A measles outbreak in South Wales: 189 cases.
Parents are being urged to make sure their children receive the measles, mumps
and rubella (MMR) vaccination.
So that they won’t get measles.
Dr Marion Lyons, director of health protection for Public Health Wales (PHW), said: “We continue to be concerned at the number of cases of measles we are seeing in the Swansea and Neath Port Talbot areas.
“We cannot emphasise enough that measles is an illness that can kill, or leave patients with permanent complications including severe brain damage, and the only protection is two doses of the MMR vaccination.”
She added that people most at risk of catching measles are children of school age who have not had two doses of MMR.
Get the vaccination.
H/t Roger
Look, not everyone who doesn’t get vaccinated gets measles. The ones who do surely must have done something to deserve it. #bravehero
Hey, thanks anti-vaxxers, because I really love to see children get sick because of your ignorance. And I love how this endangers children who are unable to get the vaccine for medically sound reasons.
As long as it’s only in South Wales. I haven’t been there, yet, but I did have measles. Go figure.
Or, maybe do go get vaccinated, justincase, brain damage? Haaard decisions.
A good friend of mine was among those who couldn’t have the MMR when he was a kid (I don’t remember the specific medical reason, but his parents sure tried). He ended up getting mumps and was incredibly ill. He believes the issues he still has with his sight and light sensitivity (20 some years later) are a direct result.
I adore how anti-vaxxers so often say it’s a personal choice, and if others get their kid vaccinated then they shouldn’t worry about it. IT’S NOT YOU, IT’S A CHILD that you’re threatening, that makes it a very NON personal choice. Plus, they threaten herd immunity and encourage the formation of disease vectors meaning that even if someone is vaccinated they have a higher chance of being exposed and the ones who can’t have the vaccine are screwed. So, those idiots are risking horrible disease and death for OTHER people’s children on top of their own, despite the responsible parent’s best efforts, because they’re too ignorant or stubborn to give their kids real medical care.
Anti-vax = child abuse. I hope those kids heal well from it.
@rnilsson
I know you’re being sarcastic, but it’s not only in South Wales: Number of laboratory confirmed measles cases in England and Wales. That page shows cases from 2012 broken down by region. In the North West (where I live and where my kids and my nephews and nieces go to school) 865 people, 686 of them under 20, tested positive for measles in 2012 alone.
686 is more than the total for all age groups in all of England and Wales for the 7 years between the start of 1995 and the end of 2001.
Anti-Vaxxers can fuck right off.
Yes! I get pretty upset when people make noble choices, not for themselves but by proxy for those whose interests they are required to look after until the kids reach maturity. Just the other day somebody on tv was buying a hero halo for “choicing” their own child into a not-quite-ghetto school and not opting for a “better” one.
Not their shoes, not their choice. Simple really.
AsqJames, I blush becomingly* before your praise.
* for some values thereof.
Nice variation on the tragedy of the commons.
The really irony-meter overloading thing about the anti-vax brigade is that there will be a very significant overlap between them and the pro-homeopathy crowd – and vaccination is THE ONLY KIND OF HOMEOPATHY THAT ACTUALLY WORKS.
Anti-vax doesn’t seem to be an issue in S Wales, there was a drop in vaccination after the MMR scare that wasn’t made up, that’s all. This looks like a temporary problem thankfully.
Got into it once with an anti-vaxxer who maintained stoutly that if she took her unvaccinated kids on the bus and a pregnant woman caught rubella from them, if that pregnant woman gave birth to a child with disabilities (congenital rubella syndrome), it was the pregnant woman’s fault for not taking her herbs and practicing proper visualizations.
Of course, this was the same anti-vaxxer who argued that human beings had just naturally and spontaneously developed a planet-wide immunity to smallpox, and it was just coincidence that it happened at the same time as the (completely useless waste of money) worldwide eradication program.
A quote from Schiller comes to mind: