Deetee said:
However, ther remains a small core of dedicated antivaxers who will promote their cause to the death (not their own, but that of susceptible infants).
They are currently whipping themselves into a frenzy on the BMJ electronic responses web site. The shame of this is that they are reaching a wider audience with their nonsense than they would do in their own antivax forums. They are posting several messages each day (as they have done for many months), and claiming victory for their cause by citing each other's pseudoscientific ramblings as "evidence".
From one of Deetee's links:
For Jennifer Best to compare two children with renal transplants (with all the immune suppression steroids etc. following transplantation) and long term neurological sequelae, subsequent to measles, to the herd is beyond any reasoning I can conjure. Are the pro-vaccinators now to the point that they would recommend multiple jabs in patients undergoing organ transplantation? If so, I'm running as far and fast as I can.
This poster was referring to a reference to the two boys from London who had had renal transplants and were dong very well until they both contracted measles. If I've got it right, one is now confined to a wheelchair and the other is practically blind.
Neither would have been vaccinated, of course, under any circumstances. Nobody would have contemplated vaccinating them, if for no other reason than that the immunosuppressive drugs they were taking would have rendered it highly unlikely they would have produced an immune response.
In a normal, decent world, both boys should have been able to rely on their schoolmates' vaccinations to keep measles out of the group as a whole, and so protect them, the vulnerable minority. Herd immunity, in fact. However, what happened was that one boy caught measles from a schoolmate whose parents were vaccine refuseniks (and who may well have had a very mild attack of the condition). Then, before the infection was advanced enough to show clinical signs, he attended a renal outpatients' clinic where he met up with the other boy as he often did, the two being friends after having undergone their transplants together. And he infected the other transplant boy.
To anyone with two brain cells to keep each other company, this is a perfect example of the need for herd immunity. These boys were exactly the people who needed their schoolmates' parents to be responsible and vaccinate them, and they were shamefully betrayed. Someone on immunosuppressive drugs can't be vaccinated and if he catches the infection is far more likely to suffer a severe clinical illness. So every precaution should be taken to ensure that he doesn't become exposed to the virus. But some people were too selfish and decided that their children were so special they should skip the vaccine, so condemning the really "special" children to a lifetime of disability.
But instead of understanding this pretty simple concept, all we get is a rant suggesting that the evil pro-vaccinators are advocating vaccination of transplant patients. Is anything more required to show how brain-dead these people are?
The point about herd immunity is that it protects those who cannot be vaccinated (like these two boys), and those not yet old enough to have received the vaccine, and those who, although vaccinated, fail to mount an effective immune response. Some people just don't care about these vulnerable groups, or the fact that some of these groups
will catch the disease and some of them
will suffer serious consequences unless a high proportion of those eligible are vaccinated.
Makes me sick.
Rolfe.
