According to a report by the U.K. Health Security Agency, London is at risk of a major Measles outbreak that could result in tens of thousands of cases and dozens of deaths. The Guardian has more.
Without an improvement in MMR vaccination rates, the capital could experience an outbreak of between 40,000 and 160,0000 cases, fresh analysis by the UKHSA suggests. Experts said an outbreak of this scale could lead to dozens of deaths and thousands of people hospitalised.
Dr Vanessa Saliba, a consultant epidemiologist at UKHSA, said: “Measles can be a serious infection that can lead to complications especially in young children and those with weakened immune systems. Due to longstanding suboptimal vaccine uptake there is now a very real risk of seeing big outbreaks in London.”
Official data published on Friday revealed a steady rise in measles cases this year, indicating a resurgence of the illness. Between 1 January and 30 June this year there have been 128 cases of measles, compared with 54 cases in the whole of 2022, with 66% of the cases detected in London, although cases have been seen in all regions.
Measles can lead to severe illness, with an estimated 20-40% of children hospitalised, according to the UKHSA. The US Centre for Disease Control estimates one to two in 1,000 children infected will die from measles, with a larger number suffering serious complications, including intellectual disabilities and deafness.
“UKHSA is right to be worried about this,” said Prof Paul Hunter, professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia, saying that an outbreak of the scale described would be expected to lead to “dozens of deaths”.
“Measles is one of the most infectious viruses to infect humans,” he said. “About two in 1,000 infected people will die, the main risk being in children under five years old, but adults can get very sick as well.”
Measles is the most infectious of all diseases transmitted through the respiratory route. In a population with no immunity, a single case of measles will infect between 10 and 20 others.
To maintain herd immunity, the World Health Organization set a target of 95% vaccination uptake. But the UK is far below this target, with uptake for the first dose of the MMR vaccine in children aged two years in England at 85.6%, the lowest level in a decade. In some parts of London, coverage of the first MMR dose at two years of age is as low as 69.5%.
Worth reading in full.
It’s worth asking why MMR uptake is at its lowest level in a decade. London is far from the only city in the developed world suffering from this problem. Manhattan saw a similar decline in routine paediatric vaccination levels in the last three months of 2022, from 64.5% to 59.2% in 2021. The New York Post Editorial Board was in no doubt as to the cause:
Closing schools seemed sensible in the earliest days of 2020, but the data soon proved that young kids basically never get the bug. Most masks do nothing to reduce transmission, nor does six feet of social distancing. And making toddlers mask in school risks major developmental harm.
Heavy-lockdown states fared no better in health outcomes than mainly-open ones — and fared worse economically and most likely in mental health, too.
Every element of the public-health establishment from Dr. Anthony Fauci on down got many of these points wrong, even long after the science was clear. Worse still, government pushed censorship (as ‘misinformation’) of any discussion of the downsides of any intervention. And that included the real risks to younger men of cardiac problems associated with vaccination.
In short, the public-health establishment earned a ton of distrust. Tragically, that’s now feeding doubts about MMR jabs, leaving more New York kids vulnerable to measles, mumps and other childhood diseases that actually present real danger to the young — unlike Covid.
So what is the city doing in response to this catastrophe? “Confronting rising vaccination hesitancy through media campaigns, providing educational forums to providers and community-based organisations, and providing tools to talk about vaccine confidence with patients and parents.”
More lectures, in short, from the lost-credibility crew.
America needs a trustworthy public-health establishment, but getting it requires some kind of truth-and-reconciliation commission, with significant firings and massive, unflinching and public mea culpas from city, state and federal health departments — and reforms aiming to ensure they never make the same mistakes again.
Do it for the children.
That sounds bang on to me – and, needless to say, the ‘solution’ the public health authorities have come up with in London is identical to the one in New York. The Guardian again:
The NHS has launched a national campaign to encourage the uptake of the MMR vaccine, included target outreach work in London for those at highest risk and in communities with the lowest update.
All children at primary school who have missed one or both doses of the MMR vaccine are being offered the opportunity to get up to date at school. Parents of those children will be contacted by the NHS school immunisation service. Parents of younger children or those who are home-schooled can make an appointment with their GP practice or visit a community clinic.
But the problem isn’t the absence of pro-vaxx propaganda being pumped out by the NHS and schools. The problem is that more and more parents distrust the NHS and schools, given that they promoted the vaccination of children against Covid when a rational risk-benefit analysis clearly indicated the risk of harm from the COVID-19 vaccines clearly outweighed the risk of harm to children who became infected with the disease. Fool me once…
If the NHS, the Department for Education, the U.K. Health Security Agency and the Department of Health are serious about restoring parents’ trust in their medical advice, they should start by apologising for all the needless pandemic measures that harmed their children, including closing schools, mandatory masking in classrooms and school corridors and, above all, the aggressive promotion of the COVID-19 vaccines.
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