Measles outbreak in North America

[Chris Preston]

The West Texas measles outbreak from February is still spreading. To date there have been over 1300 cases across 41 states https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html.

92% of cases are in unvaccinated (or unknown vaccination status) people. 13% of infected people have been hospitalised and 3 people have died (2 children and an adult).

The situation is even worse in Canada where there has been more than 4000 cases https://health-infobase.canada.ca/measles-rubella/. Once again more than 90% of cases are in unvaccinated (or unknown vaccination status) people. 8% of cases have been hospitalised and one newborn with congenital measles has died.

[IvanV]

Unlike their follies over road safety and gun control, this is not a case of US exceptionalism. Similar issues in Canada were mentioned. But Europe has the same problem, without the need for an RFK Jr type in high office to cast doubt on vaccine safety. Plenty of other people have been doing the same job, seemingly just as effectively. Unsurprisingly places like Romania have the largest problem, where vaccine uptake is a long way down, doubtless more due to poor public finances than misinformation peddling. But UK and many other richer places in Europe have problems with insufficient vaccine uptake. Per capita, a couple of the larger outbreaks in the article I linked were in Belgium and Austria.

There was a report in the Economist a few weeks ago on the more general issue of trust in science, which has been investigated with a standardised international survey. I was most surprised to read that, for all the cranks and high rates of misinformation in the US, American people on average haev a higher level of trust in science than most of Europe. IIRC, the French and the Swiss have particularly low rates of trust.