Measles cases reached 15-year high in 2011: CDC

[Tax Man]

Source: Reuters

(Reuters) - Measles cases in the United States hit a 15-year high in 2011, with 90 percent of the cases traced to other countries with lower immunization rates, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Thursday.

There were 222 cases of measles in the United States last year, more than triple the usual number, the CDC said. There had been only about 60 cases per year between 2001 and 2010.

No one has died of the disease in the United States since 2008. But approximately 20 million people contract the measles virus each year worldwide, and about 164,000 die from it, said Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the health agency's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

The agency said in 2000 that home-grown measles had been eliminated, but cases continued to arrive in the United States from abroad.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/19/us-usa-health-measles-idUSBRE83I1L520120419

[Rhiannon12866]

1. I had the measles during the summer when I was seven or eight...

Now they have inoculations to prevent it. I drove a friend who was returning to college to get an MMR vaccine, mumps, measles and rubella. She had to get it before she could start classes.

[FirstLight]

2. okay...but let's not panic

I dunno, we have so many drugs to treat symptoms and shorten diseasae now than 40 or 50 yrs ago..., my parents generation had them all, measles, mumps, whooping cough...oh and chicken pox...and they are still kickin at 70+...they also ate eggs fresh from the farm and milk from the cow that THEY fed, so they knew what they ate ... how prosaic! how dangerous!

[COLGATE4]

3. I think that making light of the seriously

severe possible consequences of measles is irresponsible. The fact that your parents didn't develop severe complications at a time when vaccines were not available for childhood diseases just means that they were lucky. Instead you seem to be embracing the new fad of 'vaccine denial' which is dangerous not only for the unvaccinated child but also for anyone who comes into contact with him/her.

[Ian David]

6. Maybe you'd like it better if you lived in Somalia. n/t

[Javaman]

9. So when your un-vaccinated kid infects a class room of kids...

and some of those kids die, you going to step up and take the blame?

you have zero idea of the severity of measles.

Go back just one generation and take a look at the death toll.

and here's a little factoid for you, more soldiers during the civil war died of disease than from battle woulds. one of those diseases was measles. Why? because of the close conditions in which they lived.

and now in our current era as population increases, people live closer together, so the spread of any disease is that much easier.

[longship]

4. Vaccination rates below herd immunity

This is what happens when people believe ass hat idiots like Jenny McCarthy and her lame husband Jim Carrey, or that proven fraud, the former doctor, Andrew Wakefield.

There is a body count to this idiocy. We're close to eliminating polio on the planet. But the anti-vaccination crap is impeding efforts, especially in Africa, where fundie religious fools are spreading bullshit about the vaccinations. The results are that polio outbreaks are increasing. One airplane flight could bring polio back to the US where decreasing vaccination rates could give it a chance to effect a community.

I am old enough to remember polio. It isn't nice.

Jenny McCarthy should go back to eating her boogers on MTV.

[obamanut2012]

8. +1

[Javaman]

10. +1. nt

[alarimer]

5. Thanks, ignorant anti-vaxxers

You are not anti-vaccine; you are PRO-INFECTIOUS DISEASE.

[Ian David]

7. The Jenny McCarthy Song