Concerned About Vaccines And Autoimmune Disease? - Page 4

[pers]

Originally Posted by kathymuggle 

I am well aware measles is highly contagious.  It is one of the few vaccines I even come close to waffling over.  

That being said I was objecting to the "close to 100%".  That is quite the claim!  There is no way to know what the measles rate would be if people did not vax.  The world changes, heck diseases change (and many of them have cycles, some die out, new one are born or increase in rates...).  

Comparing it to the way it hit the New World in the 1700's is bizarre.

Plenty of studies show that measles vaccination is quite effective in preventing measles.  Prior to the introduction of the vaccine, it was true that close to 100% of people got it at some point in their life, mostly in childhood.  This was after improved food availability, less crowding, better sanitary practices etc. had greatly reduced mortality for measles and many other diseases, and modern sewage treatment had pretty much eliminated typhoid and disease spread by dirty water/food.  Yet measles, while not nearly as deadly as it had been, still  spread like wildfire.  

This changed very quickly after the introduction of the vaccine, and very soon after measles was quite uncommon.  Outbreaks in the 1980s (still small enough that the vast majority of people didn't get measles, but big enough to see i was still being spread around the population) showed we needed a higher percentage of immune people for herd immunity, adding a second vaccine which produced immunity in many of of those who had failed to develop it after the first vaccine solved this problem and lead to measles eventually being declared eliminated from the US.  We do still have imported cases, but the high level of immune individuals prevents it from spreading very far. 

Measles is still very common in third world countries with low levels of vaccination, but recent vaccination campaigns have greatly reduced rates of measles and measles deaths.  On the other hand, falling rates of vaccination in parts of Europe has resulted in measles making a comeback with many large outbreaks.  France this year had had thousands of cases with hundreds of serious complications and six deaths (as of the last article I read about it, which was a month or two ago).  France is hardly a third world country, rates of death/complications are probably quite similar to what we would expect from measles if we had large outbreaks here.  

So given all this, what reasons are there to believe that measles wouldn't quickly become a common disease which pretty much everyone got again if we stopped suddenly vaccinating?

True, comparing it to measles in the 1700s does not really work.   Then it was hitting a completely unprepared population where none of the adults were immune.  Now if we quit vaccinating children today, while a few unfortunate adults who had never been vaccinated or the small percent whose vaccines fail to produce immunity would be vulnerable, most adults would be protected either by natural infection for older adults or vaccination for younger adults, teens, and children old enough to have been born when vaccination was still common.  It would mostly be young children who got it, just as it always has been.   

[kathymuggle]

To be brief:

My objecting to the 100% number was an knee jerk reaction   100% is quite the number and I think you can understand my initial skepticism.  

A bit of research shows 90% rates prior to vaccine introduction.  I guess 90 is close enough to 100 that I should not split hairs.

Upon some reflection, I now tend to think measles (and I am only talking about measles at this point) may be controlled through mass vaccination or "herd immunity."  

Saying herd immunity and mealses may be a plausible argument does not mean I am saying you should vaccinate for measles.  A parent would still need to assess whether or not measles or the vax had the greater risk.

I still think the New World thing was weird, as it was so long ago.  While it might be interesting for some readers, using recent data from developed countries is the way to go.

 Do you know the ages of those who died in France - or have a link?  When I was a teen, a teen (maybe more than one) died of mealses in a nearby city.  Measles might be safer to have as a child than an teen or adult.  I would have to look into this more.

[MsFortune]

Originally Posted by kathymuggle 

To be brief:

 measles may be controlled through mass vaccination or "herd immunity."  

This is the scientific consensus, so it is nice to have you on board. 

The same logic and facts apply to all other contagious VPD.

This is how herd immunity works.

[savithny]

Originally Posted by kathymuggle 

I still think the New World thing was weird, as it was so long ago.  While it might be interesting for some readers, using recent data from developed countries is the way to go.

 Do you know the ages of those who died in France - or have a link?  When I was a teen, a teen (maybe more than one) died of mealses in a nearby city.  Measles might be safer to have as a child than an teen or adult.  I would have to look into this more.

Measles is safer to have as a child rather than as a baby or an adult, I believe.  

(The 90% figure I was reading was that 90% got it by 16 or 18.   Many of the rest would have gotten it after that point.)

My point about the New World epidemic was this:  as the anti-MMR movement began years ago, the pool of unvaccinated, and thus non-immune, people is not just little kids, people under 17.  It's a mixed-age group.  This means the disease, if it becomes endemic again, will likely behave in different ways than it did during past epidemics, and is more likely to behave the way it did in the first few new world epidemics.   Many of the older people in the colonies would have had it as children before immigrating, but there were far more older people who were not immune than there usually are in a population.   

[miriam]

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Edited by miriam - Yesterday at 5:22 pm

[MountainMamaGC]

I know of a few people on the crohns forum that had their first flare following an vaccination in their teen or adult years. I am severely autoimmune, and it has played heavily into my decision to vaccinate my child. I cant bring myself to inject her with adjuvents. They are designed to make the immune system to react and I dont think they fully understand what that means yet.

For the record, infections/viruses can also trigger an autoimmune disease, so it certainly makes sense that a vaccine can. I also know people that had their first flare following a viral or bacterial infection.

I would rather have a VPD once in my life, than to have to deal with crohns the rest of my life. My bowel exploded and that was not fun to say the least.