Europe, especially France, hit by measles outbreak (vaccinations down)

Associated Press ^ | April 21, 2011 | JOHN HEILPRIN

[decimon]

GENEVA – Europe, especially France, has been hit by a major outbreak of measles, which the U.N. health agency is blaming on the failure to vaccinate all children.

The World Health Organization said Thursday that France had 4,937 reported cases of measles between January and March — compared with 5,090 cases during all of 2010. In all, more than 6,500 cases have been reported in 33 European nations.

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To prevent measles outbreaks, officials need to vaccinate about 90 percent of the population. But vaccination rates across Europe have been patchy in recent years and have never fully recovered from a discredited 1998 British study linking the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella to autism. Parents abandoned the vaccine in droves and vaccination rates for parts of the U.K. dropped to about 50 percent.

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[happyhomemaker]

Anyone who has doubts about vaccinations should simply ask someone like me, who lived through the 40s and 50s as a child, what it was like every summer when polio season rolled around. The fear was palpable and all parents lived in terror that their child would come down with polio. Thanks to modern vaccines polio is no longer feared every summer as it was only about 55 years ago.

I would encourage you to actually study the history of vaccinations. Most diseases were subsiding before a vaccination was even produced. Millions of people were exposed to disease and never affected. What was the difference? Immune systems were able to fight off disease in millions of cases. The idea to stab every kid with 20-30 direct diseases straight into the blood stream is questionable. There has to be a balance between supporting the immune system to fight disease and just jabbing every kid with needles full of disease in the believe that it will "prevent" disease.

[Reddy]

I can understand the hesitation to vaccinate, but agree that most vaccinations have saved countless lives. We vaccinate, but not in multiple doses (MMR given separately, for example).

My oldest son did have a reaction to a vaccination, it was not good but he recovered. I think it is healthy for parents to examine the issue and make the best decision for their family.

[porter_knorr]

vaccinations have a death rate though.

[nopardons]

Just one wee quibble.........there were NO vaccines for chickenpox until 1995, but children did indeed get vaccines to protect them from whooping cough.

Summer was, indeed, a very trying time for parents, until the polio vaccine came out.

[Reddy]

Before this gets into a long, drawn-out vaccinate -vs- don’t vaccinate thread, let me just mention that it won’t be the typical measles, mumps, rubella that wipes us all out. It will be a strain of antibiotic resistant bacteria that will probably help cause the end of the world as we know it.

[porter_knorr]

I’ve told this multiple times and never hear a satisfactory answer.

I had the measles shots as a kid (in the 70s)
I then attended two colleges across the country that each had a measles outbreak, because I didn’t have proof of vax, I had to get shots at both of them, (88 and 90 or 91).

fast forward to 2003, after a blood test when I was pregnant, they said I wasn’t immune to measles, so be careful around kids.

That’s what started my research into (non)vaccination of my child.

[davisfh]

I had measles when I was around seven years old. That was back in the ‘40s and I don’t believe that there was a vaccine at that time. It was a very difficult disease - high fever, lots of coughing up of the lesions that the measles left in my throat. I don’t remember how long that went on, but it must have been more than a week. And, by the way, I was kept in an almost completely darkened room so that my eyes would not be affected - and they weren’t. I recovered but was very weakened by the disease. I recall the first time I got out of bed after the fever broke. I was unable to stand and fell to the floor.

[happyhomemaker]

The only reason your children didn't get sick with something, such as measles, is because of the vaccination rate in the USA, which has all but wiped out many childhood diseases. So, if your children have made it through to adulthood without the childhood diseases that were quite common when I was a child, before all the vaccinations, then you need to thank all the parents who DO have their children take their shots

LOL Oh should my parents who were born in 29 and 38 and never had polio, mumps or whooping cough "thank" vaccinated kids of the 60's-90s? The idea that shooting multiple needles full of live virus into every kid is a miracle solution to disease as decided science is absurd. If you want to believe that you are a more "perfect" citizen because you take your kids into their government appointed shot schedules then go for it. After all it is the easy way and gets you points in group think

[nopardons]

That just is not so and because you never had your children vaccinated, should they come down with what was once called "childhood diseases", as an adult, your kids can become sterile ( mumps kills off sperm ), blind ( measles ), get not just chickenpox, but then, also shingles. Measles also kills, as do these other disease, the older one is, when they are contracted. Then, there's polio. At best that cripples; at worst, it also kills.

The more people refuse to have their kids vaccinated, the more chances of epidemics of these once almost completely done away with/controlled break out, as the above article proves.

The ONLY reason that the aforementioned diseases rarely appeared in America, in the past several decades, is due to parents having their kids vaccinated against having them and nothing else.

Immune systems usually fought off repeats of many diseases only after one had had them!

[happyhomemaker]

The more people refuse to have their kids vaccinated, the more chances of epidemics of these once almost completely done away with/controlled break out, as the above article proves.

so you know this as "fact"? What do you base your decisions on?

[nopardons]

Not everyone, born prior to the polio vaccine got polio...........do you want to take that chance? I don't think iron lungs are made any more.

Someone born in '38, could have gotten the polio vaccine, when it came out. Not saying your parent did, but it was possible.

Your parents NEVER had any of the "normal" childhood diseases? REALLY? Did they both live in very isolated places when growing up?

And FYI..........the parent born in '38 would have gotten vaccines for whopping cough and smallpox. Both were around back then and proof of a smallpox vaccination were, as far as I know, requirement to enter school, as far back as the early 1920s, if not earlier, so the parent born in '29, would have also gotten one.

[happyhomemaker]

The World Health Organization said Thursday that France had 4,937 reported cases of measles between January and March — compared with 5,090 cases during all of 2010. In all, more than 6,500 cases have been reported in 33 European nations.

So how many of these measles case ended up in blindness? It seems that most posters on this thread are concerned that measles causes blindness... so how many people in this group in all of Europe are now blind from contracting measles?

[nopardons]

Yes, I know it for a fact, as I have read many studies on the matter and before you launch into the usual :"THE PHARMA COMPANIES PAID AND/OR DID THE RESEARCH", garbage, that isn't true of all of the studies.

There are and have been massive epidemics, in nations that haven't had their populations vaccinated and those people spread these diseases, when they travel, as well as unvaccinated travelers to those outposts.

Germs, bacteria, and viruses just don't disappear......they hang around waiting to attack those who aren't protected. Immunity is built up by having many diseases, though a very few people do contract such a disease a second time, even though they've already had it before; usually less virulently than the first time. For instance, I did have regular measles twice, in the space of five years. The first time damned near killed me; the second time around it was no bid deal at all. And no, the second bout was NOT German Measles/Rubella, but the real deal.

[neverdem]

bump & a micro ping

[happyhomemaker]

Your parents NEVER had any of the "normal" childhood diseases? REALLY? Did they both live in very isolated places when growing up?

Maybe they did but there were never long term health consequences. I know my mom told me her 2 best friends got polio but even thought she was around them she never got it. Her mother did use herbal medicine and limited sugar which apparently had a profound affect on polio cases. Neither of my parents where "isolated" If you don't have young kids you don't understand the huge push to jab your kid with ever imaginable "vaccination" Also the difference is that lots of kids are wear housed in "daycares" and have constant colds yet have to be vaccinated on almost a monthly schedule. Their poor immune systems are overwhelmed

[Turbopilot]

Wait - are you claiming that vaccines do not prevent disease?

[happyhomemaker]

Germs, bacteria, and viruses just don't disappear......they hang around waiting to attack those who aren't protected. Immunity is built up by having many diseases, though a very few people do contract such a disease a second time, even though they've already had it before; usually less virulently than the first time

So you know this as fact? That immunity is "only" built up by having "many" diseases?? I think a lot of people are just hung up on the whole idea that stabbing enough people with a virus offers immunity. I just happen to not believe in the theory that loading a kid down with multiple viruses shot directly into their blood stream is a smart idea to keep the kid healthy.

[happyhomemaker]

Wait - are you claiming that vaccines do not prevent disease?

Wait - are you claiming that vaccines prevent disease?

[nopardons]

I had a young child and you better believe that vaccinations were part of what I did FOR said child, who never went to daycare.

Said now adult child of mine, has had my grandchild vaccinated, so don't tell me what I do or do not know about.

As I stated earlier, not everyone, born prior to the polio vaccine, got polio; however,many did, as your story about your mother proves. And sugar has nothing at all to do with getting polio! How do I know this? Because I remember several babies getting polio, when they were less than 6 months old, way back when. These children lived in the neighborhood and I didn't get polio either and since my mother was friends with two of the mothers, I was in and out of the houses, before it was known that the babies had polio.

Human immune systems are impacted by our modern day uber cleanliness streak, with parents constantly using anti-bacterial soaps of their kids, children not out and about as children used to be, and being exposed to viruses brought to this nation by foreigners; both legal and illegal.

Neither of your parents ever had the "normal" childhood disease? That's abnormal, because parents used to expose their kids to them, the younger the better, they thought, so that they would get them and be done with them, as soon as possible.

As I said, vaccines for smallpox was required in order to attend school ( and yes, you had to bring a doctor's note with you, to register a child ) for both of your parents and there was also a whopping cough vaccination, back then.

[Politicalmom]

I’d prefer my children to be blind over what happened to my nephew after his DPT shot.