The other thing about measles is that it resets your body’s memory of other diseases. So all those times you’ve gotten sick? Your body’s memory cells no longer remember those illnesses, so even if you get the same type of illness again your body will react like it’s the first time you’ve been sick.
It’s so much worse than “just a disease”.
Measles does WHAT
Holy fuck
What the fuck what the fuck what the fUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK
antivaxxers also, in part, helped sabotaged the human lyme disease vaccine for lyme disease caused by borrelia burgdorferi infection (until 2016 the only known species of lyme disease causing bacteria in the USA). In 1998, the first lyme disease vaccine for the strain of the bacteria prevalent in the USA licensed. It passed clinical trials and was shown to be safe and effective; it was between 76 and 92% effective at preventing lyme disease with 3 injections. Antivaxxers proceeded to abuse the adverse affect reporting system, often complaining of arthritis, and this caused media and general hysteria about the vaccine. if you remember the flu vaccine hysteria around the swine flu epidemic, it was kind of like that. despite double-blind trials conducted both before and after licensing, that was unable to support their claims and instead displaying that the vaccine was safe and effective, the damage was done, and the vaccine was shelved in the USA. you can get a lyme disease vaccine in Europe, but Europe has a different strain of the bacteria that causes lyme disease.
Lyme disease can become very serious, it can infect the nervous system and cause neurological problems especially in young children who are often bitten on the head or the neck, undiagnosed it can cause chronic health issues that mimic other diseases. Without safe prophylactic measures beyond trying to minimize contact w ticks, this has driven people who have had lyme disease, have chronic effects from mass-disseminated lyme disease infection, or people who believe they have chronic lyme disease to go to quack doctors and undergo unsafe, unapproved medical treatment in an attempt to stop suffering.
This would not be happening on the scale that it is if antivaxxers didn’t straight up execute a supervillain plot to sabotage the lyme disease vaccine. the vaccine was licensed in december 1998, which was the year andrew wakefield published his fraudulent research on the MMR vaccine
antivaxer are terrorists and should be dealt like one
H.Bomberguy’s video on the anti-vaccine movement is absolutely worth watching in its entirety. Because it lays out just how fucking twisted and wrong the entire thing is, and how this entire movement that is KILLING CHILDREN is based on a lie for money.
wait wait wait wait WAIT!
YOU GUYS HAD A VACCINE AGAINST FUCKING LYME????
AND THOSE ASSHATS HELPED TO SHELF THAT STUFF?????????
Do you people even KNOW just how much trouble lyme disease makes every fucking year? Holy shit think of the possibilities!!!
So when I say I hate anti-vaxxers, yeah. This is why.
Yeah its not a viable belief system, it doesn’t have any nugget of truth or good intentions in it, the lie and the packaged alternatives that come with it are quicker easier money than you could ever make climbing the ranks of “big pharma,” these lies kill people, they become politicized and contaminate government legislation, and believers are not just quaint fringe eccentrics who only harm themselves. They’re abusing their kids, hampering medical progress, robbing other people of medical choice in situations like the Lyme vaccine, and actively making the world around them worse and deadlier. No mercy or tolerance for anti vaccine propaganda. Make it legally terrorism.
Gonna say it on every reblog of this post I see - This began because of ableism against autistic people. Jenny McCarthy insisted that her child’s autism was caused by vaccines, and enough people hated the thought of ever having an autistic child that they wouldn’t use vaccines. They did not care that their child would die of the illnesses prevented by vaccines, they would rather have a dead child than an autistic one.
Measles is also THE most communicable disease. It has an R value of 16-18 which means that every person with measles will infect 16-18 people.
As a comparison, the most communicable Covid variant, omicron has an R value of about 3-4. And yet colonized the entire world in a few months.
Just think what a measles outbreak in an unvaccinated community could do. A measles infection in a child does to their immune system what 7 years of HIV does.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could erase disease with these happy organ erasers? Sadly the only two diseases to be eradicated worldwide are smallpox and rinderpest. We are still working to get rid of polio, yaws, dracunculiasis, malaria and so many more.
If you had magic powers, what disease or condition would you choose to wipe off the face of the Earth?
We love the Olympics not only for the amazing feats of athleticism on display but also for the personal triumphs over adversity that bring the athletes to the games. Wilma Rudolph is a legend for both. At just age 16, she won a bronze medal in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and then took home 3 golds four years later in Rome. But even to compete at all was a victory for Rudolph. A sickly child, she survived premature birth, whooping cough, chicken pox, scarlet fever, measles, and infantile paralysis caused by the polio virus. Who knew this girl with a brace on her twisted leg would become the fastest woman in the world and an international star?
Tell your friend she’s got a little Wilma Rudolph in her. Reblog now to give her a little push.
This year saw the largest outbreak of measles in the U.S. since 1994, with 1,250 cases reported as of Oct. 3, largely driven by families choosing not to vaccinate their kids. Worldwide, the disease has resurfaced in areas that had been declared measles-free.
Some families choosing not to vaccinate argue that measles is just a pesky childhood illness to be endured. But two new studies illustrate how skipping the measles vaccine carries a double risk. Not only does it leave a child vulnerable to a highly contagious disease, but also, for individuals who survive an initial measles attack, the virus increases their vulnerability to all kinds of other infections for months, possibly even years, after they recover.
The research begins to explain something surprising that happened when the measles vaccine was introduced in the U.S. in the 1960s. Rates of childhood deaths from other diseases fell precipitously. The same thing happened as the vaccine was introduced around the world.
But what is it about the measles vaccine that seems to provide protection from more than just measles? The new studies published this week in the journals Science and Science Immunology provide substance to what has been the leading theory: Measles can damage the immune system by erasing the body’s memory of previously encountered antigens.
Omg, you guys. My FB memory from a year ago today was all, “Yay, my measles vaccines are up-to-date! I had my dr check my labwork…Michigan is having a nasty outbreak right now, so, yeah, I had them check my blood…Ya’ll should get checked too, measles is one of the most contagious diseases we currently have in our population. It’s a nasty little bastard.”
I was such a naive little baby girl in those days.
