Tag: measles

Frustrating, Infuriating, Embarrassing

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The whole situation regarding childhood vaccinations and childhood illnesses continues to worsen. And not just in the USA, where there are obvious reasons for the problems.

Measles is one of the most contagious viruses on the planet, and it’s estimated that the measles vaccine saved around 60 MILLION lives in the first 24 years of this century alone.

But all that is changing: and because measles is so very contagious, it’s changing fast. We had control over this terrible disease which maims and kills young children. No more.

On January 23, 2026, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced six European countries lost their measles elimination status: Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Uzbekistan. Canada lost its elimination status late last year. This means measles is no longer a random event in these countries; it’s endemic and freely flowing.

First World Countries! It’s embarrassing.

So millions of lives saved, sure. But equally, millions in danger again now. And it’s just so infuriating, because we have spent so many years on fighting this, so much money, time and effort on trying to make a positive difference, and we actually did it. We were winning.

And then some knobheads wrote some stuff on Facebook and it all started to unravel.

If those knobheads were scientists, microbiologists, vaccinologists, then I’d consider that maybe they had a point. But they’re not. They have no experience of science, experimentation, research or anything like that. Of course, they have their own areas of expertise, but imagine if you went into their place of work and told them that everything that they were doing was wrong, corrupt or dangerous? Imagine if you pretended that you knew more than them about hairdressing or plumbing or bricklaying, even though they’d been doing it for 20+ years, and you’d never even tried it?

They’d rightfully tell you to F off. Yet, for some reason, they’re all experts when it comes to vaccines.

It’s happening locally too. Diphtheria – DIPHTHERIA! – a proper, old school, medieval disease has killed 19 people in the last few months in South Africa. And with a current mortality rate of 21%. That, as the locals say, is pretty hectic, bru.

Yeah. That one really slipped beneath the radar.
It’s completely and utterly preventable. Those people could still be alive. No suffering, no illness, no grieving families. But…

Vaccination gaps appear to be a key driver of vulnerability. Among children aged 12 years and younger who fell ill, several were unvaccinated or had not received booster doses, while others had only completed part of the infant immunisation schedule. The report stresses that protection depends not only on early childhood vaccination but also on booster doses later in life.

The South African healthcare system may have its problems, but access to childhood immunisation really isn’t one of them. You can’t pin this one on them – this is all about the parents making poor decisions based on what they have seen on social media.

How can we stop it? I don’t know.
The lack of trust in the the healthcare systems and industry shows no sign of going away, and the unbridled misinformation spewing forth from social media and the US Government is, if anything, increasing.

At a personal level, get vaccinated. And get your kids vaccinated. There’s no excuse for your kid getting diphtheria: we immunise at 6 weeks old. And in SA, we give our first measles vaccination at 6 months. If your country doesn’t, then given the current situation, it might even be sensible to talk to your doctor and discuss early vaccination.

Choose wisely. Make sensibly informed decisions.

Doctors spend several years of their lives learning how best to look after your health. Amazingly, despite your alleged innate knowledge of your own body, they do know what’s best for you. The do have the expertise and the knowledge to make good decisions for your well-being.

The car mechanic up the road might be great with engines, but honestly, he knows fuck all about the benefits of vaccinations. Don’t believe what he says, unless it’s about spark plugs.

Oh – and if I didn’t mention it enough earlier – get vaccinated. And get your kids vaccinated.

It’s not just about measles

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More from YLE: Your Local Epidemiologist. And they are still banging on about measles.

I (last) “banged on about it” here.
Great post, that. Just enough rant, balanced nicely with facts and an appropriate amount of sarcasm.

Anyway…

The latest newsletter from YLE has the same title as this post. That’s not coincidence – I copied it.

Because it makes a very good point:

It’s not just about measles. It’s about what measles represents.

As scientists, having worked and studied hard for many years to become experts in our fields, we need to remember that not everyone is like us. Some people studied hard to become mechanics or accountants or teachers. And what seems obvious to us, perhaps only seems obvious to us because of our studying and our expertise. Much like the reasons behind a broken engine will be more obvious to a mechanic, or the meaning of a balance sheet will be more obvious to an accountant. And also teacher… stuff. Probably.

The measles outbreak in the US (and in Europe); the reappearance of a deadly disease that we had completely under control in the developed world is every bit as terrifying as it is completely avoidable.

Measles is a canary in the coal mine. When measles reappears in a country like the U.S., it signals that something has gone seriously wrong. This is a disease we had essentially eliminated—thanks to one of the safest and most effective vaccines in the history of medicine. But the way things are heading, the U.S. is at risk of losing its elimination status this year. This is not just a failure to move forward—it’s the unraveling of decades of progress, representing one of the greatest public health achievements of our era.

It’s a massive failure, and it’s a huge indicator of the high level of mistrust in what is – objectively – clear and obvious, successful science. But as we see regularly in politics, when there is a vacuum of power – or the perception of such – then nefarious parties will take advantage and move in.

It’s because trust has, both due to failures of public health to reach communities and due to well-organized efforts to spread inaccurate information about vaccination, leaving many Americans’ heads spinning as they sort through the noise and figure out who to trust.

We shouldn’t have to keep telling the public just how well vaccines work and just how essential they are: the proof is all there in the data. But maybe we should still have been explaining those data to the public, because in the absence of that sort of communication, others have taken the baton, contorted it, and presented their alternate version to the relay running public.
And as a scientist, it’s both absolutely infuriating that these snake oil salesmen and grifters have peddled their constant lies and unfounded theories around vaccination, and thoroughly depressing that (some) people have looked at the evidence set out before them, and then chosen to believe these venomous blatherskites.

For many in medicine, the resurgence of measles, along with declining rates of routine childhood vaccination, is a concerning sign of what’s to come. If we’re losing ground on measles, we may soon be vulnerable to other vaccine-preventable diseases. Whooping cough cases are already rising. Polio, Hib, or even diphtheria may soon appear in our emergency rooms.

It’s shocking and it’s embarrassing. And YLE’s attempt at a measured response to this upcoming crisis:

…the road back to a world where this isn’t a challenge will not be paved with more facts, fear, or finger-wagging. It will be built, as it always has, through stories and relationships—one respectful, genuine, evidence-based conversation at a time.

is absolutely admirable, but also smacks of someone living in a Walter Mitty world.

Sure, it would be perfect if we had the time, the resources and the ability to talk to concerned, confused parents and families out there and explain to them why they should listen to us and not the other “opinions” on this. But firstly, we don’t have the capacity to do that, and even if we did, in this divided, polarised world, there’s no reason why they would take our word over the nice “doctors” with their brain worms, and their books and supplements to sell. And I say that because if the public could see through the lies and the clever manipulation of the anti-vax lobby, then they would surely have done so already and we wouldn’t be facing this disastrous situation.

This won’t get any better anytime soon.
In fact, without wanting to be pessimistic, I don’t see how it will get any better anytime at all.

Why should we bother?

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Technology is the key to our advancement as a species.

We invent things using technology.
We improve them using technology.
We simplify processes using technology.
We overcome society’s problems using technology.

There’s a lot of work, a lot of brains and a lot of money that goes into developing these technologies so that they can benefit humankind.

And yet, sometimes all of that seems so very unappreciated.

And it does seem that parents are particularly unappreciative of the things that could literally save their child’s life.

Like the mother driving her squabbling kids home from school yesterday: both of them 8 or 9 years old and climbing around the footwell and passenger seat of her car – not a seatbelt in sight.

To the parents in Gaines County in Texas,

It seems that in this case, religious beliefs may have been a strong reason behind many of the (now 24) cases: all of whom *shock* are unvaccinated. Gaines Country has a high population of Mennonites, and all of the cases in Gaines can be linked to Mennonite schools. Traditionally, Mennonites reject “modern” technology (which would likely include vaccinations), which is all well and good until it backfires and a wholly preventable measles outbreak maims or kills their children.

According to this from MennoniteUSA.org:

Mennonites believe in simple living but express that simplicity in a spirit of stewardship and awareness of the needs of others rather than completely separating from society

But if I was the parent of a baby in Texas right now (the first MMR vaccination is at 12-15 months), I would be very worried. I certainly wouldn’t be thinking very kindly about the Mennonites and their alleged “spirit of stewardship and awareness of the needs of others” BS.

Look, religious or not, as parents we deserve to give our kids the best chance in life. And that should start with the right to health and life. Willfully ignoring or rejecting the proven technologies that we have developed to keep our children safe and well is tantamount to child abuse. As one commenter points out:

It’s difficult to have sympathy for an adult who refuses a vaccine and then gets the disease.
The children didn’t have a choice.

Yep. The children deserve better.
And everything they need is right there. It’s readily available.

They’re just not being used.

And that does raise the question: Why should we bother?

More to come

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Ugh. I does sometimes feel like this blog is just a means for me to moan. But taking a step back, and looking at the several (or more) years that I’ve been writing on here, I also feel that it’s reasonable for it to reflect my state of mind at any given time. Sometimes, that state of mind is influenced by personal stuff (no, the kitchen still isn’t finished and they’ve also managed to not connect the sink up correctly, so they’ve destroyed some cupboards as well), sometimes by life in general. Probably most often both, with some delicious interplay between the two.

But the last couple of months have been… bad.

Are things going to get any better? Well, hopefully, yes. But perhaps not just yet.

We have a few things to deal with before that:

It’s a lot.

The light at the end of the tunnel?
I want to believe it’s there, but I just can’t see it at the moment.

Microbiology is bad news

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Except it’s obviously really not.

Microbiology is great.

But when microbiology gets into the news, it’s rarely for happy happy joy joy reasons. Even the mention of words like Ebola, Listeriosis or Bacteroides melaninogenica twist the tongues and instill fear into the hearts – and horrendous infection into other major organs – of the population.

This isn’t how it should be, so to balance the bias, I went searching for some good news microbiology stories.

Rookie error. It’s all terrible.

A tiny beetle is is killing South Africa’s trees. But only because it’s introducing a tinier fungus into those trees.

According to Professor Marcus Byrne, an Ig Nobel prize winner and entomologist at the University of the Witwatersrand, the beetle bores tunnels into tree trunks where it spreads the fungus Fusarium euwallaceae, which effectively cuts off the trees’ vascular system, causing them to die.

So, it’s the fungus that is actually killing the trees. Not the beetle.
Entomology is only very slightly to blame here. Microbiology loses again.

_____

Aside: Ig Nobel prize details here:

Byrne, an entomology lecturer, and his colleagues from Lund University in Sweden, designed caps and boots for dung beetles and dressed the beetles in their new apparel to prove, firstly, that dung beetles use the Milky Way to orientate.

The caps blocked light from reaching their eyes in order to experiment with how they use starlight to navigate. The boots, in a fashionable luminous green, blocked heat from reaching the dung beetles’ feet.

_____

Next up: Virus kills pigs. Millions of pigs.

It’s African Swine Fever caused by… er… the African Swine Fever Virus.

Otto Saareväli lost his entire herd of 7000 pigs because of a case of ASF was diagnosed on his farm in Estonia.

“We have the strictest biosecurity measures here, and still no one is quite sure how the disease got in – it may have been a truck that wasn’t washed properly after visiting an infected farm,” says Saareväli. “But if you find just one pig, then everything has to go.”

Estonia is just the tip of the iceberg though. China is home to half the pigs in the world, so it’s vital that the virus doesn’t get a trotterhold there… oh… too late:

“The key thing that makes us very conscious of the threat that ASF poses is that China represents half the pigs in the world,” says Dr Matthew Stone, deputy director general of science at the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), which coordinates international monitoring of diseases. “It’s extremely important for food security and the economy of China and in the absence of a vaccine, stamping-out policies are crucial.”

And it’s not under control.

“At the moment because it’s on the move and undergoing a period of pandemic spread it’s very important.”

Still – at least that’s just a virus of pigs. There’s worse news when it comes to (very human) Measles Virus.

The annoying… no… the INFURIATING! thing about hearing about cases of, and deaths from, measles is that we have a very, very effective vaccine for measles. It’s entirely preventable.

Simply: there is no need for any child, any human, to suffer from, let alone die of, measles. So why is it happening?

Well, in Western Europe because “Dr” Andrew Wakefield is a corrupt twat, and because people chose – and continue to choose – to believe his lies.

Result?

Oh, and because misinformation and fake news is a big deal these days:

A new study showing that Russian-linked trolls and social media bots have been heavily promoting misinformation on vaccines shows just how far Putin’s government is prepared to go in its worldwide effort to sow mistrust and division. The study follows rapidly on the heels of earlier reports that Russian-owned media sites had been among the most prominent proponents of anti-GMO stories and memes, again aiming to undermine scientific consensus and public trust in academic institutions.

Both anti-vaccine and anti-GMO groups appeal to prejudices against modern science and conspiracy thinking to spread fear and misinformation. Like the tobacco lobby of old, doubt itself is their product.

We live in a truly sick (no pun intended), truly bizarre world.

And, as if it couldn’t get any worse, this:

In which, the Indonesian Ulama Council (MUI) declared the vaccine haram – religiously forbidden, despite also commenting that:

…the religious organisation understood the dangers associated with not getting children immunised.

So they do understand that the vaccine works, they do understand the need for it and they do understand the implications of children not being vaccinated, but they’re still going ahead and railing against it anyway.

Fantastic.

And why would you do that?

It’s entirely possible Amin is using this fatwa and the MUI in general as political tools to impact the election. The group receives funding from the government of Indonesia, and Amin has used it to impact politics in the past.

Ah – personal gain at the expense of others. Pretty sure that’s unlikely to be top of the list at the Things I Learnt From the Quran Symposium later this year.

To be fair to Microbiology, it might be Fusarium spp. killing the trees and not the beetle, but it’s Ma’ruf Amin killing Indonesian kids and not the measles virus.

Science is doing everything it can, but in Indonesia, it’s Religion 1-0 Microbiology.

Microbiology will still get the blame, though.

I will go on looking for good news Microbiology stories, but I’m not going to waste too much time over it, because I don’t think that there are any of them out there.