Fan-fucking-tastic news for every anti-vaxxer who think it's just a rash and a fever that will go away in a few days. I hope this woman recovers though.

It's looking like she won't recover. I mentioned this story in yesterday's measles article here, and since then she's only gotten worse and they suspect she already has brain damage from the infection, plus the inflammation has spread from her brain to involve her meninges as well.

Measles encephalitis is frequently deadly. That's how Roald Dahl's daughter died.

From a letter he wrote in the 80s:

Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn't do anything.

"Are you feeling all right?" I asked her.

"I feel all sleepy," she said.

In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.

The measles had turned into a terrible thing called measles encephalitis and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her. That was twenty-four years ago in 1962, but even now, if a child with measles happens to develop the same deadly reaction from measles as Olivia did, there would still be nothing the doctors could do to help her.

That's so sad.

And the actress Patricia Neal was her mother.

Are you an idiot?

Have you met Bort?

Short answer: Yes.
Longer answer: Yes. Fuck yes. Abso-fuckin-lutely. Is that even a serious question?!

Recovers, and with the help of the DOH tracks down the person(s) who gave her the measles and sues them.

I mean.... Come on!

Thanks, anti-vaxxers!

Goddammit.

She probably got it from the autism caused by her vaccine, amirite?!?

Enough of this shit - round them all up and force it on them. The persecution complex can go fuck right off if this is physically harming people INVOLUNTARILY!!!

This poor woman, I hope she recovers. Are they going to track down who the culprit was? I'd sue the fuck out of their ass.

Why wasn't she properly vaccinated. Seems like if you fly all around the world that should be part of the employment requirement.

...she was

But she wasn't because she only had one shot. Seems like if you work in that kind of industry they would test you and make you get a booster shot or a second set of shot. When I worked in a high risk setting I had to have all kinds of shots as part of my employment.

Even with 2 shots or boosters, it's still not 100% effective.

So 93% efficacy is less than 97%. We understand that.

How many people do you think have the common knowledge to know they should get two shots once they've already been vaccinated once? That sounds like a more understandable circumstance than a guy who (the story doesn't say otherwise) hasn't been vaccinated but thinks he's safe because he got the measles "once" before.

I side with the person who took a precaution over the one who didn't.

I'm not blaming her, I am asking about her employer. if you work in a higher risk industry they should be asking and testing and requiring vaccination. That is what happens in the military, law enforcement, medical, etc. It seems like the airlines and other travel industries that have employees who are coming into contact with large numbers of travelers and who have employees traveling to far flung areas should be screening and requiring vaccinations to protect their employees and to protect their customers too.

It seems that she was, but either her body failed to develop the proper anti-bodies, or it did but they have gone away over time.

Even with the vaccine its 93-97% effective. She got dealt a shit card mathematically but had the culprit been vaccinated (who knows if they were Orthodox or not but as framed that may be the implication) then it's fair to say she wouldn't be in a damn coma.

When was the last time you had a titer test?

I had one in college. Even though I had my full round of MMR shots (two? three?) when I was small, the doctor was very surprised to find the measles titer was very low (akin to nil immunity) and I had to get the MMR vaccination again. And again when I was in grad school.

That is my point exactly, when i worked in health care I had to be tested for and vaccinated again for certain diseases. If you are traveling all over the world and coming into contact with populations that have different health care standards, that seems like it would be part of employment requirements.

Like many others of her generation around the world, the flight attendant, who has not been identified, received only one dose of the measles vaccine when she was a child.
It wasn't discovered until later that one dose is only about 93% effective. More recently -- in the United States, starting in 1989 -- children have been given two doses, which is about 97% effective, according to the CDC.

"It's believed that she did actually get the vaccine as a child, but
while vaccination is highly effective at preventing the virus (
,
depending on whether or not a patient gets one or two doses of the
vaccine), there's still a small chance that even inoculated people will
get sick anyway."

Nowhere in the article does it state that she was not properly vaccinated. It just states that improper vaccination can be a cause of a vaccinated person getting measles.

Ugh. I bet the anti-vaxxers are gonna use this piece of news as proof that vaccines don't work.

They do have a rather flimsy grasp on the relationship between claims and supporting evidence.

You'd have to ignore the part about heard immunizations too.

It's spelled herd.

I would like to hear more about this patient zero. I can't think of a more perfect argument that your religious beliefs / God did not make you 'perfect' and above the need for medical attention in the face of diseases.

Well, it's just that we as fallible humans misinterpret what perfection consists of. In reality, perfection includes susceptibility to dying painfully from preventable diseases. It's part of God's plan that we suffer from plagues!

I would like to propose an airline just for anti-vaxxers called Plague CarryAir.

Take out the Carry part and you've got yourself a name!

Or known by its more common name: Spirit Air.

Why not LegionnAir?

Nice. Well done.

"Officials worked with the local Hatzalah members to track down patient zero, who reportedly believed himself to be immune to the disease because he'd had it before. Since arriving in Detroit, the man came into contact with hundreds of people in the Orthodox community—not only in their homes, but also at synagogues, yeshivas, kosher markets, and a pizza parlor. As a result, 39 people came down with the highly contagious virus."

This is fucking insane.

Waiting for Walter to defend it because Israel.

" who reportedly believed himself to be immune to the disease because he'd had it before"

That's not a totally unreasonable belief though or at least not as unreasonable as assuming you won't get it because you have been vaccinated.

Now if he was symptomatic and was ignoring it that's another issue.

Considering he was misdiagnosed, you can't really blame him.

Exactly. It is more reasonable to think one is immune from actually having had the disease than from vaccination. Part of the problem lies in doctors being unfamiliar with diseases which were once common but still exist *regardless* of vaccination status

It has nothing to do with Israel other than that's where he contracted it.

I've been called a faggot and told I shouldn't have the same rights as Hasidic Jews.

I'm Jewish. They don't treat us as equal.

Bullshit.

HAHAHAH. What the fuck are you going on about? Seriously dude, calm the fuck down.

You know exactly what the fuck I'm talking about.

https://youtu.be/N75DP2LcPYY

Relevant. To a post about someone contracting measles.

Fucking nailed it!