BEGGING FOR DEATH: Anti-Vaxxers Are Still Spreading False Claims As People Die Of Measles

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By Helen Stokes-Lampard

In the early 2000s, after the link between the MMR vaccine and autism was thoroughly debunked, healthcare professionals, including GPs and our teams, worked hard to re-establish public confidence in vaccinations. It took years to restore, but uptake rates in children receiving the MMR vaccine began to improve and there was a time, not so long ago, when we thought we had eradicated measles entirely.

That is why recent data about the surge in measles cases across Europe will come as distressing news – even to us here in the UK. However, it backs up concerns that were published last month in the British Journal of General Practice. The World Health Organization has reported that a total of 41,000 people in the European region were infected in the first six months of 2018 – up from 23,927 cases in 2017 and 5,273 in 2016. Of the cases reported so far this year, 37 deaths have been recorded.

The rapid spread of measles across Europe is an inevitable consequence of lower uptakes of the MMR vaccine globally, and the particularly virulent nature of this disease and how easily it can spread. It has put the UK on high alert and prompted warnings about the risk of measles spreading here, but it has also put the need for a strong, consistent vaccination campaign high on the political agenda.

Getting the public invested in the benefits of vaccination is key to its success
Vaccination is one of the great successes of modern medicine so it is tragic that a decade after the MMR scandal was thoroughly exposed, we are still suffering from the setbacks of the 1990s. While uptake rates of the vaccine are high in the UK, this year’s outbreak of more than 800 confirmed measles cases in England shows that we are still in dangerous territory. Many of the cases reported will be a direct result of susceptible teenagers and young adults who missed their MMR vaccine as children. Another reason for the outbreak is people travelling in and out of Europe, and mixing with groups of people with low rates of vaccination.

As a society, we have collectively failed to adequately tackle the strong anti-vaccination movement which continues to influence some parents.

In general practice, we have been working to reassure worried parents on a one-to-one basis that the vaccine is safe for their children, and while we are very pleased with the trust parents have shown in it so far, it is clear that the message is still not getting through universally. False information about MMR continues to be spread online, particularly on social media, giving a platform to the anti-vaccination movement to push erroneous claims.

Some of the posts have hundreds of thousands of “likes” and include false claims that healthcare professionals have been lying to the public or that immunisation injections amount to nothing more than “poison being pumped into people’s bloodstreams”.

A lack of regulation and enforcement around this material online has allowed these groups to build momentum without the opportunity for any form of meaningful evidence-based rebuttal.

Tackling public misinformation about vaccines is crucial to the future success of any campaign. We need to counter this with the message that vaccinations are safe, effective and essential to safeguarding our health and that of our children. Getting the public invested in the benefits of vaccination is key to its success and this must be tackled with a society-wide approach.

People develop life-changing complications from measles. People die from this entirely preventable infection. That is a tragedy that must be prevented.

Any death from measles is one life too much. Vaccinations take only a moment but they can protect for life.

Helen Stokes-Lampard is a GP in Lichfield and chair of the Royal College of GPs. This article was originally published in The Guardian.

{Matzav.com}


30 COMMENTS

  1. Oh God. Please stop. Please stop with this vaccine debate. I can’t take it anymore. Enough already. If I hear another word about this issue, I’m going to harm myself.

  2. Yay! Back to measles! Finally, let’s curse and name call kids of anti vaxxers. Thank you Matzav for blnot letting go of this urgent topic, and for giving us this amazing platform to curse and argue.

    • Had you and dozens of others commented on the rockets being fired into Israel, Matzav wouldn’t need to go back to popping measles where there’s more action bringing more points to its site.

  3. Any Child not vaccinated should be taken away from the parents and sent to Guatimala to the Lev Tahor cult! There they can do what they want marry them of at 13 beat them not vaccinate them etc.

  4. These vaccination articles are like the Makas Tzefardea which started with one frog and multiplied and filled the land after being hit. The more they talk about it, the more people are waking up, questioning, researching the matter and become anti-vaxxes.

  5. So immature and silly already. Stop these stupid posts and stay focused on real news. Don’t become the CNN of Frum sites by just constantly pushing your agenda

    Nobody died
    Nobody is infected anymore
    The alleged outbreak is over

    Please. Genuk shoin

  6. I think that this whole measles situation has allowed people to read comments that may motivate them to do their own research on the topic. And that is a good thing. Here are two articles that I would like to contribute. The first link is from the CDC, where there seems to be an increased incidence of acute flaccid myelitis being reported in the US. The second link discusses whether vaccines may be causing this. You cannot argue with the vaccine manufacturers’ own product inserts that discuss possible side effects, can you?

    https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/67/wr/mm6745e1.htm?s_cid=mm6745e1_e

    https://www.learntherisk.org/news/paralysis-vaccines/

    If you are troubled by what you read, then continue on and do more research. If it doesn’t bother you, then continue to give your children vaccines, which is your right to do so.

      • Not sure why you say that. The first link is from the CDC. The second link shows the vaccine manufacturers’ own product inserts with side effects. Are you saying you do not trust what the CDC writes and you do not trust what the vaccine manufacturers write in their own product inserts?

    • There is far more hard evidence that cigarettes cause yeina machla than there is that vaccines are dangerous, yet way too many members of the frum community ignore the warning and puff away without caring that they’re poisoning themselves. I personally am sick and tired of breathing in their carcinogens which, by the way, are also harmful to me. None of you anti-vaxxers are worried about that, are you? Perhaps you should check out the yeshivas where you send your sons as many of them are known to be smoking yeshivas. But you won’t because you’d rather brag that your son goes to yeshiva X than send him to a less prestigious one where the bochurim don’t smoke like chimneys. Who cares if he’s putting tar, the black gook they pave roads with, into his body? As long as he’s in a choshuve yeshiva it’s okay. He’s a top bochur, so what if he’s drinking like a shicker? There are so many things that are far more harmful than vaccines, but no one seems to worry about them or the harm they do.

  7. Hamodia reports:
    “Based on Dr. [Reuven] Shanik’s advice and the demand from most of the tzibbur, a lot of schools are sending home kids who didn’t get the vaccine,” said a spokesman for Igud haMosdos. “A lot of schools have kids with medical conditions and they have to do what they have to, to protect them.”
    I wonder why so many kids have medical conditions?
    Could it be all those vaccines that were jabbed into them?

  8. Hamodia reports:
    “Based on Dr. [Reuven] Shanik’s advice and the demand from most of the tzibbur, a lot of schools are sending home kids who didn’t get the vaccine,” said a spokesman for Igud haMosdos. “A lot of schools have kids with medical conditions and they have to do what they have to, to protect them.”

    I wonder why we have so many kids have medical conditions?
    Could it be all those vaccines that were jabbed into them?

  9. How can you write that “vaccines are safe” for all children? Unfortunately there is a possibility that some children may be harmed by vaccines. The science of vaccines is not settled, according to many doctors including Dr. John Abramson, on the faculty of Harvard Medical School for 16 years.
    https://thevaccinereaction.org/2018/08/harvard-medical-school-doctor-vaccine-science-is-not-settled/

    If you look at the adverse reactions reported into CDC’s VAER’s you will see that some children may have been harmed as a direct result of the vaccine.

    The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) Request

    https://wonder.cdc.gov/vaers.html
    Under the words CDC WONDER on the left side is a tab that says “Request Form” – click on that.
    It will bring you to a blue bar that says “Organize Table Layout”
    For “Group Results by”, click on “Vaccine Type”
    For “And by” (underneath previous box), click on “Event Category”
    For “And by” (underneath previous box), click on “Serious”
    Then click on the SEND button that is on the right side of the blue box that says “Organize Table Layout” and you will get the results.
    If you want more specific results, you can put in more parameters throughout the page, and then press the SEND button.

    So this is not a black and white issue. Yes, it is dangerous for some people to get the measles, and it is dangerous for others to get vaccines. This is a difficult dilemma.

    • So this is not a black and white issue. Yes, it is dangerous for some people to get the measles, and it is dangerous for others to get vaccines. This is a difficult dilemma.

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