Vaccination status of children with measles and autism spectrum disorder in the US: a comment on secretary of health and human services
Measles is the most contagious disease that is transmitted directly between people. Epidemiologists use a metric to find out how many people are expected to get sick with a particular illness. The R0 is more than enough for this disease. The R0) for COVID-19 at the start of the Pandemic was thought to be about 2.3, while the R0 for influenza was thought to be 1–1.
Responding to the Texas outbreak, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has acknowledged that vaccines are important. He simultaneously praised the benefits of cod liver oil and the benefits of vitamins. A supplements for treating the disease. The vaccine advisers were supposed to meet with the CDC. The meeting that was due to be held at the end of February has not yet been rearranged. Kennedy has also said that the HHS will investigate the recommended childhood vaccination schedule. He should outline the scientific evidence for this move and provide reassurance that there will not be a reduction in vaccines coverage.
The vaccination status of 650,000 children was recorded in a study by researchers in Danes from 1999 to 2010. They combined those data, on measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccines, with data on autism spectrum disorder diagnoses. They did not find a difference in the incidences of Autism between vaccination and unvaccinated children. Ann is a person. Intern. Med 170, pp. 513–520.
A forest fire, but no sparks yet: the fate of subacute measles panencephalitis in Maryland as a forest fire
One of the most eerie long-term effects is a rare, almost always fatal complication called subacute sclerosing panencephalitis. It develops years after a measles infection and is characterized by cognitive decline, personality changes and dementia.
Approximately one to three cases in per 1,000 unvaccinated children are fatal. Roughly 5–6% of infected people develop pneumonia, which is the most common cause of death in young children with measles. Measles can cause hearing loss and even blindness.
People can fool themselves into thinking they have a cold with the first 2 to 4 days of symptoms. People who have measles might be more reticent to get in touch with each other. The disease’s red spots tend to appear several days into the illness.
In 1991 a single athlete with the disease was in a sports stadium and spread it to 16 other people, two of which were sitting at least 30 metres away.
That’s hard to predict. A measles outbreak is like a forest fire throwing out sparks, Moss says. Maryland has a 97 percent immunization rate for the vaccine, so if a spark is found in the state, it will go away. Moss says that if sparks from the initial fire land in communities where vaccinations are low, then there will be multiple large outbreaks.
William Moss, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at the Jesuit university of Baltimore, Maryland, says that they have not yet seen signs of the outbreak slowing down.