LITMIR.BIZ

      A sign in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn in New York City tells people who have been exposed to the measles or who have symptoms of the disease not to enter the building. Earlier in 2019, Mayor Bill de Blasio declared a state of emergency during a measles outbreak in the city’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.

      Spencer Platt/Getty Images

      Immunization rates are down, particularly in certain communities, and the incidence of measles among the unvaccinated has been on the rise, reaching the highest level since 1992 during the first eight months of this year. Infectious disease experts say unless this trend reverses, the disease is poised to return full force this school year.⁴ Some states are eliminating exemptions from mandatory vaccination policies for schoolchildren, and health officials are using a variety of strategies to overcome skepticism about the necessity and safety of vaccines.

      Measles is transmitted by direct contact with infectious droplets or spread through the air for up to two hours after an infected person breathes, coughs or sneezes. Babies, young children, pregnant women and people with compromised immune systems are at greatest risk. Measles is so contagious that a single child in a pediatric oncology clinic in Shanghai infected 23 other children; nearly 22 percent of them died and more than half suffered severe complications.⁵

      Before the measles vaccine was introduced in 1963, about 4 million people in the United States contracted the disease annually, says Dr. Sandra Fryhofer, a member of the board of trustees of the American Medical Association. Of those who caught measles each year, 500 died, 48,000 had to be hospitalized and about 1,000 developed chronic disabilities from acute encephalitis, an inflammation and swelling of the brain that can cause hearing loss, pneumonia and brain damage, she says. “Worldwide, it killed between 2 and 3 million people annually,” she says.

      Before the development of vaccines, thousands of people each year were sickened, impaired and even killed by common illnesses such as measles, mumps and chicken pox. Vaccines have led to the decline or eradication of many of those diseases, leading to public complacency about the dangers of diseases such as the measles, says Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a division of the National Institutes of Health that conducts and supports research on infectious diseases.

      Description

      Most Americans Support Mandatory Measles Vaccine

      As the number of measles cases rises in the United States, Americans overwhelminglysupport requiring that all children be vaccinated against the disease, a stricter rule thanexists in most states today. A similar percentage say they have been vaccinated formeasles, and 87 percent believe the vaccine is safe.

      Source: Gabriella Borter, “77% of Americans say kids should get measles shot even if parentsobject: Reuters Poll,” Reuters, May 7, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y3qcxdkr

      Although health officials in New York declared on Sept. 3, 2019, that the measles outbreak there had ended, by Sept. 5, 2019, 1,241 measles cases have been reported nationwide, with cases in 31 states, according to the latest report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).⁶ Of those who caught measles this year, 130 people have been hospitalized and 65 have suffered complications such as pneumonia or encephalitis.⁷

      Moreover, preliminary data from the WHO indicates measles is on the rise worldwide, with reported cases up 300 percent in the first three months of this year over the same period in 2018.⁸ A 43-year-old Israeli flight attendant and mother of three contracted the disease in March after flying from New York City to Israel. She suffered brain damage, fell into a coma and died on Aug. 13, the third measles death in Israel since 2018.⁹

      Public health officials blame this year’s measles outbreaks on anti-vaccine groups and misinformation spread via the internet, social media and through documentaries such as Vaxxed: From Coverup to Catastrophe. This film was written, produced and directed by Andrew Wakefield, a British researcher who is best known for writing a 1998 article in the British medical journal The Lancet linking vaccines to autism, which has since been discredited.¹⁰ Amazon removed Vaxxed from its video streaming service after Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., complained to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos that it contained misleading information about vaccines.¹¹

      Despite the overwhelming scientific consensus that the MMR vaccine is safe for healthy children, reluctance to have children vaccinated continues to pose a public health challenge—and is not limited to the United States. The WHO calls such “vaccine hesitancy” one of the top 10 threats to global health and a serious hurdle to the worldwide eradication of measles.¹²

      In the United States, all states have requirements for schoolchildren to receive the MMR vaccine, but 45 states allow parents to opt out for medical, religious or philosophical reasons. Many parents who oppose vaccines have done so using the philosophical and religious exemption.

      Linda Fentiman, a professor at Pace University School of Law and author of Blaming Mothers: American Law and the Risks to Children’s Health, says anti-vaxxers are “disproportionately people with more education, more wealth or more time. They typically cluster in groups, and the word spreads about how to claim exemptions.”

      But Richard Moskowitz, a family physician specializing in homeopathic

Скачать книгу