“The measles gave you lifetime protection against measles infection,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Sean Hannity on Fox News.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/40537048

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“The measles gave you lifetime protection against measles infection,” - Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

If only there was another proven way of doing this without the risk of serious complications of getting sick.

  • diverging@lemm.eeEnglish
    35·
    2 days ago

    Measles silently wipes clean the immune system’s memory of past infections. In this way, the virus can cast a long and dangerous shadow for months, or even years, scientists are finding. The resulting “immune amnesia” leaves people vulnerable to other viruses and bacteria that cause pneumonia, ear infections and diarrhea.

    Those aftereffects make measles “the furthest thing from benign,” says infectious disease epidemiologist and pathologist Michael Mina of Harvard University. “It really puts you at increased susceptibility for everything else.” And that has big consequences, recent studies show.

    https://www.sciencenews.org/article/measles-immune-system-memory-infection

    • Suite404@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      1 day ago

      This is so frustrating. When covid hit, my wife and I were I’m that first wave. Her sister came to stay with us before it was in the spotlight and she caught it in the airport and we caught it from her. My wife couldn’t stand for more than 20 -30 minutes at a time for a year or more after. She had a slew of health problems that have only recently started to go away. If she caught the measles and that wiped the slate for covid… I dont even want to imagine.

      She ended up in the psych ward twice since then because of how much it stripped her of just normal life stuff for so long. And for it to possibly happen again by something completely preventable is just fucking rage inducing.

        • stoy@lemmy.zipEnglish
          4·
          2 days ago

          Ok, I get it, wrong place for a joke, though the general concept of a vaccine is to infect you with a weak/dead version of the agent causing the infection causing the body to learn how to fight the real thing.

          mRNA vaccines do differ in that they send in building blocks for the body to produce the weak strain itself.

  • 8ender@lemmy.worldEnglish
    15·
    2 days ago

    What if we could simulate everyone getting the measles without actually getting the real disease?

    • courageousstep@lemm.eeEnglish
      8·
      2 days ago

      Just got three of mine updated. I just don’t understand the anti-vaccine sentiment from parents were have been vaccinated their entire lives and have no adverse effects.

      Like. The critical thinking is in the negative.

  • atro_city@fedia.io
    3·
    2 days ago

    In developed countries the mortality rate is lower, for example in England and Wales from 2007 to 2017 death occurred between two and three cases out of 10,000

    In children one to three cases out of every 1,000 die in the United States (0.1–0.2%)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles

    So, the US has ~340 million people with 21% under 18. Maybe half are under 10? That’s about 34 million children. Say none of them were vaccinated and they all got measles. That’s 34k dead kids.
    Vaccination rates are probably around 90% at the moment though, so of the 34 million, 3.4 million would be susceptible. That’s 340 dead kids.

    If RFK Jr. thinks that’s an acceptable number of lives to sacrifice, go ahead. Do it.