Anti-vaccine activists spark a state's worst measles outbreak in decades

[DonViejo]

By Lena H. Sun May 5 at 7:00 AM

The young mother started getting advice early on from friends in the close-knit Somali immigrant community here. Don’t let your children get the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella — it causes autism, they said.

Suaado Salah listened. And this spring, her 3-year-old boy and 18-month-old girl contracted measles in Minnesota’s largest outbreak of the highly infectious and potentially deadly disease in nearly three decades. Her daughter, who had a rash, high fever and cough, was hospitalized for four nights and needed intravenous fluids and oxygen.

“I thought: ‘I’m in America. I thought I’m in a safe place and my kids will never get sick in that disease,’ ” said Salah, 26, who has lived in Minnesota for more than a decade. Growing up in Somalia, she’d had measles as a child. A sister died of the disease at age 3.

Salah no longer believes that the MMR vaccine triggers autism, a discredited theory that spread rapidly through the local Somali community, fanned by meetings organized by anti-vaccine groups. The advocates repeatedly invited Andrew Wakefield, the founder of the modern anti-vaccine movement, to talk to worried parents.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/anti-vaccine-activists-spark-a-states-worst-measles-outbreak-in-decades/2017/05/04/a1fac952-2f39-11e7-9dec-764dc781686f_story.html?utm_term=.ae90f03c547f&wpisrc=nl_evening&wpmm=1

[nycbos]

1. What an idiot

[Warpy]

2. This is why public health laws need real teeth in them

Measles isn't just an inconvenience, it's a killer with a long prodromal stage and it spreads like wildfire.

[LeftyMom]

3. I'm just posting so I can find this thread later after the retro disease enthusiasts show up.

[tblue37]

4. K&R. nt

[0rganism]

5. sometimes i wonder if the anti-vax movement is a Putinbro plant

an epidemic or two in America's denser population centers would be quite the destabilizer

[Warren DeMontague]

7. nobro, somebro peoplebro arebro justbro organicallybro stupidbro.

[LeftyMom]

8. I doubt that. It was long established and organized when my kid was small 16 years ago.

The history of the organizations promoting it is pretty easy to find (most of them date from the 80s and real problems with the DTP vaccine, which is why there's a different version now with a safer pertussis component,) and how it all shifted to autism panic post-Wakefield. Probably at least partly because their original raison d'etre was no longer a concern and a lot of the leaders were making a damn fine living on their anti-vax activism.

And then it blew the fuck up on mommyblogs and babycenter due date boards and all that kind of crap as soon as it became a thing. A big part of that subculture is that any parenting practice seen as conventional or easy is suspect. People will literally tell you you're a bad mom and going to ruin your kid forever if you put them in a bouncy seat or a stroller instead of carrying them every waking minute, and lord help you if they don't sleep next to you too. Admitting to formula feeding without some sob story about how your tits were ripped off by farming equipment will get randos calling CPS on you. They're big into any kind of "alternative" health stuff. Nobody will bat an eye if you take a baby for chiropractic adjustments but they say all kinds of crazy shit about vaccines.

But there were riots opposing smallpox vaccination in colonial New England. And Putin didn't get in a time machine and cause those. Or tell people in Sudan that the polio vaccine is a plot to sterilize them. There's nothing new under the sun.

[MicaelS]

9. Some people are too fucking educated for their own good.

They think because they're educated in one area, they're educated in all.

[Warren DeMontague]

6. sigh

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

10. We don't need no Gol danged science

[ismnotwasm]

11. Anti-vaxxers can go fuck themselves.

[Hekate]

12. My personal heartbreak on this issue is that my own daughter is an anti-vaxxer

My history at DU would show I am a fiery advocate FOR vaccinations. Or I was.

Well I guess I will still be here, but my daughter and I are both on Facebook, and it has been an education of sorts. She's smart, she's no child, but seven years ago she lost her daughter to SIDS, and that level of trauma does things to a person.

I could not understand why she had become so anti-science until I scanned the fb postings and discovered there is a cottage industry of stories about how vaccinations cause SIDS, in addition to a host of mysterious crippling diseases.

I understood then, and I won't argue because I'd like to have access to my two remaining grandchildren, but ... It's heartbreaking.