BART riders potentially exposed to measles
Original post made on Feb 14, 2014
Read the full story here Web Link posted Thursday, February 13, 2014, 6:01 PM
on Feb 14, 2014 at 8:34 am
UC Berkeley should be asked how a student was able to matriculate without providing proof of vaccination against measles and other serious contagious diseases? Innocent people may die because of the infected student.
on Feb 14, 2014 at 11:01 pm
UC Berkeley doesn't care how this student got in without vaccination records!! My friends have students from Mexico all the time---with TB! One was put in food service before discovered!!! This is what you get for kissing the diversity god's butt.
on Feb 15, 2014 at 12:13 pm
"On Sept. 12, 2013, public health officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) called a press conference to announce that vaccination rates among pre-school children are "high and stable" and "less than 1% are unvaccinated." 1 More than 90 percent of American toddlers have gotten a measles containing MMR shot by age three, along with many doses of 10 other government recommended vaccines.
159 Measles Cases Reported This Year in U.S.
But health officials warned there have been 159 cases of measles reported so far this year, the second highest number of measles cases reported in one year since 2000. They put the blame on 92 unvaccinated Americans diagnosed with measles who had "philosophical objections" to vaccination, such as orthodox Jews in New York City and Christians attending a church in Texas, which they described as "clusters of people with like-minded beliefs leading them to forego vaccines." 2 3 4
There have been no measles-related deaths in the U.S. this year; however one government official said that 160,000 people around the world die from measles every year and the infection is "literally a plane ride away." She warned that "the measles virus can hang out in the air and if you are in the same waiting room as someone with measles you will get measles if you never had it." 5
Americans Born Before 1957 Have Natural Immunity
In the interest of full disclosure, I should acknowledge that when I was a child I did get measles and so did my sister and brother and all my friends. It started off with a fever, runny nose, sore throat and white spots inside our mouths and then an itchy red rash on our faces that spread all over and I remember wearing sunglasses in the house because the light hurt my eyes. My parents and grandparents and their sisters and brothers also had measles when they were children. When I was growing up in the 1950's, measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox were infections we all experienced but our parents didn't worry about those childhood diseases like they worried about polio.
Americans born before 1957 have naturally acquired immunity to measles and we passed antibodies on to our babies when they were born to protect them from measles during the first year of life. Because naturally acquired measles antibodies are different from vaccine antibodies, young vaccinated Moms today cannot give longer lasting naturally acquired measles antibodies to their newborns. 6
Things have definitely changed in the past 60 years.
American Children Highly Vaccinated
In August and September, the CDC published annual reports that once again confirmed American children are among the most highly vaccinated in the world. 7 8 9 In 2012, 95% of children entering kindergarten had gotten two MMR shots and so had more than 90% of high school students. About 1.8% of kindergarten children had a medical or personal belief exemption to vaccination on file with schools.
Bottom line: 95% of the approximately 75 million children under age 18 10 have gotten two doses of MMR vaccine and there is also a high measles vaccination rate among young adults in their 20's and mid-30's because, since 1981, 95% of all children entering kindergarten have received at least one dose of MMR vaccine and three or more doses of diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis and polio containing vaccines. 11
Now let's take a look at what measles incidence and death rates looked like before and after the first measles vaccine was licensed in 1963.
Infections & Vaccine Reactions: Misdiagnosis & Underreporting
It is important to remember that, like B. pertussis whooping cough and other infectious diseases, measles has natural cyclical increases and decreases every few years in populations.12 13 Plus, not all pertussis 14 15 or measles infections 16 17 are diagnosed correctly by doctors and reported to government health officials and the same is true for diagnosis and reporting of vaccine reactions, injuries and deaths. 18 19 20
Before Vaccine: Millions of Measles Cases Not Reported
Before measles vaccine was licensed in 1963, the CDC admits there was massive underreporting of measles cases and that "because virtually all children acquired measles, the number of measles cases probably approached 3.5 million per year (.i.e., an entire birth cohort). " 21 Other doctors say it was more like 5 million cases of measles occurring every year. 22 In 1960, three years before the first measles vaccine was put on the market in the U.S., there were about 442,000 reported measles cases and 380 related deaths 23 24 among 3.5 to 5 million Americans..."