Two Texas Children Did Not Have to Die of Measles
The Real Truth About Vaccines
By now, you should be well aware of the fact that two Texas children died because they had measles last year. Not surprisingly, they were both unvaccinated and were caught up in the large West Texas measles outbreak.
You should also be aware that it is very likely that neither would have died had they been vaccinated.
“[T]wo little girls died tragically in the Mennonite community in Texas. Mennonites have not vaccinated since 1796. This had nothing to do with me.”
Secretary RFK, Jr.
And yes, Mennonites, like the Amish, do vaccinate!
Two Texas Children Did Not Have to Die of Measles
As this year’s measles case counts continue to rise, it is no surprise that anti-vaccine influencers are panicking and are bringing back the idea that the two unvaccinated children in Texas didn’t actually die because they had measles last year.
Why?
They are prepping people for the next measles deaths!
Deaths that are almost certainly coming if the measles case counts continue to rise.
And measles case counts that will continue to rise if more people don’t get vaccinated and protected.
Two Texas Children Did Die of Measles!
Anti-vaccine influencers are likely also still pushing the idea that the two unvaccinated Texas children didn’t die with measles because they don’t want to think about the alternative…
And again, that’s the simple fact that they did not have to die with measles.
They could have been vaccinated and protected, which likely would have prevented their getting measles.
It certainly would have prevented them from getting a life-threatening case of measles!
Instead, cognitive dissonance (or the millions they are paid) pushes them to post error filled screeds claiming that:
the decline in measles deaths have been unrelated to measles vaccines - no one doubts that improved sanitation, hygiene, and nutrition had a very big effect on reducing deaths at the beginning of the 20th century, but there is also no doubt that the effect plateaued by the 1940s. Vaccines then worked to get measles and other diseases under better control.
the fact that around 400 people, mostly children, died because of measles in the 1950s and 60s is not a huge deal - 400 children dying from measles each and every year is a huge deal, especially when you consider that kids, many otherwise healthy, were also dying from Hib, pneumococcal disease, pertussis, and other vaccine preventable diseases.
measles vaccines have caused more deaths than they have saved - the idea of a lot of measles vaccine deaths is not in any way remotely true. And there are no benefits of having measles over being vaccinated.
infants would be better off with if their mothers had natural immunity instead of vaccine induced immunity - this is not true, as you would know if you looked at how many infants died because they had measles in the pre-vaccine era
immunity from the measles vaccine wanes - this is not true and is simply anti-vaccine influencers misinterpreting the role of measles titers and not understand the anamnestic response.
the safety of the MMR vaccine is in question - this is not true. The MMR vaccine is known to be safe and effective.
And then, after all of this misinformation, Aaron Siri posts an ‘expert review’ of the medical records of the two unvaccinated children who died because they had measles.
An ‘expert review’ by Pierre Kory, who basically claims that these very sick children with measles were given the wrong antibiotics when they developed a secondary bacterial pneumonia.
An ‘expert review’ which we can’t confirm, because they never posted the complete medical records…
An ‘expert review’ that really only confirms that these two children with measles were indeed quite sick, even though anti-vaccine influencers repeatedly tell everyone that measles is a very mild disease!
A mild disease like we saw on the Brady Bunch, right?
I don’t remember any of the Brady kids making multiple trips to the ER, getting hospitalized, developing pneumonia, being put on a ventilator, or dying, do you?
And I certainly don’t want to see more kids dying because they have measles.
Fortunately, they don’t have to.
Get vaccinated. Get your kids vaccinated. Stop the Outbreaks!
Thanks for this.
Just a comment… although there were around 400 measles deaths each year in the lead up to vaccination, that represents only the officially reported ACUTE measles mortality, and that is almost certainly an undercount. This is because deaths may have been erroneously recorded as due to pneumonia or encephalitis instead of measles; measles diagnoses may have been missed due to inadequate laboratory testing and confirmation; and state-to-federal reporting was inconsistent. These factors may easily have lead to under-reporting of deaths. I did previously have a link to an article estimating the under-reporting at about 30-50% but I can’t find it just now. I will keep looking.
In addition there is reliable evidence the overall observed acute mortality in higher income countries to be between one per 2-5,000 acute measles cases, which when applied to the number of annual cases seen in the 1960s (3 million per year) would imply 600-1,500 deaths each year.
These are only acute measles deaths. A significant number of measles deaths are however due to SSPE, which occurs years after acute infection. The incidence is estimated to be 7-11 per 100,000 acute measles cases (US data), which when applied back to the estimates of over 3 million cases per year prevaccination would account for around 300 deaths per year.
Taken in toto, there would likely have been a conservative toll of >1000 deaths from measles each year prevaccine.
People should bear this in mind, and this would be a reasonable estimate of deaths each year in the US again should vaccination cease as many would wish. Claims that the mortality would be less because of better nutrition and use of vitamin A are pretty hollow, considering how the impact of this would still be rather limited, and the major ongoing disparities the US still sees in health, nutrition and poverty/wealth.
https://www.cdc.gov/surv-manual/php/table-of-contents/chapter-7-measles.html