CDC sends experts to fight measles outbreaks in Pacific islands neighboring Samoa

With a eye on Hawaii which has a poor vaccination rate the CDC is sending staff to help Samoa combat the measles outbreak before it spreads.

With a population just under 200,000 almost 5000 have contracted the disease with over 70 deaths (mostly infants and children).

The outbreak began in October of this year after an extensive campaign by anti vax shills forced the government to suspend the vaccination program which in effect dropped the numbers vaccinated almost 30%. Following a declaration of emergency, curfews etc, and an extensive vaccination program the numbers have reached 93%.

As a grim control group, both the islands of Fiji and Tonga also had outbreaks but given the 99% vaccination rate they as yet have had ZERO fatalities.

www.washingtonpost.com...

So, antivaxers caused the pandemic there in one year? I doubt it. You do not need to get the measles vaccine every year and for that many people to wind up in the hospital, I have to wonder how poor their nutrition is in that place. Most deaths from Measles happen in areas of poor nutrition or where there is not good healthcare around to combat the secondary infections. Not many people die from measles itself. But measles taxes the immune system and then other diseases can take hold.

The CDC has always exploited figures to make what they want to promote look more necessary. I do not see a problem with the measles vaccination myself, even though I never saw anyone actually wind up in the hospital from getting the measles. But I came from a town where people used to feed their kids well, many people these days do not have that luxury.

In poor parts of the world I am sure that Measles does kill quite a few people. They have poor nutrition and not very good healthcare but here in the states the figures are way better than in poor countries.

The CDC has always exploited figures to make what they want to promote look more necessary.

a reply to: rickymouse


Source, or just hyperbole?

Why would the CDC, and organization that marks success by preventing disease, make it look like there is more disease?

OH, yeah. You guys think everything is a scam to get money.

Nevermind.

The CDC has always exploited figures to make what they want to promote look more necessary.

a reply to: rickymouse


Source, or just hyperbole?

Why would the CDC, and organization that marks success by preventing disease, make it look like there is more disease?

OH, yeah. You guys think everything is a scam to get money.

Nevermind.

a reply to: KrankBruder

Even if you're right.

How many socks does a socks does a socks socks socks does socks.

Touch the doll where it hurt you.

originally posted by: KrankBruder

The CDC has always exploited figures to make what they want to promote look more necessary.

a reply to: rickymouse


Source, or just hyperbole?

Why would the CDC, and organization that marks success by preventing disease, make it look like there is more disease?

OH, yeah. You guys think everything is a scam to get money.

Nevermind.

You do not need a source, just throw out your Romaine every day and make sure to get a Zika vaccination when the chances of getting Zika here in the US is like one in a million.

The CDC blows things up all the time, they have to make it look like the citizens are getting their money's worth. Is that so hard to comprehend, that an organization that makes money off of the public would make the public a little fearful of cutting back their funding.

I am not against the CDC, I have their site bookmarked, along with the FDA and check out both sites at least once every month or so to keep up with what is going on. I am not saying it is a scam, just an organization that is interested in keeping money coming in to keep their people working. If we never heard a peep from the CDC, their funding would probably get cut......that is just the way it is. No conspiracy at all.

Now the FDA, that is in the pockets of Pharma companies and chemical companies, deriving much of it's budget from approving new chemistries and from fines that are levied against those who lie to get their products approved. I think we need to reorganize the FDA and include rules that nobody of power from the FDA can work for big Pharma or come from big Pharma. That is something that needs to be addressed to keep the management at the FDA in check. Also, the FDA needs to do it's own testing and evaluation before approving chemistries, enough of the companies supplying proof and proof of product liability insurance in place of our agency actually doing testing before approval. That is what happens when the big wheels in the FDA were employed by Pharma and return back to Pharma with a big salary increase after altering rules and regulations at the agency. Again, greed, not really anything you can call a conspiracy, that is just the way it is.

originally posted by: rickymouse
So, antivaxers caused the pandemic there in one year? I doubt it. You do not need to get the measles vaccine every year and for that many people to wind up in the hospital, I have to wonder how poor their nutrition is in that place. Most deaths from Measles happen in areas of poor nutrition or where there is not good healthcare around to combat the secondary infections. Not many people die from measles itself. But measles taxes the immune system and then other diseases can take hold.

The CDC has always exploited figures to make what they want to promote look more necessary. I do not see a problem with the measles vaccination myself, even though I never saw anyone actually wind up in the hospital from getting the measles. But I came from a town where people used to feed their kids well, many people these days do not have that luxury.

In poor parts of the world I am sure that Measles does kill quite a few people. They have poor nutrition and not very good healthcare but here in the states the figures are way better than in poor countries.

I want you to think of how many babies are born in a year.

There have been nearly 5,000 births in Samoa this year. The quoted population immunization coverage there is 34%.

This means that in a population of only 197,687 people, there are 137,473 un-immunized people and this number grows by about 3,300 each year.

So, with 66% of the population as viable hosts for the Measles virus, it has a fairly large percentage of infectable population base to grow and spread from.

Also, your assumption that the anti-vaxers had only begun this year is invalid. The anti-vaxers have been operating there for as many years as they have across the rest of the world.

I take it, from your response, that you believe the anti-vaxers?

Perhaps you need to look at this very situation as a prime, real-world, example of how wrong, and actually life-threatening, this belief is.

a reply to: FredT

So an outbreak "just happened" right after an anti-government campaign against vaccinations.

Hmmm, how convenient.

originally posted by: DBCowboy
a reply to: FredT

So an outbreak "just happened" right after an anti-government campaign against vaccinations.

Hmmm, how convenient.

The outbreak was this year. The anti-vax campaign has been running for decades.

Other Islands, in the close vicinity, with very similar climates and people of very similar genetic makeup, have had zero fatalities. Those other islands also have nearly 100% immunization rates. Figure it out!

a reply to: FredT

The whole anti-vax thing seems to come from a third world, uneducated mentality so that's not surprising.

..and yet we see it here in the first world where people should be more intelligent than that. I suspect most of it comes from people who are paranoid of doctors and they play out their fears by inventing insane conspiracies where all of medicine is out to get them. Facts are secondary to the issue.

Anti-Vaxers are likely directly responsible for quite a few deaths each year.

a reply to: chr0naut

I honestly do not know any old adults who got the MMR vaccine. Up until the eighties, kids got the measles and life long protection against ever getting it again. I was born before 1957, For some strange reason that year divides people into needing the vaccine or not needing the vaccine. I would like to know why.

Also, I had the measles like most people and the majority of older people do not need it. Of that two hundred thousand people there, I am sure the majority of them already had the measles so they do not need the vaccine, just like the kids who already had the measles this year there. I doubt if twenty thousand of those people there actually need to be vaccinated and evidently getting the measles once is better protection than the vaccine.

Give me a disease that is way more critical to vaccinate against and I will say sure go ahead. A lot of kids here who were vaccinated have been getting the measles, but now those kids have real protection since they got the real measles. I had them once when I was young. I am sure that the majority of adults on that island had the measles already and do not need vaccinating.

originally posted by: rickymouse
a reply to: chr0naut

I honestly do not know any old adults who got the MMR vaccine. Up until the eighties, kids got the measles and life long protection against ever getting it again. I was born before 1957, For some strange reason that year divides people into needing the vaccine or not needing the vaccine. I would like to know why.

Also, I had the measles like most people and the majority of older people do not need it. Of that two hundred thousand people there, I am sure the majority of them already had the measles so they do not need the vaccine, just like the kids who already had the measles this year there. I doubt if twenty thousand of those people there actually need to be vaccinated and evidently getting the measles once is better protection than the vaccine.

Give me a disease that is way more critical to vaccinate against and I will say sure go ahead. A lot of kids here who were vaccinated have been getting the measles, but now those kids have real protection since they got the real measles. I had them once when I was young. I am sure that the majority of adults on that island had the measles already and do not need vaccinating.

So, the 72 deaths from measles this year in Samoa are not serious?

Yes, it is unlikely that someone will get measles twice, and therefore you do not need to immunize those who have already survived the disease. However, that also means that the 4,995 cases of measles in Samoa this year must necessarily have been first infections.

And the thing about measles is its high rate of infection. If you are exposed to someone with measles and have not been immunized (either through having had the disease or by vaccination) you have a 95% chance of getting it.

The majority of the deaths have been children, every one, a first infection and all preventable by immunization. The deaths per infection rate in Samoa has been close to 1.4%

The MMR vaccine doesn't cause autism. It does, however, have side effects, but those are medically manageable and occur at a rate of 0.1 % of those immunized. Even the extreme allergic reaction causing anaphylaxis occurs only about 0.000132% of the time (33 cases out of 25 million doses delivered) and if it happens, it happens right there in the doctor's office.

Not immunizing does not make any rational sense. Natural infection rates, productivity losses and deaths make it cheaper for a country to run a large scale immunization program for free, than to bear the consequences of the disease.

Not only that, but as population immunity rises, the hosts for the infection reduce, which means that mass immunization programs compound prophylaxis.

a reply to: chr0naut

I have no problem if someone wants or does not want to vaccinate. All my daughters kids got vaccinated for the MMR. But my youngest daughter did not get adequate immunity, she did not want to get revacinated for a hospital job unless necessary, and even with the vaccine she did not have measles protection, so she got just the measles part. She has had medium quality side effects from vaccinations sometimes, none serious, just causing her to miss work so she did not want to get a vaccine again if she did not have to. The tests cost her about two hundred dollars.

The side effects on vaccines have been greatly understated, Doctors have a hell of a lot of paperwork to prove that a vaccine caused a reaction so they rarely say it6 does. I learned how much paperwork was involved from one of the Pharma or FDA sites, basically they have to rule everything out with tests if they say someone had a severe reaction to a vaccine, I verified this with my doctor, he has me as intolerant to the flu vaccine but because it comes from past doctors reports he does not have to go through the hoops and spend a lot of time on it. The same goes for being severely allergic to a medication he said, so he just changes the meds and does not go through the proper paperwork that winds up on statistics.

I was supposed to be a doctor, so I learned to talk to them almost like colleagues many decades ago. I usually choose the doctors by them not having good bedside mannor, I like the ones who will tell you how to avoid needing to take pills instead of pushing pills. Funny how when you talk to them like that, they treat you differently, explaining what you are possibly doing wrong instead of humoring you and giving you pills to take away symptoms you are having. I prefer the doctor to tell me what I should change than be nice and write prescriptions.

The funny thing is that the doctors will treat different people differently, I hate the nice doctors that won't discuss how to fix things. Women flock to those kind of doctors because the doctor does not tell them to knock off the chocolate or wine. The doctor does not criticize their overindulgence of comfort foods. How do comfort foods work.....usually they dope you up, overdoing them makes you unable to rationalize properly most times. Those comfort foods are psycoactive chemistries that can alter your ability to think correctly. A little is good, too much can lead to enzyme imbalances.

So, am I against vaccines.....no. Let the buyer beware, but remember, Two percent of Americans can have a serious reaction to the Flu vaccine causing a cytokine storm. If it runs in your family, then chances are you should be keep an eye on whether you get real sick from one day to three weeks after a vaccination...that is according to the Pharma sites and the FDA which have these reactions listed on their sites. Quite a few families have severe reactions to the vaccines, but because someone in their family has had a severe reaction, the relatives do not get vaccinated for the diseases, so this means that their severe side effects percentages are flawed. The actual predicted cytokine storm percentage is about two percent, which is about six million in this country alone to the flue vaccine. Some of the people use the religious reason to not give their kid the vaccination, I know about ten people personally who do that. I chose the correct way, it is listed on my and my granddaughters medical records that we have a severe reaction. To get that, you have to show evidence and I did have evidence, so did my granddaughter and a few of my grandkids. But even with that on our records, it was not reported to the CDC, that would be a nightmare for the doctor so I did not want my doctor to have piles of paperwork.

Quite a few far northern Europeans from Northern Finland and Norway and some other Scandinavian countries have the same problem as I do. It is related to autoimmune diseases, the immune system overreacts if something is in the body. The newest type of vaccine they are working on is designed to trigger the innate immunity which can lead to people overreacting to things and it is a more permanent vaccine than the yearly vaccination. Hence the 1957 and before birthday is somehow involved in this somehow.

Open your eyes and mind up, the CDC is aware of these things, but downplays them as rare when they are rare in a worldwide seven billion population but not rare in some genetic diversities.

I have natural immunity to the flu and once I get a disease, I make a broad spectrum immunity which can be troublesome when you get old and lead to symptoms without actual disease being present.

I spent a lot of time researching this because I have it and so do most of my offspring. It does not apply to ninety eight percent of the world population, only to two percent worldwide or maybe around ten percent of Northern Finnish laplander people.

a reply to: rickymouse
www.theguardian.com...

It can actually. If in 2018 parents stopped vaccinating their kids then this is the time frame they would be vulnerable

MMR's are typically given at the 1 year checkup. Then a booster is given at 4-6 years. Its one of the later vaccines because there is some antibody protection from the mother present after birth providing a bit of protection.

If the anti vax shills hyped up the tragic deaths of two children in 2018 which was a horrendous medication error (the vaccine was reconstituted with an anesthetic thus resulting in the death) and people either refused the 1 year shot and the booster, you have a ton of kids that had zero protection

originally posted by: DBCowboy
a reply to: FredT

So an outbreak "just happened" right after an anti-government campaign against vaccinations.

Hmmm, how convenient.

No, the outbreak occurred after after anti vax shills got the rate down to 34%.

Similar outbreaks occurred on Tonga and Fiji with no fatalities as I stated in my OP

a reply to: FredT

Sorry, I should have apologized sooner.

Mea Culpa.

originally posted by: Blaine91555
a reply to: FredT

The whole anti-vax thing seems to come from a third world, uneducated mentality so that's not surprising.

..and yet we see it here in the first world where people should be more intelligent than that. I suspect most of it comes from people who are paranoid of doctors and they play out their fears by inventing insane conspiracies where all of medicine is out to get them. Facts are secondary to the issue.

Anti-Vaxers are likely directly responsible for quite a few deaths each year.

It takes a lot of nerve to subvertly call Californians, third world and uneducated ;~D

a reply to: FredT

In the article you listed, it states this which I copied from the article.

"Measles is caused by a virus and can lead to serious complications including pneumonia and inflammation of the brain that can cause permanent damage and be deadly, especially in small children".

The complications cause most of the deaths, not the measles. Yes, when kids do not have good healthcare available and they do not have a lot of decent nutrition, it does cause more deaths and hospitalizations.

I scanned quite a few articles about this incident, it is not anti-vaxers that caused the problem, it was some mismixed vaccines that caused the government to shut down the measles vaccine program till they could make sure things like that would not happen again. It was the fault of the people who mixed the vaccines that caused this problem. The measles spread from New Zealand. Since they reinstated the program, their vaccine rate is now at ninety three percent.

This cannot be blamed on anti-vaxers. Put the blame on where it belongs, on the people who mixed the vaccines. They made the people skeptical after there were deaths and sicknesses from the bad vaccines.

It seems that this incident has been twisted out of context by some promotors of vaccines, trying to hide their messup.