Healthcare PSAs and BSAs

News
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For anyone who needed reminders that viruses do not respect borders.

All of the cases are in unvaccinated individuals or individuals whose vaccination status is unknown, and 13 people have been hospitalized so far. Gaines County is the epicenter of the outbreak, with 42 cases confirmed among residents, according to DSHS.
Meanwhile, in neighboring New Mexico, three unrelated cases of measles were confirmed last week in Lea County, which borders Gaines County, according to the New Mexico Department of Health (NMDOH).

The “unrelated” part caught my attention. Most likely explanation is that they are, in fact, related and there are folks carrying the virus who either are not symptomatic or are not seeking medical care. This is a recipe for serious problems should this travel very far. Unfortunately, vaccine avoiders tend to cluster and this can get very big very fast.

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Got the first dose of the shingles vaccine this afternoon.
Hoping the weekend won’t be too rough :crossed_fingers:

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More on measles, related to adults getting revaccinated:

“If you have been vaccinated with two doses of vaccine as per routine, you have a 95-plus percent chance of being completely protected throughout your life,” Schaffner says.
But public health experts say there are some adults who should consider getting revaccinated. That includes older adults who were born after 1957 and were vaccinated before 1968.

But Ratner says there are several situations in which the CDC recommends an additional dose of measles vaccine for adults who are considered at high risk. That includes people who are in college settings, work in health care, live or are in close contact with immunocompromised people, or are traveling internationally.

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I’m definitely included in those categories. Glad I revaxed!

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So, I should get a booster since I teach college classes?

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Consider this, if you’re of GenX age: I was vaccinated in infancy but had measles when I was 16 (late 1980s). The county health dept. told me, at the time, that a whole cohort (not just in that county; I lived elsewhere back in infancy) had been vaccinated too early; after that they gave the dose(s?) a few months later for better efficacy. I don’t think they counted it as an epidemic but there were enough of us that it was A Thing that spring. (Someone I knew had measles & chicken pox at the same time.)

So if you were vaccinated as an infant while Nixon was still POTUS, maybe look into a measles booster.

*Not a doctor nor do I play one on TV

EtA:

Yeah, that :arrow_up:

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In 2019 the local university required me to get a MMR booster when I enrolled in a class because my childhood vaccination(s) done in the late 60s/early 70s didn’t meet current standards.

(Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional, but it seemed like a good idea at the time, and even more so considering what has happened since.)

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I think the take-home is that if you feel you may be in a higher risk situation, get the shot. “Overvaxxed” is not a thing, even though the antivaxxers love to throw that around. Now, insurance coverage may be a different matter, and I have no idea how they do the math. But here, if someone asked for the shot, I would give it.

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Same, got MMR in (I think?) jr high due to “waning immunity.” This would have been mid-70’s or so. A whole cohort that got their shot at under 12 mos had to revaccinate.

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Through concerted deworming efforts and improved hygiene, the worms were largely flushed out over the subsequent decades. But as one medical editorial put it in 2017: We still got 'em. That year, a study detected genetic traces of N. americanus in the stool of more than a third of people tested in an impoverished community in Lowndes County, Alabama. In Lowndes, approximately 50 percent of households have failing or no sewage systems.

Just pointing out that ivermectin does, really and for true, have legitimate medical indications. In case you were wondering.

Evil Grin Clips - Find & Share on GIPHY

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A Republican lawmaker in Missouri has introduced legislation to create a registry of pregnant women who are “at risk” of having an abortion – a proposal the bill’s author characterized as an “eHarmony for babies” that could also help match adoptive parents with babies.

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:sob:

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Thanks!! I’ll talk to my GI doc about my case. I suspect I should get one due to being on immunosuppressants.

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Roald Dahl on Measles (in 1986):

"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…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. On the other hand, there is today something that parents can do to make sure that this sort of tragedy does not happen to a child of theirs. They can insist that their child is immunised against measles.

…I dedicated two of my books to Olivia, the first was ‘James and the Giant Peach’. That was when she was still alive. The second was ‘The BFG’, dedicated to her memory after she had died from measles. You will see her name at the beginning of each of these books. And I know how happy she would be if only she could know that her death had helped to save a good deal of illness and death among other children."

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COVID-19 vaccines cut the risk of long COVID by between 57–73 percent in kids and teens, according to a study published today in JAMA Network Open. And there’s more good news: A second study published today in the journal offered more data that the now-annual shots are not linked to sudden cardiac arrest or sudden cardiac death in young athletes—a claim that gained traction on social media and among anti-vaccine groups during the acute phase of the pandemic.

None of this is shocking or anything, but I feel like more data is good. Of course, if things like facts mattered, we wouldn’t be where we are, now would we?

For the new study, led by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, kids from Florida, Texas, Arizona, and Utah, all between the ages of 5 and 17, were followed between December 2021 and March 2023.

I cannot think that the population was intentionally ironic, but here we are…

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And, on a lighter note. considering we are likely going to stop having to deal with pesky clean water regulations anymore:

God, I hope this works for coffee as well!

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