‘Vaccine Hesitancy’ Blamed for Measles Outbreak in Ohio That has Hospitalized 32 Children
The trouble for public health experts lies in all the poor pandemic policy decisions that were never properly debated, thrust on an uneasy population, and failed to prevent transmissions or infections.
Last week, I reported that a significant outbreak of Strep A infections in the Denver, Colorado, area worried public health officials.
Now there is news of a measles outbreak in Ohio, which has infected at least 80 children and hospitalized 32.
A measles outbreak in Columbus, Ohio has sickened over 80 children and hospitalized dozens. The majority of these cases have involved unvaccinated children who were nonetheless eligible for vaccination. It is not yet clear how long the outbreak will continue, with the most recent case having been detected just last week.
Columbus Public Health officials first reported the outbreak in early November, though the first known cases are now believed to have begun in mid-October. According to the CPH’s publicly available data, updated Tuesday morning, there are now 82 confirmed cases of measles in the area, while 32 children have been hospitalized. None have died.
The number of cases is ticking up again after declining due to pandemic restrictions.
In 2019, right before the pandemic, the US saw the most reported measles cases since the 1990s. The majority of cases were in underimmunized communities, and 89% of people with measles were unvaccinated or had an unknown vaccine status.
“Ironically, the silver lining of COVID was we had 13 cases,” Abelowitz said, referring to the CDC’s official count of measles cases in 2020. “Now that we’re starting to see this outbreak here, this is what we were very fearful of.”
Measles has been considered eliminated from the US since 2000, which means that while there have been isolated outbreaks, there hasn’t been “continuous transmission of the disease for more than 12 months.” In the decade before 1963, when the measles vaccine became available, 3 million to 4 million people were infected and 48,000 were hospitalized per year.
Public health experts blame “vaccine hesitancy” for explaining away this year’s batch of cases. The Washington Post finds a way to blame Republicans (of course).
…More than a third of parents with children under 18 — and 28 percent of all adults — now say parents should be able to decide not to vaccinate their children for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) to attend public schools, even if remaining unvaccinated may create health risks for others, according to new polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health-care research nonprofit.
Public sentiments against vaccine mandates have grown significantly since the pandemic, said Jen Kates, a Kaiser senior vice president. A 2019 poll by the Pew Research Center found that less than a quarter of parents — and 16 percent of all adults — opposed school vaccination requirements.
The growing opposition stems largely from shifts among people who identify as or lean Republican, the Kaiser survey found, with 44 percent saying parents should be able to opt out of those childhood vaccines — more than double the 20 percent who felt that way in 2019.
It is also interesting to note that many cases are in an age range when pandemic restrictions may have made it challenging to keep up with vaccine schedules.
More than two-thirds of the cases confirmed so far are among children aged 1 year old to 5 years old.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends the first dose of a measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine for children aged 14 months to 15 months and a second dose at age 4 to age 6.
The trouble for public health experts lies in all the poor pandemic policy decisions that were never adequately debated, thrust on an uneasy population, and failed to prevent transmissions or infections. Trust, once lost, is tough to regain.
Deriding parental worry and politicizing concerns will do little to persuade many of the usefulness of vaccines. Perhaps a new strategy may be in order?
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Comments
Scrupulously avoided: What % of cases were illegals or children of illegals?
I couldn’t help but notice that “undervaccinated community” seems to be the only demographic listed. I wonder if there were some other association, as well.
“Undervaccinated community” is just the catch all category where CDC officials just dump all the inconvenient categories of people. Like the thousands of illegals that cross the border on a daily basis. You can bet that many of them are importing diseases into this country that haven’t been a problem for decades. Measles, mumps, smallpox. I never would have imagined these would be making a comeback in 21st Century United States. But there we go and here we are.
Wrong. The article does not say “undervaccinated community”. It says “underimmunized communities“, plural. It is not a “catch-all category”; it refers to actual communities, readily identifiable, where the immunization rate is below the national average. And that is mostly where outbreaks happen.
Hence the WaPo article last week with the pictures of chassidic Jews, because a handful of these underimmunized communities happen to be chassidic. These are a minority both of underimmunized communities and of chassidic communities, but they do exist, and they stick out when they have an outbreak, so they get far more attention than they deserve.
“The majority of these cases have involved unvaccinated children who were nonetheless eligible for vaccination”
So what is that from the quoted article?
What do you mean, what is it? It’s exactly what it says. The majority of the cases have been children who are eligible to be vaccinated, but who haven’t been. Exactly who you would expect to be at most risk. The next quoted article says that these children are mostly from underimmunized communities. I don’t understand how you see any contradiction or conflict there. What do you think needs explaining? Otto Kringelein’s assertion that there is a term “underimmunized community“, which is simply a catch-all category for all unimmunized people, is outright false. And so is
Dathurtz’s implication that there is some demographic marker, let alone Joe C’s suggestion that these are illegal immigrants.
There is no reason to suppose they are involved at all. None of the previous measles outbreaks have been associated with illegal immigrants. There are many undervaccinated communities, and almost all of them are composed overwhelmingly of citizens and legal immigrants. Until recently this was more a left-wing phenomenon than a right-wing one. Mostly crunchy granola types. That has probably changed as a result of the health authorities destroying their credibility with right-wingers in the last two years.
I’ve read enough of these pseudoscientific press releases over the decades to recognize when nebulous terms like “underimmunized community” or “vaccine eligible” are used to shield favored groups (e.g. illegals) by blaming vague “vaccine hesitancy” without specifics or proof to further a concocted narrative.
My first thought I would say 90% or more, just like the poliomyelitis we have been seeing
You are making stuff up again. The polio we have been seeing has not been among illegal immigrants, and neither is the measles.
I live in central Ohio and have seen and heard all this wringing of hands about
Measles for weeks now. The local media have done their best to scare people, but have been completely ineffective. No deaths from measles at all….but we did just have an 8th grader die of complications from the flu. (Don’t you dare say flu is more dangerous than measles!!!)
At risk??? At what risk??? Measles is a very common childhood disease and soon over with no after effects.
As a somewhat new parent, I’ve been shocked how coercive and manipulative those trying to push shots on my kid are. After all the lies I’ve been told, I resolved to not agree to anything until I have evaluated risks and trade offs myself— which is very difficult to find good data and info on. No more trusting someone because of a white coat.
My advice is to give your kids all the vaccines that were standard before the health system became political, i.e. as of about five years ago. Do not give them the Wuhan vaccine, and be skeptical about any new vaccine that is added to the list from now on.
Health system became political just in the last 5 years? Where have you been living for the last 40 years or more? The US healthcare system has been a political football for DECADES. Look at medicare/medicare as one example. The MIC (medical Industrial Complex) completely destroyed any and all credibility with the covid jab, so I don’t blame anyone for not wanting to get a vaccine ever again because of it.
SO about all the illegals flowing into the country, they ARE bringing in diseases that were not common here, and this is why you have robust border controls. Ellis Island comes to mind.
Yes, the health system only became political very recently. Five years ago it was not political.
?…health system only became political very recently?
What ever do you mean?
— When was Obamacare passed? He ran on this the first time, and on having done it the second time. Nationalized health care has been a political issue among other countries for generations, as has our lack of same.
Health system. Political. A while ago.
— Hillary, in her earlier episode as co-president, presided over a white house planning cabal that declared their intended redesign of the US healthcare system. Her availability for such things was a campaign talking point for the first term. These health-system machinations impacted the second term immensely. The plans as published informed every federal campaign since.
Health system. Political. A while ago, and robustly continuing.
— Building hospitals, or, indeed imaging centers, requires a govt “certificate of need” as determined by surveying the folks in that region’s health system already.
Building facilities seems pretty health system-y. Getting to declare whether competitors are permitted, backed by force of law, sure seems political. Been going so long, it’s just accepted practice.
–Introduction of non-taxed health care as an employment benefit was at least greatly accelerated by wage caps and tight labor around WW-II. The fact of employment-based health-care is a perennial campaign and tax issue; is part of union negotiations; and has an element of labor movement people’s economy wet dreams forever.
Health. system. We political you long-time.
— Let’s skip the details of Marx, and the spawned -isms.
?Not political til recently? Yeah, back in the Enlightenment — oh, wait they went off about health care constantly then. I mean the Renaissance — oh, wait. Lemmie take a bigger leap; back in classic era Greece — oh, wait.
I do not recall politics of the health system in the code of Hamurabbi — a polemic as well as prescriptions. The Egyptian panegyrics — political documents, all — are infested with the right Pharo’s bestowing health and care on the nation. Systematically. Via the govt, and economy he embodied and orchestrated.
From another source, there is the tale of The Hebrew God making retaining his people politically poisonous, by assaulting the health system of the oppressors. Call it scripture, myth, political founding story, or any other historical placement of that tale — it makes the health system in the story political.
Indeed, politicized, govt health systems have only recently become a thing — not until writing. That we know of, though some of those statues look…
Yes, the health system only became political very recently.
What the hell has 0bamacare got to do with the health system? 0bamacare has nothing to do with health care; it’s entirely about health insurance.
Mrs Clinton’s infamous committee during her husband’s first term was also entirely about health insurance, not health or health care.
Certificates of need are indeed related to health care rather than insurance, but no, “Getting to declare whether competitors are permitted, backed by force of law” is not political. It’s got nothing to do with politics. Corruption, sometimes; penny-pinching other times. Maybe local community politics, or personal conflicts, but not politics in the general sense.
“Introduction of non-taxed health care as an employment benefit”. Stop right there. Once again, you are confusing health insurance with health care.
It’s only about four or five years ago that medical decisions became political, and the health system can no longer be trusted.
The “real” vaccines that fit the long standing definition. But now, the lines are being blurred with covalent “vaccines” mixing traditional with the mRNA forms. One must be very careful. Are there risks with the old standard ones? Yes…. but well understood. Frankly, I am shying away from all vaccines these days for lack of confidence in the goals of vaccination.
IMO, yes, this is the right advice
There is some evidence that the monovalent measles vaccine is safer and more effective than the MMR shot, but of course it’s the trivalent version that is pushed (probably as a cost-savings measure as well as a convenience thing, I suspect).
If you do decide to get your kids vaxxed, it’s something to consider, along with shopping for a doctor who is willing to spread the shots out over a period of time and/or delay vaxxing until the kids are older so their bodies better able to handle it.
Do you have any link to evidence regarding efficacy?
By a pure matter of marginal probability, an individual vax would be less likely to cause an adverse reaction and this be interpreted as safer. That said, we are talking about very small risk probabilities in both types.
https://tobyrogers.substack.com/p/why-im-an-abolitionist provides a decent summary of the decades-long research data on monovalent vs trivalent measles shots. There are links in that article to a couple of good videos that should be watched as well.
TL;DR quote from article:
No politician wants to be responsible for an outbreak of polio, measles, or tuberculosis so they approve shelf-stable ineffective vaccines that cause net harms rather than the effective live vaccines that will eventually revert to virulence.
That’s the dilemma and that’s the starting place for any honest conversation about vaccine policy.
So when people ask, “can’t I use a slowed down or spaced out schedule” I say, “the best data set in the world shows that only three vaccines produce more benefits than harms, none of those vaccines are available in the U.S., and all of the vaccines on the U.S. schedule objectively produce more harms than benefits.”
You can be guided by ideology or you can be guided by the facts and those are the facts.
Well worth the time to read it in its entirety.
Also take a look at https://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/10/30/mmr-and-single-measles-mumps-and-rubella-vaccines-real-facts
They did the same with the polio vaccine, you can’t get live-virus polio vaccines anymore even though they’re vastly more effective.
And look and question what were the normal vaccines before the government induced plague. Have they made it a combination MMR and Covid vaccine and booster? Have they changed it to an mRNA version? And of course you have to vet and trust the source of information. Both the government and the medical establishment have proved they cannot be trusted to tell the truth anymore for political reasons.
It was much easier when I was a kid. I remember the sheer relief parents had when the Salk polio vaccine came out, and that when the Sabin oral version came out, EVERYWHERE was handing out the vaccine soaked sugar cubes. My kids got every vaccine available. Now they, and I, are worried about what can be safely given to my grandchildren. Because there is no institution, public or private, that can be trusted to tell the truth.
Subotai Bahadur
My tinfoil hat is fairly shouting in my ear that the real cause was way more likely to be “border security hesitancy.”
Yours and mine both.
Then you need to retune it, because you’re way off base. We know where the outbreaks have been, and in which communities, and I have not yet heard of one connected to illegal immigration.
The medical profession made this bed — now we have to lay in it.
As a “boomer”, I know that vaccine hesitancy wasn’t much of an issue prior to me or us coming to the realization that the government and it’s health “experts” can absolutely not be trusted. Now, all that I hear on various forms of media ie. Cable TV, broadcast radio, and Pandora are a barrage of ads promoting fear of new “scary” things that we must get vaccinated for before it’s too late.(roll eyes).
As soon as I saw “OHIO” in the headline I knew it was Columbus.
Nasty knock on effect for pushing a dubious not vaccine (as traditionally defined) resulting in a reduction of public trust for treatments of other ills. Planned or not our society now suffers thanks to our government’s response to Covid.
I am shocked at the number of children hospitalized for measles.
In my own childhood, long before the ubiquitous vaccinations, children got childhood diseases like measles and recovered from them uneventfully. We also never saw kids with deadly allergies, asthma or autism.
Childhood diseases WERE a problem for adults who caught them, however, and I would bet that the hospitalized statistic pre-1963 was composed largely of grown-ups, not kids.
At one time kids’ immune systems were amazingly robust, but no longer, it seems. We have helicoptered children right into invalidism.
Bingo.
I had measles, scarlet fever, and chicken pox as a kid. (Not all at the same time 😀 ) To listen to some people, you’d think I should have died at least three times.
In the 60s and 70s, these illnesses were NOT a big deal for the average kid. The only negative outcome I know in my personal circle of acquaintances was the principal’s son, who lost his hearing due to a bout with scarlet fever. Undesirable to be sure, but a far cry from death or severe disfiguration.
My bf’s sister was born after her mother contracted German measles, her legs were a twisted mass, no bones really and they had to amputate both her legs. This was in the late 50’s, I knew her as a teen. It was horrible , no matter how you adapt.
My cousin did not get the polio vaccine after it had been out 2 years, not sure why, they lived up northern wisconsin in the boondocks, but when the vaccine became available, they open all the school gyms to vaccinate everyone, I still remember being there, how thankful we were all. I had an uncle, this girls uncle too as her mother was his sister, die of polio at 13, so how you don’t get your kids vaccinated was mind boggling to me. She lived her life paralyzed from the neck down.
I understand vaccine hesitancy but the vaccines made in the 50-70’s , you really are dumb not to do it.
I also remember all the kids who had milder polio coming to school with limbs undeveloped, short skinny leg or arm. We all knew what happened.
My brother sister and I all had polio as 2,3,4 year olds, we were very lucky to have a very mild case of it with no lasting problems.
On German measles , it’s the 1st trimester that will cause all the problems. So you have a slight disease really bu tits what you pass to young pregnant mothers… That’s the real problem.
Rubella, also called German measles, is an infection that causes mild flu-like symptoms and a rash. Up to half of people infected with rubella don’t have any symptoms and may not even know they’re infected but still spread it to other people.
If you get infected during pregnancy, rubella can cause serious problems for your baby. Infection causes the most severe damage when the pregnant person is infected early in their pregnancy, especially in the first 12 weeks (3 months).
“after her mother contracted German measles… in the late 50’s”
There was no vaccine for German measles until 1964 anyway, so it was all luck of the draw.
“I understand vaccine hesitancy but the vaccines made in the 50-70’s , you really are dumb not to do it.”
If you make the automatic assumption that the vaccines you get today are the same formulations they gave out in the ’50-70s. The question is, how paranoid are you by now?
It’s not ‘vaccine hesitancy’.
It’s ‘medical establishment hesitancy’.
I used to take the flu shot. It was free and it might provide some protection.
I will never take another one in my lifetime because I DON’T BELIEVE that they wouldn’t stick the mRNA clot shot into it without telling me. That’s how badly they’ve destroyed their credibility.
What possible benefit would there be to doing that?
Gee, I don’t know. But I’m sure within the next decade, I will, as the truth comes out.
They desperately wanted every human being on the face of the planet to take one of those shots. They wanted it more than seemed rationally defensible. They were willing to physically assault me, ruin my life, and destroy my business unless I complied.
When people want you to get into the box that badly, you probably don’t want to get into the box.
I didn’t go in, and I’m damn glad I didn’t.
If you did, I’m sorry for you.
And putting it in a flu shot secretly offers no monetary gain and the potential for massive financial exposure?
It defies logic. Think for a second about all of the people who would have to be in on this to make it happen. And how many people would have massive side effects due to getting this spiked flu shot and a COVID shot.
You’re assuming the side effects are a “bug” and not a “feature.”
Big assumption.
I don’t believe the government is insisting on all these vaxxes “für Ihrer Sicherheit” any more than I believe that Friendly Freddie at the corner used car lot has a “good deal” for me because he’s such a swell guy.
1) financial exposure. I am not sure, but did they not exempt the COVID vaccines from being subject to liability “due to the emergency”? And in any case, when you have courts that protect election theft, can you trust them to protect some poor schmuck who suffers from bad effects from a government controlled and mandated vaccine?
2) if the desired effect of the massive vaccination is political and not monetary, that the monetary gain argument would not apply.
Subotai Bahadur
Big pharma still gets paid for the shot.
BTW, covid shots are illegal, because you are getting a EULA after Comirnaty was approved. It is against the law to have a EULA in inventory. It was supposed to destroyed. Comirnaty is approved but not available in the USA.
In addition, it is against the law to not publish the test results of an approved vaccine.
A number of other crimes were committed as well such as assigning the EULAs the status of a vaccine. Yes they changed the definition of a vaccine, but that was after the law was passed.
In any event, getting the EULA is illegal, and people should be held accountable.
This is an excellent way to describe the real problem. The loss of trust was a direct consequence of the medical establishment choosing jump feet first onto the Rona Mania train. Masks, social distance, shut down the economy, trample basic liberty in the guise of public health. They made a poor choice and they know it. Until they admit what they they did, apologize, accept both the judgement and the consequences administered by those they harmed then a large number of people will not trust them anymore.
But it won’t happen… because whether you care to admit it or not, medicine in the US is now a fully fascist enterprise, completely controlled by their semi-silent government partners. All the scare stories about socialized medicine actually came true, they just never made the flag day announcement. “I can’t recommend any treatment for you that the fedguv doesn’t approve, or else I don’t get paid, I lose my hospital/clinic privileges, and possibly my license.”
“I DON’T BELIEVE that they wouldn’t stick the mRNA clot shot into it without telling me.”
Because it’s not like that hasn’t already happened.
This isn’t a one-off — Walgreen’s in particular has had a veritable rash of these incidents, all around the US, with a smattering of other companies making the same “errors.”
So, according to that clip measles practically disappeared in the year 2000 but now vaccine hesitancy is causing an outbreak comeback?
En serio, senor?
Pretending not to know things is what the media does best.
Not now. Vaccine “hesitancy” caused it to come back years ago.
A friend of mine is a retired professor of pediatric medicine. She recalled the time she was called in to consult about a case that had absolutely baffled all the younger doctors. They could not figure out what was wrong with the patient. She walked into the room, took one look, and said immediately “Measles”. None of the younger doctors had ever seen a case. It had basically disappeared.
But then that evil bastard Wakefield made up his filthy lie that the MMR jab causes autism, enough parents got worried enough to refuse to have it given to their children, and measles came back. And it’s been back since.
I work as a physician. Ever since training we’ve been taught “don’t be the first. Don’t be the last.” New treatments often have unexpected problems and cannot stand the test of time. Any new treatment carries risks of unexpected complications – unless there is no other treatment for a horrible disease it’s usually best to wait and see how things pan out for a few years before taking any new treatment. If a treatment has been out for ten or twenty years it has been out long enough that we should see what unexpected complications there are.
MMR, polio and smallpox are horrible diseases, scourges of humanity. We have had effective vaccines for decades. If there were any bad complications, billions of people (?) have received the vaccinations and we would have discovered complications. They are effective and safe. And everyone except loons who believe they are associated with autism accepts this.
Covid vaccine is brand new and uses brand new technology. Anyone who went on TV to say it is safe is declaring himself to be an imbecile. It might be safe. But it has only been out for two years. We do not have the data to support that assertion. No one has that data. The treatment is too new.
The risk of Covid on a vulnerable patient (elderly or medically frail) is real. The risk of the vaccine is unknown. If you are in that category taking the vaccine makes sense. The risk of Covid on young healthy people is generally negligible. The risk is not zero but close to zero. The risk of the vaccine is unknown. In that case it makes more sense not to take the vaccine until we have better long term data bec the risk of the vaccine may very well be great and we know the risk of the virus in that group is negligible.
Now that the govt and industry has been forcing people to take a vaccine of unknown safety, it seems to me only logical that thinking people would transfer that skepticism from the vaccine that may or may not work and that may or may not be dangerous to vaccines that we know are effective and we know are safe.
I blame the government for this. CDC, Fauci, etc. Parents’ skepticism re proven vaccines is directly bec of the lies we were told by CDC, Fauci, etc.
All our vaccines have a rate of serious harmful consequences of around one out of a million doses.
Covid Vax has a rate of serious harmful consequences of around one out of 800 doses, about a thousand times worse than all previous vaccines put together.
Covid Vax is the most toxic therapy ever marketed as a vaccine, and in young people, especially in children, the Vax is more dangerous than the virus.
Wait, wait. Doing a crappy, politicized job of a thing, can discredit even effective versions of similar things.
Now do transportation.
Vector or origin? Domestic or alien? There is evidence that Covid-19/20/21/22 non-sterilizing, viral-vector treatments can induce pathogenic tolerance, a form of AIDS, VAIDS (vaccine acquired immunodeficiency syndrome).
Vaxxxine hesitancy. Vaccines are sterilizing. Vaccines are made available to the general public after years, even decade or more testing, to at-risk populations. Vaccines are distributed with full disclosure, without coercion, threat, or cancellation.
Covid Vax fails all those features.
Measles and tuberculosis were not serious problems until they came across our Southern border by the millions.
Early reporting noted the outbreaks in schools with large influxes of new “migrants”, until that kind of reporting was considered “racist” and disappeared.
Notice in this article how the authors tip-toe away from any possible reporting about the source of the pathogens, focusing instead on the horrible “unvaccinated”. A continuation of the slander started with labelling COVID a “pandemic of the unvaccinated”.
Wokeness completely infects our media.
That is just not true. None of what you claim here is even slightly true.