Thoughts on Measles outbreak?

I think that yours is a reasonable question, but there's some good answers. First of all, short of things like Plutonium, nothing is categorically "toxic." Toxicity is a function of two things: the substance and its concentration. Even water is toxic to humans at a high enough concentration. This overall notion is often referred to as The First Rule of Toxicology: "The dose makes the poison."

Secondly, the toxicity of a given element varies greatly based on its molecular form. Consider these two elements: Chlorine and Sodium. Both of these elements are pretty nasty substances on their own. Chlorine gas is very poisonous to humans and is banned as a chemical weapon. Sodium is a volatile metal that reacts violently with water to produce highly caustic lye. No one in their right minds would ingest either elemental Chlorine or Sodium. But when combined, the situation is totally different. You get Sodium Chloride, AKA "table salt". While, as with anything, you can die from eating too much table salt. We're talking an orders of magnitude difference in toxicity between the elemental forms of Sodium and Chlorine and table salt. But just like RFK Jr. claiming that a vaccine contains a "neurotoxin", I can claim that the stuff you season your ear of sweet corn with contains a "deadly chemical weapon."

Regarding mercury, it is sometimes used in multi-dose vials of vaccines to prevent fungal contamination of vials once the seal is broken when they start using the vial. If you'll recall, a few years ago there were a large number of people who were sickened or killed due to contamination of vials of steroids produced by a "compounding pharmacy" with poor sterile conditions. Mercury-containing Thiomersal is used, in very low concentrations, in order to prevent such tragedies. But the mercury is not elemental, it's in a compound (like my salt example): ethylmercury. While ethylmercury isn't nearly as "safe" as table salt and is hazardous at high enough levels, it's no where nearly as dangerous as the other common mercury compound: Methylmercury. Methylmercury is some pretty nasty stuff. One key difference is that our bodies have a very hard time removing methylmercury from our blood and tissues. Because of this methylmercury is considered a "bioaccumulative environmental toxicant." Again, Thiomersal doesn't contain the methylmercury form of mercury. Instead is contains the less concerning ethylmercury and our bodies can remove. Also, thinking back to the First Rule of Toxicolgy, vaccines use/used very very small volumes of Thiomersal, of which only one ingredient is ethylmercury.

Now let's look at RFK Jr's boogey man, Aluminum. Why is it in vaccines? Vaccines usually have two important components: antigens and adjuvants. Antigens are the dead or weakened parts of the target virus or bacteria that your body then reacts to in a "immune response" and learns how to manufacture antibodies against for the future when the real virus or bacteria shows up. Along the way, scientists learned that you can boost a body's initial immune response against an antigen by adding other things to the vaccine along with it. These became known as "adjuvants" (Latin for "Help towards"). The end result is that adjuvants improve vaccine effectiveness down the road. Many of the best adjuvants that we use are aluminum salts (remember that table salt is a "Sodium salt" in the same sense of the term). It's also important to remember that your body rids itself of both antigens and adjuvants that are contained in vaccines. What protects you long-term is the "knowledge" that your immune system gains by its brief encounter with the antigens and adjuvants contained in the vaccine. It's a common misconception that vaccines just "build up" in your body as they are administered to you.

Thank you for writing all this.

I have an actual thimerosal allergy diagnosed with PATCH testing and using a real MD. I still get vaccinated. It's not an issue to ask for a vaccination without thimerosal. In fact, I got vaccinated last year for Hep B and Typhoid and one of them contained trace levels of thimerosal....and I lived, imagine that ;)
 
I think that yours is a reasonable question, but there's some good answers. First of all, short of things like Plutonium, nothing is categorically "toxic." Toxicity is a function of two things: the substance and its concentration. Even water is toxic to humans at a high enough concentration. This overall notion is often referred to as The First Rule of Toxicology: "The dose makes the poison."

Secondly, the toxicity of a given element varies greatly based on its molecular form. Consider these two elements: Chlorine and Sodium. Both of these elements are pretty nasty substances on their own. Chlorine gas is very poisonous to humans and is banned as a chemical weapon. Sodium is a volatile metal that reacts violently with water to produce highly caustic lye. No one in their right minds would ingest either elemental Chlorine or Sodium. But when combined, the situation is totally different. You get Sodium Chloride, AKA "table salt". While, as with anything, you can die from eating too much table salt. We're talking an orders of magnitude difference in toxicity between the elemental forms of Sodium and Chlorine and table salt. But just like RFK Jr. claiming that a vaccine contains a "neurotoxin", I can claim that the stuff you season your ear of sweet corn with contains a "deadly chemical weapon."

Regarding mercury, it is sometimes used in multi-dose vials of vaccines to prevent fungal contamination of vials once the seal is broken when they start using the vial. If you'll recall, a few years ago there were a large number of people who were sickened or killed due to contamination of vials of steroids produced by a "compounding pharmacy" with poor sterile conditions. Mercury-containing Thiomersal is used, in very low concentrations, in order to prevent such tragedies. But the mercury is not elemental, it's in a compound (like my salt example): ethylmercury. While ethylmercury isn't nearly as "safe" as table salt and is hazardous at high enough levels, it's no where nearly as dangerous as the other common mercury compound: Methylmercury. Methylmercury is some pretty nasty stuff. One key difference is that our bodies have a very hard time removing methylmercury from our blood and tissues. Because of this methylmercury is considered a "bioaccumulative environmental toxicant." Again, Thiomersal doesn't contain the methylmercury form of mercury. Instead is contains the less concerning ethylmercury and our bodies can remove. Also, thinking back to the First Rule of Toxicolgy, vaccines use/used very very small volumes of Thiomersal, of which only one ingredient is ethylmercury.

Now let's look at RFK Jr's boogey man, Aluminum. Why is it in vaccines? Vaccines usually have two important components: antigens and adjuvants. Antigens are the dead or weakened parts of the target virus or bacteria that your body then reacts to in a "immune response" and learns how to manufacture antibodies against for the future when the real virus or bacteria shows up. Along the way, scientists learned that you can boost a body's initial immune response against an antigen by adding other things to the vaccine along with it. These became known as "adjuvants" (Latin for "Help towards"). The end result is that adjuvants improve vaccine effectiveness down the road. Many of the best adjuvants that we use are aluminum salts (remember that table salt is a "Sodium salt" in the same sense of the term). It's also important to remember that your body rids itself of both antigens and adjuvants that are contained in vaccines. What protects you long-term is the "knowledge" that your immune system gains by its brief encounter with the antigens and adjuvants contained in the vaccine. It's a common misconception that vaccines just "build up" in your body as they are administered to you.
Thank you for this very informative post. I appreciate the considerable effort and it has given me some excellent starting points for further reading. :thanks:
 
Chemo will kill the immune system, and so you'd need new vaccines, when it is safe.

Chemo before a bone marrow transplant is to wipe out the old to make way for the new - you can have different levels of chemo, so I'm guessing yours wasn't to wipe out your whole system. But I'd ask your doctor, just in case.

My misunderstanding, the way you phrased the first quote made it seem as though all chemo kills the immune system.
 
Thank you for this very informative post. I appreciate the considerable effort and it has given me some excellent starting points for further reading. :thanks:
No problem.

Here's a good set of pages from the National Institute of Health that gives a good overview of adjuvants.

As for Thiomersal, other here are correct in that you primarily will only likely encounter it today in multi-dose vials of the seasonal flu vaccine. It was removed from childhood years ago over public fears generated by Andrew Wakefield, et al, in an attempt to quell concerns about vaccinations. It of course had the opposite effect as anti-vaxxers responded by pointing to Thiomersal's removal as an admission that it must be unsafe to use. Here's a good background story of what was known about Thiomersal from 2008. Data released in later years only added to the supporting evidence as their safety of Thiomersal.
 

Do vaccines bottles need to be shook? I would think that Mercury would settle to the bottom ans at one point would be higher then other times vaccine is administered. I looked real quick and have no idea if I was reading it correctly but it seemed they say no, And that often if shaken it is more painful to recipient. But then one would think that it is more painful than shaking is actually giving you a different concoction than if not and that peopel could be getting varried amount of those "A" things you mentioned before.
I'm all for vaccines BTW.
Maybe th epain is from bubbles that get in needle.
 
My misunderstanding, the way you phrased the first quote made it seem as though all chemo kills the immune system.

My fault, sorry! Chemo certainly weakens most immune systems - but when getting stem cells and/or bone marrow transplants, they really need to kill off the immune system, so it doesn't attack the new cells.

Do vaccines bottles need to be shook? I would think that Mercury would settle to the bottom ans at one point would be higher then other times vaccine is administered. I looked real quick and have no idea if I was reading it correctly but it seemed they say no, And that often if shaken it is more painful to recipient. But then one would think that it is more painful than shaking is actually giving you a different concoction than if not and that peopel could be getting varried amount of those "A" things you mentioned before.
I'm all for vaccines BTW.
Maybe th epain is from bubbles that get in needle.

The mercury isn't free-floating, it's part of a molecule called thimerosal.

There shouldn't be bubbles in the needle either.
 
Do vaccines bottles need to be shook? I would think that Mercury would settle to the bottom ans at one point would be higher then other times vaccine is administered. I looked real quick and have no idea if I was reading it correctly but it seemed they say no, And that often if shaken it is more painful to recipient. But then one would think that it is more painful than shaking is actually giving you a different concoction than if not and that peopel could be getting varried amount of those "A" things you mentioned before.
I'm all for vaccines BTW.
Maybe th epain is from bubbles that get in needle.
Precipitants in vaccines are considered to be a bad thing. You want a deliver a uniform dose to a patient so you want the vaccine to be a homogeneous solution. Many vaccines are shipped in lyophilized form ("freeze dried") and then are reconstituted using sterile water as a diluent. Once mixed and shaken, their shouldn't be anything "floating around" inside of the vial after that. Re-shaking shouldn't be required. It not really any different that salt water. If mixed properly, everything should be in solution and uniform.

Here's a training video that I found that shows the whole process:
 
Well, here's a some new information about the outbreak of Measles in my state that blows another hole in the anti-vax argument: "'Patient zero' of Michigan measles outbreak thought he was immune because he had it before"
The individual who brought the disease to Michigan suffered from what McGraw said is a common misconception -- the man, who is in his 40s or 50s, believed that he was immune from the disease because he said he had it when it was younger.

"He was told he was immune because he had the measles [when he was younger], that’s why initially he completely discounted his [the doctor’s] suggestion," McGraw said.

"I know people who believed they were fully immune because they had measles, and then they had measles in the past month and a half," McGraw said, referring to other cases.
The standard line from anti-vaxxers is that getting the disease is better because it offers you "natural immunity" which then offers you a lifetime of protection. Well, no, that's not completely true. It varies from disease to disease, but "natural immunity" can wane just like immunity from vaccines. It's basically the same mechanism with both immune triggers. Your body can slowly stop producing enough antibodies to protect you. While "natural immunity" may last longer than vaccine-acquired immunity, both can fade and need to be renewed either by a "booster" shot or getting the disease again. In the case of Whopping Cough, the vaccine is one of the weakest ones we have in terms of efficacy, but the data shows that on average natural immunity only lasts a couple years more than the vaccine-based immunity.
 
I'm sorry if this was discussed already and I missed it, but does anyone know if the autism rates in unvaccinated children have been studied? I looked around and found just a little info.

https://www.verywellhealth.com/unvaccinated-children-with-autism-2633214
Here's one literally "hot off of the press" (emphasis mine)
Measles, Mumps, Rubella Vaccination and Autism: A Nationwide Cohort Study
Abstract
Background:
The hypothesized link between the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism continues to cause concern and challenge vaccine uptake.

Objective:
To evaluate whether the MMR vaccine increases the risk for autism in children, subgroups of children, or time periods after vaccination.

Design:
Nationwide cohort study.

Setting:
Denmark.

Participants:
657,461 children born in Denmark from 1999 through 31 December 2010, with follow-up from 1 year of age and through 31 August 2013.

Measurements:
Danish population registries were used to link information on MMR vaccination, autism diagnoses, other childhood vaccines, sibling history of autism, and autism risk factors to children in the cohort. Survival analysis of the time to autism diagnosis with Cox proportional hazards regression was used to estimate hazard ratios of autism according to MMR vaccination status, with adjustment for age, birth year, sex, other childhood vaccines, sibling history of autism, and autism risk factors (based on a disease risk score).

Results:
During 5,025,754 person-years of follow-up, 6,517 children were diagnosed with autism (incidence rate, 129.7 per 100,000 person-years). Comparing MMR-vaccinated with MMR-unvaccinated children yielded a fully adjusted autism hazard ratio of 0.93 (95% CI, 0.85 to 1.02). Similarly, no increased risk for autism after MMR vaccination was consistently observed in subgroups of children defined according to sibling history of autism, autism risk factors (based on a disease risk score) or other childhood vaccinations, or during specified time periods after vaccination.
 
Hrhpd, I understand. It was no the World News tonight but this popped up in my feed. https://kdvr.com/2019/04/17/israeli...oyhbEE1KUmgZUdLvO3z5z9NIa7tnFXccaDr_8cPZN-Dzs
We here in my state now have a case of the measles. Unvaccinated person went to Israel, where there is an outbreak according to the article, and came back sick. State Dept of health is monotoring person and those they came in contact with. My problem with that statement is unless that person teleported themselves from Israel to my state, I imagine they visited at least two airports if not three.
 
I'm sorry if this was discussed already and I missed it, but does anyone know if the autism rates in unvaccinated children have been studied? I looked around and found just a little info.

https://www.verywellhealth.com/unvaccinated-children-with-autism-2633214


It's been studied and restudied. If there is ANY link, it's that vaccinated children appear to be diagnosed with autism at (very slightly) lower rates than their unvaccinated peers. No one has ever been able to show a link....other than the widely discredited "Wakefield" study....which was an extremely small sample of less than a dozen children, IIRC.
 














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