Science Could relatives of measles virus jump from animals to us?

[Notebook]

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-50839868

There is some resistance in the UK now for general immunisation of childhood illness.

When I was at school aged 5-10? we were all inoculated with the common types.
Polio, diptheria, whooping cough, mumps, chickenpox,and a few more I can't remember.
The mumps failed as I caught it and had a few weeks off school with a swollen neck, and general unpleasantness.

My parents generation had even worse diseases to cope with and child mortality wasn't unknown.

Just wondering what the situation is worldwide?
Obviously as a child you have no choice, but I don't remember any opposition
from parents.

 

[Artlav]

It seems to be a plague worldwide, with various flavors in various places.

Here in Russia a typical argument i've heard goes "Sure vaccines work. Real ones they gave us back in USSR, not this modern commercial poison".

Back when i was in school, parents weren't even asked.

 

[Notebook]

Similar experience.

Both my parents had "Scarlet Fever", both sent to dedicated hospitals away from home.
Fever hospitals as they were called.

This is late 1930's before anti-biotics and Penicillin was still in the lab I think.

 

[Urwumpe]

Right now, the measles simply follow the air routes to those places with really bad immunization rates. Samoa for example was badly hit last month, with just 90% immunization. Before it broke out badly in Ukraine.

The big problem is keeping new-born children away from infected, before they could be vaccinated - when Measles break out, it is too late to start it.

 

[RisingFury]

It seems to be a plague worldwide, with various flavors in various places.

Here in Russia a typical argument i've heard goes "Sure vaccines work. Real ones they gave us back in USSR, not this modern commercial poison".

Back when i was in school, parents weren't even asked.

Of course the old USSR vaccines worked! They were loaded with radioactive isotopes!

 

[Notebook]

Might not have got out of the UK, there was a now discredited report from Dr. A Wakefield linking MMR vaccine to autism.
This caused a drop in vaccinations in the UK, and some distrust in general of vaccines.

https://www.nhs.uk/news/medical-practice/ruling-on-doctor-in-mmr-scare/

 

[Linguofreak]

Might not have got out of the UK, there was a now discredited report from Dr. A Wakefield linking MMR vaccine to autism.
This caused a drop in vaccinations in the UK, and some distrust in general of vaccines.

https://www.nhs.uk/news/medical-practice/ruling-on-doctor-in-mmr-scare/

Unfortunately, it did get out of the UK; it's one of the primary allegations fueling our own local anti-vaxxers in the US (although anti-vaxxism was a thing here before that; still, the supposed vaccine/autism link gave the anti-vax movement a... shot in the arm. *rimshot*).

 

[Notebook]

Unfortunate indeed.
I don't remember any anti-vaccine movement here till this came out.

Nothing worse for public confidence than the medical establishment arguing with itself.

At least they did an investigation and hopefully won't happen again.
Damage is done of course.

 

[Artlav]

Worst part is, it's mutating.
Wakefield linked competitor's vaccine to autism.
Media linked measles vaccines to autism.
Gossip linked vaccines in general to autism.
International memetic mutation spread seeds of "vaccines are bad" everywhere, which caught root on whatever local fertile ground happened to be there - Big Pharma, golden billion conspiracies, racism, commercial medicine, extermination plots, spy missions, you name it.
And all these, in turn, started spreading back in a deranged game of broken telephone.

It's ironic how much it resembles flu.

Nothing worse for public confidence than the medical establishment arguing with itself.

And that's the fun part - medical establishment never had any arguments or controversies about this. The issue was settled back in the 90s and scientifically debunked decades ago.

 

[Urwumpe]

And that's the fun part - medical establishment never had any arguments or controversies about this. The issue was settled back in the 90s and scientifically debunked decades ago.

And I will never really understand why arguments or controversies are considered bad.



Did somebody remember the famous argument around formula one engines, if ten or twelve pistons is the way to go? Did this leave any impression that combustion engines or formula one cars are generally a badly unproven technology?


Its good if people argue about something. The important thing is about what they are disagreeing - and about which things they must have agreed to have this argument.



If Anti-vaxxers can't even agree to reason and manners - its very hard to have a meaningful discussion with them. And that does not mean the vaccines are the problem.