Measles in the past was endemic. Everyone got it at some point. Most survived and so the population was somewhat resistant. But today? Without that resistance it would spread through any unvaccinated population like something from a hollywood movie.
Measles is the most virulent common infectious disease, clocking in at R0 ~ 12 to 18. For comparison, Covid's is 2 to 6 and chickenpox 10 to 12.
Only about 1 or 2 out of a 1,000 measles infections results in death [2]. But something like 1 in 4 results in hospitalization. We don't have that hospital capacity.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/measles/symptoms/complications.html?CDC_...
It was slightly less infectious, but with a mortality rate of 10%, it was immediately taken seriously in a way that COVID was not.
There's a story of a US Marine escaping from measles quarantine in the US to visit Gene Tierney, a Hollywood starlet, in town who was pregnant, and the infant being born with severe life-long complications.
That is the argument for people to get vaccinated - to protect via herd-immunity those that cannot get vaccinated.
https://dev.vijeejournalist.com/2015/07/agatha-christie-mmr/
For example, every once in a while, a new flu strain hits a certain younger or middle-aged cohort much harder than usual, because some other strain decades ago left lingering immunity in yet-older people. Examples:
2014 flu season: https://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center-news/2014/10/flu-hi...
1977-78 Russian flu: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus_subtype_H1N1...
As a result, this season of abnormally-low flu infections may not be unvarnished good news. When normal interaction levels recur, we may see a rebound of flu cases – in numbers & severity – from all the people who didn't get a typical mild seasonal re-exposure. Decades from now, people may suffer for having missed a survivable-exposure-while-young. Time will tell.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190123174405.h...
"Scientists compared blood samples of eight crewmembers who completed missions to the International Space Station with healthy individuals who remained on Earth. Blood samples were taken before launch, at several points during the mission and after the astronauts' return to Earth.
The results showed that NK-cell function is impaired in astronauts as compared with pre-flight levels and ground-based controls. At flight day 90, NK-cell cytotoxic activity against leukemia cells in vitro was reduced by approximately 50 percent in International Space Station crew members."
The link you posted doesn't make that claim. The word antigen doesn't even appear in the article you linked.
Rather, it claims:
"In order to do that, you have to first figure out what's causing the decline: Is it stress? Is it microgravity? Is it radiation? Is it a plethora of things? When we figure that out, we can try to find ways to directly target those factors and mitigate them."
Having said that, we know for a fact humans can't survive long term in a completely sterile environment as babies wouldn't have their integumentary system and digestive systems populated with commensal organisms shortly after birth in a completely sterile environment.
So it's seems at least plausible to me that living in a increasingly sterile environments is likely to be a net negative on overall health etc etc.
"Immune issues sound familiar to Dr. Jerry Linenger, an American astronaut who spent more than four months on the Russian space station Mir. He said he was never sick in orbit, but once he came back to Earth “I was probably more sick than I was in my life.”
Astronauts launch into orbit with their own germs and get exposed to their crewmates’ germs and then after a week with nothing else new in the “very sterile environment” of a space station “your immune system is really not challenged,” Linenger said."
Thus we can see that not being sick while in orbit, despite all the stress and other space factors - microgravity/radiation/etc. - which are supposed to weaken immune system, while getting sick on return when those space factors disappear clearly favors the immune system antigen exposure dependence explanation.
Yeah, I can see why having astronauts not get ill in space makes sense at the moment, and that for more long-term viability of living in space humans are going to probably have to take their mess and germs with them.
And also that lack of exposure to immune-challenges probably represents a net-negative effect on our well-being in this life and also reduced selection-pressure in the evolutionary sense.
Quite concerning!
> When someone is infected with a virus they’ve seen before, the immune system tends to pump out antibodies created during the first infection. That immune memory normally helps fight off secondary infections faster, but that memory can occasionally backfire if the virus has mutated in the right way to evade those original antibodies – as happened with last year’s flu.
i.e. youth exposure to a particular 70s/80s strain of the flu virus actually worsened the immune response in 2014?
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/measles/transmission.html
[2] https://www.popsci.com/story/health/how-diseases-spread/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_transmission
[5] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/scientific-br...
Measles Aerosol R0 12–18 vs COVID-19 Respiratory droplets and aerosol R0 2–6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number
(Technical stuff means that sometimes, we don't even get the actual virus, but that point doesn't really take away from the argument).
I'm gonna trust the health professionals here.
In the famous Coburg outbreak 2001 it was an anthroposophic school (Waldorf), infection rate 1000 of 200.000, no one died. In all subsequent outbreaks it was always such a school. The virus is transported from Waldorf School to Waldorf School with an average vaccination rate of only 60% compared to 90% elsewhere. Hence it could not jump over to the neighboring districts. Why these schools are not yet forbidden is interesting. But you can safely call it a Waldorf illness.
No, your children dying of measles is a Darwin test.
1) You are poor and can't afford medical treatment in time. 2) Very young and haven't been vaccinated 3) Not young, but don't have immunity for a variety of reasons, including unable to be vaccinated and immune system issues. 4) You are simply unlucky
But my understanding is that the vast majority of protection comes from other people wearing masks, is that wrong?
The US has been extremely behind other countries but even the CDC has finally acknowledged the benefits
For example, a Hitler mustache would probably be okay (though it may negatively impact your health in other ways)
https://blogs.cdc.gov/niosh-science-blog/files/2017/11/Facia...
One of the funniest things I've seen :-)
Also, as others mentioned - flu shots.
But it's a perfectly valid opinion that the benefits do not outweigh the societal impact of treating each other like infection vectors instead of having normal social behavior (as well as the option to wear a mask or stay away from people if your priorities are different).
I would rather risk death than live the rest of my life in a bubble, and there needs to be more of a discussion of what people value and the tradeoffs we're making.
Whose?
2. The medical establishment does NOT want a bunch of flu cases flooding into already-overwhelmed hospitals.
3. Is there a possibility of interaction between COVID-19 and the flu? I have no idea, I just made this up.
so yeah, I think the risk of the flu is a lot lower, and the vaccine might be less effective, and there are risks to getting vaccinated, but presumably the various risks of the flu during a pandemic are worse than the risks of the flu during normal times.
And then around April it became evident to me that maybe it is fine to wait until next year.
Never got around to getting it.
This does not seem correct. The data on this does not require travel or social interaction. The CDC (and other gov't agencies throughout the world) literally has cooperation with sites around the world to monitor the rise of new flu strains. These sites use technology like: the telephone, the internet, and the fax machine, to transmit the information the world uses to develop the current generation flu vaccine.
So you are supposed to get flu shot, so that if you get covid, you have better chance of it going easily.
The company I work for organized flu shots and you did not had to go to clinic. It was in work, people were spread out so you was in room alone when they shot you.
The issue is - COVID, too, shall pass, people will come out in the open again, and meanwhile the measles vaccination rates have dropped a lot, thanks to irrational beliefs made popular by "influencers".
Doesn't make much sense, I know. But on the other side at least for us we are not skipping nay vaccinations, nor for us (mainly flu) nor for out 11 month old kiddo.
Source? My impression was that very few cases of transmission from young kids were observed, precisely because they were isolated. The adults might bring Covid into the house and spread it to the entire household, but the kids staying home means they can only get it from the adults. Nothing about being intrinsically less contagious, and everything about having an environment that minimizes contact.
Why's that a good thing? Children get between 4-8 viral infections a year and thus build up natural immunity with no issue.
There's a reason you have an immune system.
Natural immunity is much more effective for viruses that don't change much: measles, polio, chickenpox, coxsackievirus (hand-foot-mouth), even common-cold coronaviruses.