On September 14th BBC News reported a London measles warning: ‘Outbreak could hit tens of thousands.‘
Reading on, you discover this is based on our favourite dislocation from the real world: computer modelling.
Mathematical calculations suggest an outbreak could affect between 40,000 and 160,000 people. … This is a theoretical risk, rather than saying we are already at the start of a huge measles outbreak. There have been 128 cases so far this year, compared with 54 in the whole of 2022.
Theoretical is one word for their calculations; scaremongering is another. Reports for the last 20 years vary widely with the highest being over 6,000 cases in 2013 (see figure 2 below).
The BBC report continues:
The UKHSA also says a large outbreak could put pressure on the NHS, with between 20% and 40% of infected people needing hospital care.
Ring any ‘Protect the NHS’ bells?
But worse was to follow. On September 15th it was reported:
Councils in London have written to households to say the capital could be facing a major outbreak unless MMR [measles, mumps, rubella] inoculation rates improve… Measles is highly contagious and severe cases can lead to disability and death… Any child identified as a close contact of a measles case without satisfactory vaccination status may be asked to self-isolate for up to 21 days.
This threat of sending children home for a disease they don’t have will resonate with parents whose children were repeatedly sent home for 10 days at a time due to one child with a positive Covid test. As will the “without satisfactory vaccination status” caveat – a ‘nudge’ reminiscent of the Covid-era vaccine passports.
MMR vaccine uptake levels have been variable ever since its inception. Herd immunity levels of 95% are quoted as the level required to stop measles completely. But measles has never been a condition slated for total eradication. Cases fluctuate with mini outbreaks every five to six years and this was always the case before the availability of the measles and later the MMR vaccine. So how real is the current threat and how could it possibly justify such a discriminatory measure as excluding unvaccinated children from school?
From the headlines, parents may think that measles has a high death rate, and whilst that was certainly true in the past and remains true in developing countries, improved nutrition and widespread access to health care in the U.K. were associated with a huge decline in measles deaths. The death rate declined from over 1,100 per million in the mid-19th century to a level of virtually zero by the mid-1960s. Notably, 99% of the reduction in measles deaths in England and Wales occurred before the introduction of the measles vaccine in 1968.
More recent figures show case reports fluctuating widely and deaths of children from measles varying between zero and two per annum. For example, in 2013 when there were over 6,000 reported cases, there was one adult and zero child deaths.
As for the quoted 20-40% admission rate, this is certainly nothing like the 3% admission rate in the pre-vaccination era. Where does this figure come from? Is it just another part of the scaremongering?
That is not to say that deaths cannot occur, or serious complications such as pneumonia or hearing loss. But for the vast majority of children, measles is what it was always described as, namely a ‘childhood illness’. It is noteworthy that WHO recommends:
All children or adults with measles should receive two doses of vitamin A supplements, given 24 hours apart. This restores low vitamin A levels that occur even in well-nourished children. It can help prevent eye damage and blindness. Vitamin A supplements may also reduce the number of measles deaths.
In a systematic review published in 2002, two doses of water-based vitamin A were associated with a 81% reduction in risk of mortality (RR=0.19; 95% CI 0.02 to 0.85). Nowhere is this simple measure mentioned in U.K. guidance.
The parents who have chosen not to get their children vaccinated will accept the possibility of them catching measles, but sending them home for three weeks isn’t going to make this go away. A policy which writes in educational discrimination against unvaccinated children is hardly going to improve trust in public bodies. Moreover, the GMC Guidance on Decision making and Consent states in paragraph 48:
If you disagree with a patient’s choice of option: You must respect your patient’s right to decide. … You must not assume a patient lacks capacity simply because they make a decision that you consider unwise.
Health choices should always be free from coercion and the failure to take-up whatever is on offer should never result in punitive consequences disguised as being ‘for your safety’.
Dr. Ros Jones is a retired Consultant Paediatrician with a special interest in neonatal intensive care and paediatric HIV. She is a member of the Health Advisory and Recovery Team (HART), on whose website this article first appeared. It has also appeared in TCW Defending Freedom.
Stop Press: Pathologist and HART Co-Chair Dr. Clare Craig has done an X (Twitter) thread on the story.
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None of the scaremongering stands up to scrutiny….. climate catastrophism, nut zero, covid, measles – NONE OF THEM.
The real problems are ignored…..
If everybody just remembers the one golden rule then everything will be OK; do not believe a damn word anyone in authority says. The thing that will save more people than any crummy vaccine ( or any so-called ”public health measure” ) ever will is a good dose of critical thinking capability and common sense.
What a joke ‘the science’ is. Measles are normal, natural and not life threatening. A necessary iruption as the immune system matures. No, the quackcines don’t help, don’t prevent but only injure and in extremis kill. Leave. Children. Alone. Hygiene, comfort, normal parenting will see the child safely through measles.
Measles can kill – it killed my cousin, aged 11, in 1968. I had it at the same time….
As can flu in susceptible individuals. The treatment for measles is Vitamin A.
The impact of any infection depends on the robustness of the immune system. Yours was more robust & sadly for your cousin, theirs wasn’t robust enough.
That was 1968. Look at the graph above and see what has happened subsequently.
Sorry to hear that of course tragedies like your cousin sadly happened. I was in a boarding school in the same year lots of us got measles in fact I got it twice (second time the following year) and German measles to boot (now called Rubella presumably so we don’t offend our Germanic brethren). No one died.
They were quite common in the past. I had it around 1968 when at primary school and had a week or so off with that. No doubt quite a few others did as well. It was in the days when the local GP would call at home for many things.
Yes, I had it. I was put in quarantine. Luckily, in the front room with the television set rather than the cupboard under the stairs. Quarantine was fine while I was ill, but awful after I had recovered. I remember being stuck indoors for a few days, watching other children play outside. Of course applying Covid logic, would require all the healthy children to be in quarantine as well!
Don’t forget the measles parties of old.
Herd immunity levels of 95% are quoted as the level required to stop measles completely.
Is that 95% based on experiment, observation or… modelling?
Measles, chicken pox, German measles mumps, they where all normal childhood infections that all parents expected, nay, wanted their child to get when I was a nipper! What is all this fecking mollycoddling these days? I was sent to school to catch chicken pox when mum found out someone had got it! No wonder kids have no immunity to anything!
People are less trusting of the medical profession and vaccination in particular. All entirely predicatable with what has gone on over the last few years.
And now we are going to have regular pandemic/epidemic scares. Again, entirely predicatable.
Modellers’ futures depend upon it.
i’m surrounded by friends getting their latest round of the shots ,the flu the’ virus’ shingles, no one i know has woken up well maybe a few last year said they would not be getting any more but the rest eager to get as many as they can
plus one maybe to be a former friend won’t admit that she was wrong to treat me as a leper wont even admit she did
i’m making star anise tea and got black seed oil to counteract the shedding hope it works!
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/does-this-measles-scare-story-ring-any-bells/
And this article from Dr Ros Jones in today’s TCW also takes apart the “measles epidemic.”
Now why are they pushing this and simultaneously pushing for children to be jabbed? Have they been tinkering with the MMR “vaccine?”
Apologies – this article appears in today’s TCW also.
I am very tired.
How long before the WHO changes it’s advice on vitamin A? We can’t have a cheap effective remedy getting in the way of scaremongering and pushing a much more expensive vaccine on the whole population.
The modelling is linked to that well known benefactor of the Gates foundation who has pumped many grants into the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine! Enough said.
Another excellent article by someone who knows what they’re talking about has oodles of common sense and with whom I would trust my life. If only she were in charge rather than these self serving corrupt fools from the MHRA.
Thank you Dr Ros Jones someone for once who deserves to have the title Doctor in front of their name. Bless you.