[LATIMES] The measles outbreak centered in Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party, is rapidly expanding, with officials now confirming 51 cases of the illness -- nearly double the number reported Tuesday -- and warning that more people will probably fall sick with the highly contagious virus.| If anybody can remember that far back, children used to routinely come down with measles, mumps, and chickenpox. They were mostly one-shot diseases: once you'd had them you didn't get them again. The mortality rate, I believe, was eentsy, so the 51 kids in California won't die, probably. If any of them do, I hope we're not treated to the sight of their parents blubbering on national television. And I equally hope the stars of stage, screen, and terriblevision don't decide that polio vaccine is bad for everyone else's children. |
| It wasn't the small chance of death that was -- and still ought to be -- what concerned our parents. It was the less-than-death outcomes: blindness, deafness, sterility, disfigurement to a greater or lesser extent, mental retardation, partial or complete paralysis including all those kids in iron lungs. The probability of such outcomes was/is considerably higher. |
| That the death rate is low doesn't mean it's zero. We in medicine like to prevent the deaths of children, and one child dying of measles is one too many. There's the other moral issue here in that these idiot parents, by allowing their own kids to be at risk by not vaccinating them, put other innocent kids at risk. |
It is the beginning of a scenario experts have feared. Health officials generally hope a measles outbreak can be contained within a manageable group of people and eventually extinguished by keeping the ill at home or in a hospital room until they recover, with the outbreak eventually being stopped by the broader community of vaccinated people.
But kindergarten measles vaccination rates have been falling almost every year since 2002 in California, and the virus now appears to be spreading.
Hardest hit has been Orange County, home to Disneyland. On Friday night, county health officials said there were six new cases of measles diagnosed among people who did not visit Disneyland before Christmas. State officials said there were two more such cases in Ventura County, and one in Alameda County.
In a statement, Orange County health officials said the identification of six measles cases with acquisition from unknown community contacts indicates exposure to measles is more widespread throughout the county.
They added: The Health Care Agency expects that the measles outbreak will continue to spread.