I had measles as a child, too. Fortunately, my parents are doctors and I was well cared for and nature was good to me as well. So here I am, pretty much fine. I’d rather have not had the disease, all things told. Incredibly contagious disease. I was in the room with the other sick child for only a few moments.
also...
Suppression of the immune system by measles lasts about two years and has been epidemiologically implicated in an increase in childhood mortality from other infectious diseases during this period.
Disclaimer: I am an internet rando -- talk to your doctor.
Why does distrust arise toward the institutions and hierarchies that speak for science? There is distrust of the universities, government agencies, media, pharmaceutical companies, and big tech that those scientists belong to. And that distrust turns science from a matter of conclusion into a matter of identity, based on 'who said it' rather than what the evidence shows.
In fact, 42% of US graduate degree holders trust scientists, but only 21% of high school graduates do [1] But when you think about it, governments, state agencies, and even universities themselves are not actively trying to improve this. Maybe humans are beings who create hierarchies and live within identities regardless of the truth. Some people think humans built civilization because farming created a need for labor, but I sometimes wonder if instead, people gathered around a certain identity (whether religious or otherwise), and then farming began in order to feed that labor force. That ideal I always heard as a child, a world where all people become one, without class, race, or discrimination, might just be something that the human species can never truly possess.
[1]https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20244/public-perceptions-of-sc...
Having trouble parsing this one.
I'm old enough to have lived with Y2K. It's not really talked about much nowadays and I suspect a good number of people don't even know about it but leading up to 2000, everybody knew about it. By 1998 it was something you'd see on the news. Anyway, a ton of work went into eliminating Y2K issues and when 2000 happened, everything kinda kept on working.
Lots of people looked at that and unironically said that Y2K was a hoax. I actually wonder if this was a significant contribution to the distrust in authority that contributed to the rise of anti-vaxxers. To be fair, that did start before 2000. The disgraced former doctor Andrew Wakefield blew up in the late 1990s over the UK's triple jab and his effort to sell an alternative, which failed.
Polio (effedtively eliminated in most countries), smallpox, measles, Guinea worm (due for elimination in the coming years), etc didn't disappear on their own. Australia is on track to eliminate cervical cancer by 2035 due to the widespread adoption of the HPV vaccine [3].
Sometimes it's hard not to feel like we live on the dumbest timeline.
[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html
[2]: https://www.kff.org/other-health/measles-elimination-status-...
[3]: https://www.health.gov.au/ministers/the-hon-rebecca-white-mp...
I suspect a lot of "vaccine skepticism" is just an expression of such needle phobia.
Maybe developing more needle free vaccine delivery mechanisms would solve a lot of this problem. I have much doubt about arguing people out of phobias.
They died, Kayleigh. There were just 9 other siblings to see who survived
Football fans can get infected and spread the virus in their home countries if they get exposed.