Analysis of Texas measles outbreak shows just how dangerous virus is

About 1 in 5 cases were hospitalized and most of those developed complications.

See full article...

 

[The Lurker Beneath]

Do you have statistics for that, or just your gut feel? I'm old enough to remember those bleak days also, and my gut feel says that a similar number died. My parents immunized their children as soon as vaccines were available. Fortunately, my younger siblings didn't have to suffer.

https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/history.html

In 1912, measles became a nationally notifiable disease in the United States, requiring U.S. healthcare providers and laboratories to report all diagnosed cases. In the first decade of reporting, an average of 6,000 measles-related deaths were reported each year.

A vaccine became available in 1963. In the decade before, nearly all children got measles by the time they were 15 years old. It is estimated 3 to 4 million people in the United States were infected each year. Among reported measles cases each year, an estimated:

• 400 to 500 people died
• 48,000 were hospitalized
• 1,000 suffered encephalitis (swelling of the brain)

 

[The Lurker Beneath]

I think it's much more likely that what you're seeing here is patients with very mild cases (in last year's outbreak) not being accurately reported/counted.

This is a writeup of only known cases, in an environment where many who refuse vaccines see themselves as anti-establishment (and understand that their position isn't in alignment with standard medical recommendations... hell, in some cases it seems to fuel their persecution fantasies).

I'd bet money that lots of anti-vax parents whose kids had mild cases didn't report them to anyone outside their own social circle, and certainly not The Medical Establishment (TM). I'm a little surprised that so many non-hospitalized cases were actually reported.

What you seem to be advocating for, btw, is a return to hundreds of easily preventable children's deaths annually. Even the "safer" stats you pointed to (e.g. here) point to 400-500 annual deaths, 48k hospitalizations, and 1,000 cases of encephalitis, as a fraction of the population in the early 1960s.

The current US population is roughly 340,000,000 (vs. 179,000,000 around 1960, very roughly). So assume nearly double the number of easily preventable deaths, hospitalizations, and cases of encephalitis per year, mostly in kids.

That's still rare enough for any one individual to feel like "it's not so bad," if you don't look at population-level data. But the population data is readily available. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess you were a kid in the pre-vaccination days, rather than a parent worrying about your own kids' health.

What do you imagine I am "advocating" for? Pointing out apparent discrepancies in the statistics is not advocating anything. I think measles vaccination is a very good thing; that doesn't mean I need to nod along to every assertion about its benefits. If the assertion can be supported with argument, then we all learn something.

 

[The Lurker Beneath]

Measles vaccination reduced child mortality by almost half in some countries. It turns out that getting a disease that erases your immune system is bad for kids.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37482223/

I don't fully understand the figures in the abstract, but they seem to be arguing that the vaccination has an effect regardless of subsequent measles infection...

 

[The Lurker Beneath]

Yeah, there's something strange going on. It looks rather like the adjuvants in some vaccines seem to have some sort of benefit beyond the vaccine they were used with, but this hasn't been confirmed yet.

That idea has been in the air lately, partly in the context of dementia (see here: https://meincmagazine.com/health/2026...isk-experts-have-startling-hypothesis-on-how/ .) Though I don't think the thought is fixated on the adjuvants as such - it could be an effect of vaccination itself.