How Anti-Vaccine Influencers Respond to Measles Deaths

The worst of the anti-vaccine movement is now on full display as they work to minimize the death of another unvaccinated child with measles.

Surprisingly, anti-vaccine influencers are very good when it comes to talking about death.

They have it down to a science!

How Anti-Vaccine Influencers Talk About Measles Deaths

What do I mean?

Just consider how they react to the recent deaths of the school age children with measles.

The only mismanagement is coming from Bobby Kennedy and how he is letting these measles outbreaks continue to grow.

As soon as the tragic death was announced, anti-vaccine influencers were posting explanations, blaming the child’s death on medical mismanagement.

“In this second case, a young girl who had previously been infected but recovered from a measles infection developed a blood infection (sepsis) after suffering from chronic tonsillitis complicated by chronic mononucleosis.”

Breaking News: Another Texas Child Dies a Tragic Death After Recovering from Measles

Before we even talk about how the child tragically died from “measles pulmonary failure,” a complication of measles, as reported by Texas Department of State Health Services, know that chronic mono is rare and is not just a sore throat. Those folks have chronic fevers and are immunosuppressed.

“Unfortunately, the child developed sepsis, a bacterial blood infection, which progressed to acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). In this case, blood cultures identified gram-positive cocci in her blood, indicating that her sepsis and ARDS were likely caused by either a Staphylococcus aureus or Streptococcus pneumoniae bacterial infection.”

Breaking News: Another Texas Child Dies a Tragic Death After Recovering from Measles

Wait though, how does Robert Malone know about the mono and that they identified gram-positive cocci in her blood?

Does he have the child’s medical records?

And if he does, why is only leaking bits and pieces?

“The indication of “gram-positive cocci” in blood culture reports represents isolated information that, by itself, is unhelpful. If there are gram-positive cocci in blood cultures, the arrangement of the organisms must be stated (i.e., whether the gram- positive cocci are arranged in pairs, chains, or clusters), which helps enormously.”

Empiric Antimicrobial Therapy for Bacteremia: Get It Right from the Start or Get a Call from Infectious Disease

Gram-positive cocci, without knowing other information, could be anything from a contaminant to an infection with Streptococcus pneumoniae, Staphylococcus epidermidis, or Staphylococcus aureus, etc.

And why doesn’t Robert Malone mention that the child tested positive for measles?

“Her parents brought her to the Texas University Medical Center in Lubbock, Texas for treatment of her apparent bacterial sepsis due to underlying chronic tonsillitis and chronic mononucleosis. At the time of admission, the girl’s father specifically requested that she be treated with inhaled budesonide by nebulizer. The UMC Hospital staff refused this request, and appear to have treated her as if she was suffering from COVID rather than ARDS, and administered an intravascular infusion of steroids. IV steroids suppress the immune system's ability to fight bacterial infections, and the father was aware that inhaled Budesonide is an effective, lower-risk treatment relative to IV steroids when treating ARDS.”

Breaking News: Another Texas Child Dies a Tragic Death After Recovering from Measles

So instead of accepting that the child died from a common complication of measles, these folks will once again try to blame the health professionals who worked to save her life.

“Among 177 patients (mean age 26 ± 9 years), only 2 were vaccinated. Thirty patients (16.9%) had signs of pneumonia on chest radiography. Computed tomography scan showed the following abnormalities: centrilobular nodules (63%), ground-glass attenuation (63%), air-space consolidation (36%), pleural effusion (16%) and pneumothorax (10%). Five patients developed severe lung injury and hypoxemia requiring admission to Intensive Care Unit. Two young unvaccinated women with no past medical history died from acute respiratory failure. The death was sudden and unpredictable.”

Severe and fatal measles-associated pneumonia during an outbreak in Italy: data from the heart of the epidemic

Health professionals who follow evidence based guidelines and use treatments that have the best chance of working and not simply anecdotal things that made some providers famous during COVID, like giving everyone budesonide nebulizer treatments. Treatments that are not only far from being a clinically proven standard-of-care treatment, as Malone suggests, but have mostly been found to not work.

“As a consequence, she passed away due to sepsis resulting from chronic tonsillitis and chronic mononucleosis, complicated by medical mismanagement.”

Breaking News: Another Texas Child Dies a Tragic Death After Recovering from Measles

The child died because she was unvaccinated, got sick with measles, and developed a known life-threatening complication.

Of course, that doesn’t fit that anti-vaccine narrative that measles is a mild disease though.

“In the previous related case that was widely misreported by mainstream media, another ‘medical error’ by a Texas hospital led to death of 6-year-old child who developed mycoplasma pneumonia after receiving a measles diagnosis.”

Breaking News: Another Texas Child Dies a Tragic Death After Recovering from Measles

So what happens next?

With more and more cases of measles, as anti-vaccine influencers not only scare parents away from vaccinating and protecting their kids, but also taking them to the hospital when they get sick, we will see more kids dying at home.

Who will they blame then?

Bobby Kennedy said it was hard to kill a healthy child with measles, and yet two previously healthy children are dead since he became Secretary of HHS last month.

I know who is at the top of my list…

“When RFK Jr. attends the funeral of yet another child who has died from measles unnecessarily, he should apologize to the family. Apologize for his inaction. Apologize for his continual spread of misinformation about the disease and the vaccine. Apologize for his failure to strongly support the importance of vaccinating children during an epidemic. And apologize for cutting funds for immunization clinics in areas with low vaccination rates. The frankly dismissive mantra of “thoughts and prayers” doesn’t cut it here.”

Another Child Dies from Measles

I know who is at the top of a lot of lists — Bobby Kennedy and the Senators who voted to put him in charge of our public health system!

References

Texas announces second death in measles outbreak. https://www.dshs.texas.gov/news-alerts/texas-announces-second-death-measles-outbreak

Burke A. Cunha, Empiric Antimicrobial Therapy for Bacteremia: Get It Right from the Start or Get a Call from Infectious Disease, Clinical Infectious Diseases, Volume 39, Issue 8, 15 October 2004, Pages 1170–1173, https://doi.org/10.1086/424525

Lombardo D, Ciampi G, Spicuzza L. Severe and fatal measles-associated pneumonia during an outbreak in Italy: data from the heart of the epidemic. Adv Respir Med. 2020;88(3):197-203. doi: 10.5603/ARM.2020.0118. PMID: 32706103.