from 2019 condensed version
The Measles Mumps Rubella (MMR) vaccine is still mandatory, even though the CDC declared measles eliminated in the United States in 2000, with rubella eradicated in 2005. The measles death rate in the U.S. has been near zero for decades, yet the Disneyland panic of 2015 created a Measles Mania akin to Ebola Frenzy during the 2014 campaign season. This outbreak was blamed on unvaccinated children, even though the original infector, a Measles Minnie or Mickey was never identified. The virus was a id’d as a “wild” measles strain infecting the the Philippines. There were 131 measles cases with a dozen hospital visits in California from illness spread by Disney theme park visitors.
Peasants with pitchforks were chanting, “We believe in Science” and demanding that all school children be injected without any evidence for public health benefits. Measles, mumps and rubella are so “benign and self limiting” when contracted in childhood, it’s difficult to understand the hysteria. People who were infected are immune for life, while the effectiveness of the vaccine wanes within years. Fighting these infections helps develop a healthy adult immune system that protects against skin diseases, degenerative bone and cartilage disorders in comparison studies.
There are more severe cases, with 1 death per 10,000 infections before mass vaccination began in 1963, and occasional serious complications requiring hospitalization. These rare horror stories are what doctors warn about because that’s what they’ve seen or read about, but 90+% of illnesses were treated at home, with bed rest, quarantine and symptom relief. Even so, these cases are far more rare than severe reactions to the measles vaccine. Nine American died from measles since 2000 according to CDC mortality reports, while official Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) showed 459 deaths from measles vaccines since then. This vaccine has the “longest and most serious list of reported reactions.”
Measles was a dreaded killer in the 19th century in the U.S., but deaths diminished by 98% decades before the first measles vaccine was introduced in 1963. That vaccine used a killed virus and “consistently” caused pneumonia, fever and encephalitis. It was replaced with a live virus vaccine that caused measles like rashes in about half those injected. Incidence rates went down partly because illnesses causing rashes were less likely to be diagnosed as measles, since patients had been “immunized.” A new vaccine replaced it in 1980 that required two shots. They revealed that the previous vaccine was “not widely effective” and warned everyone under 32 to get a booster shot. Few did.
Pro-vaxxers chant that millions of global measles deaths have been prevented with vaccines, while eradicating an average of 400 (inflated to 500 in 2019) measles deaths a year in the U.S. Almost all of American deaths were in horribly crowded asylums for the mentally ill and disabled, fed with dismal diets and rarely outside in sunshine. These state institutions were where measles vaccines were tested in the 1950’s, because they were reliable sites for outbreaks with serious complications.
Treating hospitalized measles victims with Vitamin A reduced death rates by 65% in poorer countries where most global deaths occur. Medical science learned how to drastically reduce deaths and hasten recovery from measles, but chose to pursue the chimera of prevention by injection.
China has measles outbreaks with nearly 99% mandatory vaccination rates, no personal belief or religious exemptions allowed. Their measles rates tripled in 2013 according to the Bulletin of the World Health Organization. The Council on Foreign Relations, hardly a radical group, documented the greatest number of measles, mumps, pertussis, rubella, and polio cases in 2014, were in the most highly vaccinated countries.
Once you catch mumps, you are protected for life, while severe cases are virtually unheard of in children prior to puberty. French researchers found that vaccinated adults are contracting a particularly virulent strain of mumps causing meningitis, swollen testicles and hearing loss. In 2006 a mumps outbreak in an Iowa college spread to several states. Most of the infected people had been vaccinated during childhood when complications are rare, but immunity from the vaccine wears off by adulthood. Twenty were hospitalized, suffering arthritis, kidney, heart, brain and fertility problems.
The reason for vaccinating against rubella, the “mildest of all childhood illnesses” with lifetime immunity, is to protect pregnant women who have never had the disease, never been vaccinated, or the vaccine she got as a child wore off. The rubella vaccine caused acute arthritis in adult women given the vaccine, while chronic fatigue syndrome appeared in the medical literature three years after the new vaccine was developed. The MMR vaccine caused acute arthritis in 26% of adult women recipients, with some cases lasting for years.
If the rubella portion of the vaccine is also ineffective, the unborn children of pregnant women infected with German measles during the first two trimesters of pregnancy could suffer blindness, deafness, heart defects and autism. Universal childhood infection, rather than mandatory school vaccination, will reduce most risks from measles, mumps and rubella.