I’m in my middle 70s, can’t recall which childhood diseases I had, so i got the MMR a couple/three weeks ago. When I set up the CVS appointment online it offered the Moderna booster, so I added that to the same appointment.
I have a primary care physician who tells me when i need boosters. A couple of years ago i asked about the Tdap, and he said I’d had it quite recently. But keeping track of that is something he does for me.
My PCP uses the online EPIC system, as did my previous PCP. It’s also linked to CVS, so all my immunizations show up there in a dashboard. [I just looked, it also has all my weirdo travel vaccinations I got through the office health center, not sure how those got loaded in]
It doesn’t really hurt (unless you have a needle phobia). Especially if you don’t remember the last time you got a tetanus booster. I consider the extra pertussis protection a bonus, what with the decreasing vaccination rates around the state.
In my old town, pertussis outbreaks usually could be traced to the Amish communities in the area. They didn’t prohibit vaccination, but they usually didn’t routinely do it until and unless they were in a situation where they were required to do so.
Yeah, this is one of the really horrible parts of it all (I mean, it’s horrible enough that ignorant parents deliberately endanger their own innocent children) - there are people who, for genuine medical reasons, cannot receive vaccines (e.g. people with immune systems deficiencies for whom a live vaccine type might be dangerous) and people for whom vaccines simply don’t work very well (e.g. people on immunosuppressant medications where the medicine is literally undoing the immunity that their body might have acquired from a vaccination).
These groups of people are put at greater risk by anti-vaxxers.
…
Friday data showed 575 cases where [sic] in unvaccinated individuals.
No doubt should be “were.”
Measles is highly contagious, so up to 9 in 10 people exposed to the virus will become sick if they are not protected by the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine or a prior infection, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
…
While we’re on the topic of measles, one really crappy consequence of getting them is immune amnesia, i.e. your body losing the memory of some of its other immunities.
How common is immune amnesia among people sick with measles, and does its commonality differ between adults and children?
Virtually everyone who gets measles experiences some level of immune amnesia, but the extent can vary. However, children with severe measles seem to be impacted more than adults.
Is immune amnesia more serious for adults or for children?
It’s hard to say as there are many variables that also may be in play — including underlying disease states like malnutrition — that can impact a person’s immunity. These conditions, compounded with immune amnesia, may make someone more susceptible to other infections.
What are the main dangers or health risks of immune amnesia?
It makes you more susceptible to other types of infections. Even if you have survived measles and didn’t end up hospitalized or developing serious complications, you’re now defenseless in terms of other common infections that you might encounter. This is especially true for children, who can face much more severe and complicated infections.
With the R-naught (risk of transmission) being as high as it is, a single case could almost be considered an outbreak. This case, BTW, was in an adult.
This region also has several Amish and Mennonite communities, which has me wondering if that’s where they came from.
I regret that very marginalized religious communities will be blamed for this.
When the true fault lies in the right spreading false information on vaccinations.
There’s no excuse at this time that anyone should be in a true “outbreak”.
It sorta negates all the research, studies and trials that went into development of these ways to combat terrible diseases.
Fringe religious communities deserve a considerable share of blame for outbreaks of dangerous vaccine-preventable diseases.
It’s not just West Texas Mennonites. A sect of Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn was the epicenter of a 2013 outbreak. A Texas megachurch and North Carolina religious community were involved in other ones.
And we have asses like this pastor.
Today on Twitter an antivaxer was questioning the need for rubella vaccination, saying the U.S. has only about 10 cases a year.