danger.

Is it not analogous to letting my children play with the bleach under the sink?

Forcing people to undergo medical treatment is ethically questionable at best. It's an extremely heavy measure to take.

So no, cost is not the reason and I think it's a bit scary that that's the best reason you could come up with.

I'm as sceptical of antivaxxers as most of HN, but I'm appalled at the level of support for forced medical intervention in the comments here. That's the stuff of dictatorships.

For that reason the laws don't make vaccinations mandatory, they make it illegal to enter public schools without a vaccination. Limiting dangerous activities in public places is accepted by most as a valid function of government.

I consider people who vote differently from myself to be a threat to my safety. Acting on that opinion is not a good idea.

The question isn't 'can we rationalise this?' - we can rationalise everything. The question is 'is the threat great enough for the government to start infringing on liberty?'. It probably isn't, otherwise we'd ban all hard and soft drugs (including alcohol & smoking) as a similar level of threat to public health. That battle has been fought and lost by the public safety folks.

An incentive program would probably be a good idea, but I expect there is already one in place.

Actually nuance is given close to the proper level of attention. You may drink yourself to death but some controls are in place to reduce the chance you’ll run someone over via drink driving. You may smoke but not in places where you might be fumigating others involuntarily. Etc.

It’s all about managing th externality.

Vaccination is not treatment. And we are being "forced" to undergo much more than that which is in our interest: filtering of air and water, food quality regulations and so on.

> That's the stuff of dictatorships.

I think that’s over the top. The most legitimate argument for forming governments is the management of externalities. It infringes on the factory owner’s liberties to restrict their dumping of toxic waste into the river.

Likewise vaccines and quarantine are ways to limit the spread of dangerous pathogens.

Abortion has externalities. However, we've decided that individual medical autonomy over one's body is sacred.

What externalities are you talking about? I fail to see how forcing women to give birth to children would do anything positive for society: either you'd have to force them to raise them, which would result in tons of children being raised by single mothers who don't want them, which doesn't sound like a very good environment (and also violates individual autonomy) and would have a lot of negative economic effects for society, or you'd end up with tons of kids in foster homes or orphanages, which would also have lots of negative economic effects for society, both for the costs of institutionalizing these children, and then later all the social problems they'll cause when they grow up and become criminals.

There are no real negative effects for vaccination, as long as you don't force them on people who have genuine medical conditions preventing them from taking them safely (e.g., allergy to vaccine components).

Externalities on the fetus.

Not necessarily a fan of forced vaccination, but a little remark to further the discussion:

Unlike most medical interventions, vaccination is not about one's individual well-being, but more about the protection of the entire population, especially other, more vulnerable individuals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity).

This is why some vaccines are recommended even if you're not especially in danger, because they help protect others that may not be able to be vaccinated (because they are too weak, or due to a special reaction to the vaccine etc.)

Not saying that it means that forced vaccination is morally justified however! But the question of vaccination is definitely not simply about individual choice in regard to one's own health.

Thought experiment: a government is faced with a problem, where they have to either force people at gunpoint to get a vaccination for a deadly disease, or the society will utterly collapse because too many people stupidly refuse to get this vaccine because of unfounded fears spread by some people who have a financial interest in doing so and don't understand the societal consequences of this (a pandemic is coming and it will wipe out most of the population). Is it right for the government to force vaccinations in this case?

Also, an interesting note: if you join the military, you have to get vaccinations. You're not allowed to opt-out.

Given how recently democratic western governments have conducted eugenics programs, I would be uncomfortable with any law that enforces mandatory injections for children - even for vaccines.

The cutoff isnt at injections here. Its way past that somewhere between vaccine and poison.

Your comment does not make any sense, what's the link between Nazi eugenics programs and vaccination campaigns?

One reason people refuse vaccination is that they are worried the vaccines are secretly an attempt to sterilize undesirable segments of the population. For example, see what happened with the tetanus vaccine in Kenya in 2014.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/tetanus-vaccine-sterilizat...

From the article:

> Ms O'Brien said all four European nations that have lost their eradication status have "extremely high" vaccination coverage.

Oddly enough, England hit one of the WHO's vaccination targets (95% of five year olds having received their first MMR vaccination) for the first time ever just a couple of years ago. Not just since Wakefield and co (though they certainly didn't help) but in the entire history of the vaccine.

Yeah I don’t know. I thought people in the US were/are abusing the religious exemption option (which states are rescinding). How are European patents skirting immunization requirements?

They just say "no". Apart from looks of despair and despise from their pediatrician nothing will happen.

In France, it is mandatory. Still, there is some cases of measles because of anti-vax that go against the law...

Although rare, vaccines can still have negative side effects, sometimes very severe ones, even in healthy children. I think that state shouldn't have the right to kill your kid, however small is the chance. As for children who can't be vaccinated and have to depend on collective immunity, they are as big danger as antivaxxers' kids. You wouldn't force it on the first group, what gives you right to force it on second group?

Just a reminder that Measles also has negative side effects, and refusing a vaccination may force it on someone else less able to withstand those effects.

Obviously. But the question is to whom do you feel you have bigger obligations - to yourself/your kid or some rando?

Related neighbour thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20837940

I would feel very sorry if I (or my children) infected somebody else with an easily preventable disease. And I would be super pissed if "some rando" did it to me!

Measles can still have negative side effects, sometimes very severe ones. Measles causes grave neurologic damage in approximately 1:10^5 and death in approximately 1:10^6 of naive children. The complication profile is far worse in adults. That's far more than the vaccine. What do you prefer?

Dunno why you think that I am antivaxxer. I tried to represent other, in fact quite valid point of view. Personally I would obviously prefer vaccine. But even more I prefer right to choose and not having government's decisions forced upon me.

Well no, the point of view you exposed has no logical basis. It stands on the fact that vaccinating one particular kid makes this particular kid at higher risk compared to others. Given that the herd immunity threshold is not achieved in most kids' communities, this results in a false assertion by a wide margin regarding risk of severe disability or death. It would be a true assertion if you argued an increased risk of minor symptoms or complication.

No. Your assertion is wrong because it assumes where does given person live. I'm from country where are measles considered eradicated and there it's completely valid strategy. If you're from country where is 1 case of measles in million each year, combined with the risks of severe harm as you listed, you'll find out there is orders of magnitude higher chance of being hit by lightning than suffering from adverse effects of measles.

Ok, we disagree based upon numbers. However, "eradicated" status just means "not endemic any more" really, and unvaccinated individuals tend to cluster in communities. Plus, the herd immunity threshold for measles is 95% and the chance of living in a community above that is certainly much lower than you think. Including in your country.

It's annoying how you keep assuming facts that you know nothing about. I happen to live in country where vaccinations are mandatory and parents have to go through significant trouble to avoid them. That incidentally means the chance of living in such community is much bigger than you think.

It's not about children. Majority of new cases are older adults (immunization failed after ~ 25+ years).

Define older adult - an age range please.

According to this [1] non-immune adults in the UK can get vaccinated, if born between 1970 and 1979, and hence got the single measles vaccine, or between 1980 and 1990 and hence missed the mumps vaccine.

However what about those of us born before 1970 (measles vaccine licensed in UK in '68), and so presumably never vaccinated against any of the three?

That would leave people of 50 and older, and viewed as having "life long" acquired natural immunity. So presumably not vaccination failure amongst them.

So is the "older adults" only referring to some age < 50, who were vaccinated, and that vaccine immunity has now faded?

Edit to add - there are age / year statistics available here [2], which lumps everyone >= 35 in one bucket. Which may imply these "older adults" are actually people between the ages of 35 and 50.

[1] - https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vaccinations/mmr-vaccine/

The section "MMR for non-immune adults".

[2] - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/measles-confirmed...

Seems like another topic that has a suspiciously polarising effect on people - i.e. people on both sides refuse to listen to each or are intrinsically are upset by the opposing view. Both sides have a point in my opinion, definitely more nuanced than this article portrays.

What is the point of not vaccinating?

the real question is why do people 'take a side'? I mean in all polarising debates not just this one.

Because people care about the welfare of the group but disagree about how to achieve it. It is a matter of safety versus personal liberty and you're not going to get easy answers.

Anti-vax, flat earth, alt right... I often ask myself, are these the same kind of movements that brought down the civilizations before us?

What makes the current situation unique is the ubiquitous presence of the internet as a very robust and very efficient infection vector for disinformation.

We've just never had something quite like it.

On the other hand the civs bevor us had far less people, so they probably didn't need internet to distribute the news.

Since the population boom it took quite a while to get something like the internet set up.

In the marketplace of ideas, a lie travels half-way around the world, before the truth gets is shoes on. It's a lot easier to broadcast low-effort bullshit, than rebut it.

It's funny, having been part of the generation that was educated as a youngster midway through the rise of the Internet, I can't help but feel envious of young people now who have access to a wealth of resources I never had growing up.

Nowadays, one can go online and find PDFs of textbooks, online lectures from prestigious professors teaching useful subjects, videos from conferences to learn latest findings, tutorials on practically every subject matter, Discord groups / subreddits from other enthusiasts, YouTube videos explaining practically every esoteric subject matter... I could've used so many of these resources when I was struggling in high school with classes taught by smart but bad teachers.

I guess I've felt like it hasn't been that hard to separate the 'good' information from the misinformation.

I grew up pre-Internet and I don't regret not having had access to it when growing up at all. The schools I went to had good libraries as did the town. I'm not sure I would have got more out of the Internet than I did out of books; I'm also not saying that I wouldn't, just that it is not a foregone conclusion that having access to a firehose is necessarily a better way to slake ones thirst than from a less dramatic tap.

I had no trouble finding textbooks, I could ask my high school teachers, my university tutor, my friends, classmates, and so on for help. As for the esoteric subjects, well they are esoteric precisely because not many people are interested in them so I don't think I lost out there either.

The amount of information available to me in the late sixties and seventies was already many orders of magnitude more than any one person could consume.

I wonder if we'll see to some degree much wider variance in intelligence in kids growing up with access to these resources. I was a fairly nerdy kid, but all I had access to was a crappy library, I was starving for interesting information.

But then again, if I was growing up now I very well may have become addicted to iPad games.

Radio had and to a lesser extent has a similiar effect - and it was also a robust vector for (dis)information. However it had bandwidth limits and centralization over limited airwaves. Plenty of disinformation was passed before but it was limited to those who had permission or ability to act without it without any consequences.

Meh. It looks like the UK's measles problem at least was mainly caused by the mainstream media acting as a vector for disinformation back in 1998, before most people had internet access: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... Current childhood vaccination rates are much better than they were back then, but unfortunately there are still a lot of people who're now in their teens and early twenties who have no immunity because they missed out on vaccinations.

This obviously does vary from country to country. Greece's big problem is more the complete destruction of its economy over the past decade and the vast damage this has done to healthcare access there.

They are connected via Anthroposophy[1]. Flat earth not as much - but who knows

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthroposophy

I always refer people to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusion... if they want to read about memes of the past.

A lack of understanding of varying viewpoints (~stereotyping) magnified by the internet resulting in social polarization seems like a more serious risk to me.

I think so too, the examples I listed are just symptoms, but it's the symptoms that bring you down.

I believe the risk of them bringing us down is amplified by overly eager grouping of people into categories like this.

It would be extremely interesting to be able to look back in time, as if on a TV screen, and see what really happened in ancient civilizations and see why they really collapsed.

From anthropological studies, it seems the usual cited reason is either environmental problems or invasions. Environmental problems are probably the main reason for most: they have a long drought, rivers dry up, crops fail, etc. But that doesn't explain why these peoples were unable to adapt, perhaps by moving elsewhere.

Of course, there's the Romans. They had some problems with volcanoes (Pompeii and Herculaneum I think), but those were local, whereas the empire spanned most of the continent, so they should have been able to handle it. From what I've read about it, it seems their society collapsed basically from too much corruption and bad governance; at some point, it became more sensible for people to abandon the cities with their aquaducts and plumbing and their highly specialized trades and move to a feudal lord's land and be a serf, working in the fields and living in a hut. So I really do have to wonder: what kind of stupidity on a massive scale happened to cause things to go that badly?

Well the Romans had an unsung reason as well which goes for many but not all invasions - pissing their neighbors off and then getting too weak.

I recall one documentary about Minioan archaeology - they had a practice of demanding/taking sacrifices from tributaries - the sacrificed adolescents weren't related to the other remains found.

Apparently they suffered many deaths from an eruption and then when they were weakened their feared reputation backfired as their tributaries invaded and decided now was the time for vengence and to put an end to them for good.

Corruption as a downfall seems to be a case of short term vested interests resulting in massive stupidity which also comes back to bite them. China weakened their navy massively over internal political disputes and even after they were forced to pay massive ransom and pardon pirates who decimated them. They even ignored the opportunity/hint as the pardoned pirates offered to sign up to be the new navy. Imperialism by western naval powers followed.

Don't forget the far left.

Could it be - in part - due to the virus changing? Other vaccines with high coverage are known to have lost effect due to mutation, such as pertussis. There is also the example of the best-guess flu vaccine of the season. The article mentions it is in highly vaccinated populations, which contradicts the heard immunity idea, as well as would equate to a high selective pressure on the virus to change. Also looking into this I've learned about how prior to the vaccine, mothers would pass on a temporary immunity to their children but that this is lost with the vaccine - could that also be at play here?

This may be valid. After both the last 2 measles outbreaks that hit the news in the US it was discovered in many of the kids tested that the strain of measles was actually from the vaccine itself. Not sure if that's classified as a mutation but I don't think thats supposed to be able to happen and spread that way. Will follow up with sources after I'm off mobile

Edit: Here are a couple of sources. The first claims to have proven that someone on the vaccine schedule spread measles in 2011. However I will correct that I thought the disney case was similar but I think that one may have been wild measles and only a few vaccinated were infected. These are just food for thoughts

https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/58/9/1205/2895266

This one is more scientific and dry but is from the CDC I believe and showed among other things an increase in sporadic measles outbreaks among vaccinated

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC228449/

The whooping cough is more interesting. You can find multiple cases of outbreaks among highly vaccinated people but the symptoms are allegedly milder so the vaccine is possibly doing something positive about it. The CDC is warning the vaccine is losing effectiveness.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/allthemoms/2019/03/14/wh... https://www.livescience.com/53359-whooping-cough-outbreak-ra...

Anyway interested in any takes on that. I'm not wildly anti-vax but even these mild questions on it were immediately downvoted. I think its a complicated and fascinating thing to talk about when people aren't crybabies about it

That's very interesting, I didn't know that. Looking forward to the sources, thank you

I'm interested as well, as I did some searching and found nothing like those claims.

Yes, because it's wrong. The measles is a live attenuated vaccine, meaning that in some extremely rare cases it could be transmitted and can cause minor symptoms. This is of course tested for and monitored, and current vaccine technology allows vaccines with a good safety profile.

That's my understanding as well, but as someone who tries their best to be a rational skeptic, I'm more than willing to reconsider my understanding given sufficient evidence (the key there being "sufficient"), so if such evidence exists I'd like to see it.

That first and last articles are pointing out evidence that maybe some people aren't 100% immune after vaccination - it doesn't point towards the immune and vaccinated as carriers. The CDC article is saying they found viral RNA in urine. The part I found most interesting:

"Since a single cycle of viral replication would be expected to take 17 to 24 h, it is unlikely that the RT-PCR detected the progeny of virus replicating in the urinary tract. Rather, this observation suggests that shortly after vaccination the input virus or viral antigen, in the form of nucleocapsids, is deposited directly into the bladder via interstitial fluid."

Looks like we're just peeing out the vaccine. I'm not educated enough to know if that's "live" RNA or not, but it makes sense it would be there, as it was introduced in the vaccine itself.

No. This disaster is really exclusively due to extraordinary stupidity. The vaccines you compare are very different. The measles vaccine is a live one (which is part of the reason why it worries people) and is very efficient. Pertussis has always been only 60% efficient due to the complexity of the germ which is a bacteria, not a virus. The flu virus is a very special case due to its rapid mutation and seasonal activity, which is the main reason why it's a challenge. This does not contradict the herd immunity principle, because the problem is precisely that the herd immunity threshold is not achieved in a reliable manner in the population, plus some stochastic failure risk depending on the particular case.

>The flu virus is a very special case due to its rapid mutation and seasonal activity, which is the main reason why it's a challenge.

Exactly. The flu and the common cold viruses are different from most others, which is why we don't have a cold vaccine and our flu vaccine is only good for that season's flu (maybe). The flu and cold mutate very rapidly and constantly, whereas those other viruses don't.

It's interesting how few unvaccinated people are required for the virus to come back. Here in Greece, I only know one person who doesn't vaccinate their child, but apparently such low densities are enough for viruses to propagate.

According to the French ministry of health, "the elimination of measles requires a 95 per cent immunization coverage level for young children." [0]

I've tried finding some good resource about mathematical modelling of infectious disease, but they're rather dry[1] or clearly biased.

[0] https://solidarites-sante.gouv.fr/prevention-en-sante/preser...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_modelling_of_infe...

The article tries to have us believe it's the anti vax movement doing this.

Although that's probably true in the UK, are we really going to pretend the problem in Greece is also some non vaccination movement? This is absolutely Orwellian.

Why is it legal not to vaccinate your child? Seems stupid.

Some no-vax downvoted you :D

Jokes aside, it's not stupid, it's just extremely dangerous.

It's unbelievable what a luxury we have nowadays! Saying NO to vaccines. Any person from the last 5000 years would have had these shots without thinking twice about it. We, on the other hand, think not about survival anymore, but about "oh, my freedom is endangered".

In what way is it not stupid?

In the way that children may die because of non-vaccinated people around them. And also all those people with serious diseases that can't risk taking other diseases, like people fighting cancer or whatsoever.

It's the so called mass immunization, and it's very well documented to have proven improvements in terms of health in the last century. Otherwise let's all go back to the Middle Age where people would die for a cold.

It's not me telling. It's being part of society. If you want to benefit from it, you have to follow social rules. Otherwise go live in a jungle like some people do. I find it unfair that a newborn should risk his life because people around are not immunized.

It's unfair to benefit from health improvements thanks to all the others that are immunizing themselves through vaccines. That's what I find stupid and evil.

First page result on google: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/...

I think I read "in what way is it stupid?". Sorry, my bad :)

If you make it a law that you have to buy and consume a certain product, what incentive is there for the manufacturer to care about making it a good one? If in a mandatory-vaccination world contamination and low effectiveness don't reduce the number of people getting vaccines, then I would forecast some serious quality issues as pharma companies (who are corporations, not nonprofit health organizations) get sloppy.

In a world where a single pharma company can be given total control of the manufacture of a specific vaccine via patents, mandatory vaccination is really asking for trouble. I could patent a vaccine to cure some random virus, use my army of lobbyists to convince the government it was a health crisis, and distribute saline injections for 20 years.

In a hypothetical world you are really right. In the real world, people survive measles thanks to vaccines, while it wasn't the case just 100 years ago. https://physiciansforinformedconsent.org/measles/dis/

Now, you can have all the most interesting 'pharma is bad' arguments, facts are facts. You don't have to go out and worry about catching measles. The biggest worry is "oh shit, will I catch the train?".

I'll speak from the American perspective, YMMV depending where you live: because the government can't dictate what you do with your body.

But, if you choose to send them to public schools for instance, they can impose requirements for attendance like vaccination, much like being required to pass a drivers test before using public roads.

And yes, you should get your kids vaccinated. https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/04/09/in-the-united-states-ru...

That's how I view it. It’s not a matter of it not making sense or being a "Duh of course you should vaccinate" which is how I feel about it, it’s a matter of giving that type of authority to the state. Once you do that, the precedent has been set.

Quarantining infections has been a function of government for 10,000 years.

Interesting that you brought that up, If you look up the history of quarantining, it looks a lot different than compulsory administration of medicines.

The slippery slope fallacy does not apply to governments. Once you give an inch, history has shown us indeed that miles are taken.

So why stop with vaccines? As a thought experiment, imagine the US moves to universal health coverage, where the government is the sole administrator of health payments. As a cost cutting measure, some department introduces legislation that requires proof you take your medication as exactly as prescribed in order to increase positive health outcomes, cut back on medicines administered, and reduce costly office visits. Again, similar situation to vaccines, "of course you should take them as prescribed", but do you want it to be forced? what if you feel particularly nauseous one day and don't want to take your nauseating-inducing drug? Or any other thousands of reasons people forget one time. Maybe you take more? Maybe the pharmaceutical industry was wrong about your recommended dosage and your medicine is killing you.

Anyways, it isn't hard to imagine. It's ironic to me that many proponents of "keep the government out of my body" vocalize support for these types of things.

> because the government can't dictate what you do with your body.

Except for the military draft?

Or unless you're a woman trying to get an abortion (in some states) apparently.

> Why is it legal not to vaccinate your child? Seems stupid.

Why do you feel you have the right to tell me what to do with my body? My body, my choice!

If your body comes close to me and can infect me with something then I have the right.

Then they shouldn't leave their property and keep everyone else off.

It's the other way around. If you choose not to be vaccinated when there is no medical reason that you couldn't be, it is your duty to stay out of public areas where you would be a danger to others.

Your rights and freedom end where my begin, and with such an approach you are attempting to kill me and my family by your negligence.

Is you/your family immuno-compromised?

Not relevant. Measles represents a substantial risk of death even in immunologically normal individuals.

Well if you have a normal immune system, you can get the MMR vaccine. Which if it is effective, should significantly reduce your risk of contracting measles as a disease, no? If the vaccine is effective, there are two casez in which ggp commenter's life is threatened by gggp commenter's rights: a) they have a immunologically normal, but have refused the vaccine for whatever reason, which is puts the risk on their shoulders, b) they have a compromised immune system, and cannot get the MMR vaccine, in which case gggp may actually represent a threat to their life not preventable by normal action.

Because people do not like to be treated like cattle? Parents want to have some control over how to raise their children, even if sometimes it leads to adverse effects.

Seriously? Then live in a jungle. We are meat since the second we are able to breath through our own lungs.

Their adverse effects have impact over other people. That's all I care about. That their poor children die because of their parents' beliefs, I find it very sad, but that's how it is, I can't change.

Libertarian leaning folks will say that forcing people to receive injections at the mandate of a government with a past history of abuse is an infringement of individual liberty.

Vaccines have undoubtedly saved millions of lives and eradicated numerous deadly diseases. But whether the government should make it illegal to refuse vaccines is not only a question of health, but one of individual liberty. The answer may be, "public health is more important than individual liberty", but this gets into a gray area.

A bunch of ostensibly libertarian people were all about putting that Ebola infected nurse in Texas in prison in the name of public health, contrary to the opinion of the medical community. Maybe a few people that call themselves libertarians just like libertarian ideals when they overlap with areas of self-interest.

That may be so, but it wouldn't matter much. People are messy. I've never met someone who is 100% consistent in their values.

It's a "slippery slope" argument: if the government is allowed to force it they may force bad things later. However it would be nice if people presented a cost benefit analysis (the risks of sliding down the slope versus the public health impact) rather than just declaring a conclusion.

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