Tag: diseases

Two infants die of whooping cough in Louisiana as cases climb nationally

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Experts say they see peaks and valleys with these kinds of illnesses over the years, but there have been about 6,600 cases already in 2025, almost four times the number at this point last year.”

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“Concerned about increasing cases, experts are urging vaccination.
The US had more than 200,000 cases of whooping cough every year before the vaccine was introduced. By 1948, the vaccine was widely used, and infection rates began to drop.”

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“Boosters are recommended because protection from the vaccine can fade over time, which may be one reason for the ongoing outbreaks.

Declining vaccination rates are another reason. The percentage of US kindergartners who received the DTaP vaccine has steadily declined over the past five years, leaving thousands vulnerable to infection.

Organizers within the state say that although many people have become hesitant about vaccinations, another issue is a lack of access.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/two-infants-die-whooping-cough-205515737.html

Sam Harris Reveals Million Dollar Bet w/ Elon That Killed Their Friendship

Posted on by Lone Candle

Elon Musk thought Covid would remain under 100 cases in the United States, and was extremely confident about this belief. Disagreements over this ended his relationship with Sam Harris.

Elon would publicly insult Sam over misleading clips of Sam that misrepresented what Sam said. Sam would email Elon explaining the context, and Elon would tell Sam to fuck off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vzBTpIF_hI

First death reported in Texas measles outbreak

Posted on by Lone Candle

“The first death has been reported in the ongoing measles outbreak in West Texas, according to a press release sent out by the Texas Department of State Health Services Wednesday.
The victim was an unvaccinated child who was hospitalized in Lubbock last week.

The outbreak, starting in late January, has 124 confirmed cases, the majority of which are either children, unvaccinated people, or both. Eighteen people have been hospitalized, the state health department said.”

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“According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the last measles death in the United States was reported a decade ago in 2015. Measles was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, which the CDC attributes to its vaccination program.

Vaccination rates for the MMR vaccine in Texas have dropped slightly in recent years following the Covid-19 pandemic.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/26/texas-measles-outbreak-rfk-jr-00002698

One More Damned Time: Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Lutnick is right that autism diagnoses have risen substantially. If not childhood vaccinations, what accounts for this increase? First, greater awareness means that many people with autism spectrum disorder who in the past would have been missed by clinicians are now being identified. However, a 2020 review article in Molecular Psychiatry reports that changes in diagnostic criteria “has been accompanied by a 20-fold increase in the reported prevalence of ASD over the last 30 years, reaching a current prevalence of more than 2% in the United States.” This contributes to the likelihood of over-diagnosis and a shift toward autism diagnoses in place of other mental health conditions.”

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“the liability system was unable to properly balance the public benefits of vaccines against their private harms. The result of this imbalance was killing off vaccine innovation and production. So Congress a year later chose to change the liability system with respect to vaccines in 1986 with the adoption of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) of 1986 established the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which provides compensation to people who are injured by certain vaccines.
And the benefits of vaccines are enormous. A 2024 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention review finds that “among children born during 1994–2023, routine childhood vaccinations will have prevented approximately 508 million cases of illness, 32 million hospitalizations, and 1,129,000 deaths, resulting in direct savings of $540 billion and societal savings of $2.7 trillion.””

https://reason.com/2024/11/01/one-more-damned-time-vaccines-do-not-cause-autism/

Trump’s campaign against public health is back on

Posted on by Lone Candle

“People are already losing trust in vaccines: Only 40 percent of Americans believe it is extremely important for parents to get their children vaccinated, down from 64 percent in 2001. It is perhaps the most worrying trend in public health right now.
We have the tools to stop many infectious diseases — if we take advantage of them. Trump’s words are making it less likely that people will.”

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“Meanwhile, measles cases in the US matched their 2023 total over just the first few months of 2024. A local outbreak in Oregon has seen nearly two dozen cases since June; at least two people have been hospitalized.

A disease that was once effectively eradicated in the US — and which school mandates helped to stamp out — is mounting a comeback.

Donald Trump could choose to wield his tremendous influence to try to restore people’s faith in vital public health measures. He did it, if half-heartedly, during the pandemic and it had the desired effect. Instead, he’s stoking doubts about the value of vaccines, and courting the dangers vaccine hesitancy brings.”

https://www.vox.com/today-explained-newsletter/366472/2024-election-donald-trump-vaccines-schools

Antibiotics are failing. The US has a plan to launch a research renaissance.

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Many other developed countries with established pharmaceutical industries such as Japan, Canada, and the UK have implemented or are working to roll out their own incentives to spur antibiotic development. The Pasteur Act dwarfs these. This could potentially drive pharmaceutical companies to flock to the US market to make drugs deemed important there and not in other places.

“The size of the Pasteur Act is going to be so large that it ultimately draws developers to only focusing on the United States, only developing the drug so that it can be used appropriately in the United States, and only registering the drug in the United States, because that’s ultimately going to be sufficient revenue and incentive for what otherwise is not a very profitable market,” explained Rohit Malpani, a senior policy advisor at the Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership, or GARDP.

Cirz added that with a steady influx of Pasteur Act funds, pharmaceutical companies may be less interested in investing additional funds to figure out ways to manufacture their antibiotics more cheaply. Usually companies would continue investing so they can increase their profit margins by lowering manufacturing costs, but if profit margins are set by the US government, then there’s less incentive to make an approved drug cheaper, when it can divert attention to making even more drugs. Without that innovation for affordable production, the act may unintentionally prohibit developing countries such as India from being able to independently manufacture the drug.

Finally, while Americans with federal health insurance plans are guaranteed access to antimicrobials that receive support from the act, the proposed legislation does not provide any stipulations or guidance for ensuring global access to these drugs. Pharmaceutical companies are left to make decisions regarding pricing, manufacturing, and distribution of whatever antibiotics might be funded by the program, argued Ava Alkon, global health advocacy and policy adviser at Doctors Without Borders.

“What the act doesn’t do is attach any meaningful conditions to facilitate affordable access to people outside of those federal programs, and certainly not outside of the US,” said Alkon.

“From our years of work on access issues around the world, this generally results in products being sold to the highest bidder and being inaccessible in many contexts where they’re needed,” she said.”

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/367247/antibiotic-resistance-bacteria-pasteur-act-big-pharma