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Measles surge in Utah sparks fears US could undo decades of progress

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Re: Measles surge in Utah sparks fears US could undo decades of progress

#71

Post by mistersquid »

SoftTalker wrote: post #29
mistersquid wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The World Cup already started. But there are no games played in Utah For now, Utahns can travel freely to US states where World Cup games are played.

Relatively nobody in the US cares about soccer, much less travels for it.

> Relatively nobody in the US cares about soccer, much less travels for it.

Utahns travel to US states with World Cup games for reasons other than the World Cup. Its Summer in the Northern Hemisphere. Utahns do travel, for example, to the San Francisco Bay Area for graduation ceremonies, to visit family, and for sightseeing. These Utahns may mingle with foreign visitors.

I’m not making a case that transmission of measles from a Utahn to a foreign visitor is likely, but the failure to consider possible routes of transmission is exactly why vaccination is so important.

Re: Measles surge in Utah sparks fears US could undo decades of progress

#72

Post by JumpCrisscross »

doctorhandshake wrote: post #57
jdw64 wrote: post #14

Why do problems caused by anti scientific behavior occur in a country like the United States, which has so many outstanding scientists? From a third party perspective, I wonder if it's because, as stratification has progressed in the US, distrust of the social class that scientists belong to has led people to deny even their achievements. Why does distrust arise toward the institutions and hierarchies that speak for…

My personal theory is that many responsible for teaching science in the K-12 grades are not doing a great job of communicating that science is a process for finding truth. Definitely not laying this at teachers’ feet - standardized testing and curricula, overcrowded classrooms, underfunded schools etc all contribute I’m sure, but I get the impression from talking to even well educated people that they were taught sci…

> Biology in particular but also chemistry is often taught with rote memorization

I’m guessing with high confidence none of the parents who are busy getting their kids sick got even this.

Re: Measles surge in Utah sparks fears US could undo decades of progress

#73

Post by lightbulbish »

cjmcqueen wrote: post #26
flawn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the evolutionary advantage of this? I mean, if the host dies subsequently that's pretty bad for both parties, or?

Viruses don't care if the host dies. Evolution doesn't explain all things in nature.

Evolution theory by itself doesn’t give us the ability to explain everything in a certain moment, but that’s only due to lack of knowledge on our part.

Consider that measles in itself comes originally from a animal but a mutation found itself be able to spread to humans. That, in and of itself, is the process of evolution.

So while it is not necessarily a useful lens to try to interpret a moment in time as many unknown factors are at play (for example the same gene that is important for mortality might also impact survival in certain environments, and therefore how contagious it could be), if we were to understand it’s history of every mutation that came and went, the environments it lived in, evolution theory would explain why the path looked like it did. And subsequently why it is like it is today.

Re: Measles surge in Utah sparks fears US could undo decades of progress

#74

Post by lazide »

flawn wrote: post #15
chasil wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It erases immune memory, taking away antibodies to recently exposed diseases. It's best not to get it.

What is the evolutionary advantage of this? I mean, if the host dies subsequently that's pretty bad for both parties, or?

It’s a side effect in a small portion of the infected. It spreads well enough regardless, so it doesn’t particularly hurt it.

Re: Measles surge in Utah sparks fears US could undo decades of progress

#75

Post by [deleted] »

jdw64 wrote: post #14

Why do problems caused by anti scientific behavior occur in a country like the United States, which has so many outstanding scientists? From a third party perspective, I wonder if it's because, as stratification has progressed in the US, distrust of the social class that scientists belong to has led people to deny even their achievements. Why does distrust arise toward the institutions and hierarchies that speak for…

[deleted]

Re: Measles surge in Utah sparks fears US could undo decades of progress

#76

Post by entuno »

jancsika wrote: post #63
arjie wrote: post #6

Quite interesting to see that measles is coming back. I suppose there is a notion of generational memory. Two generations out, people forget what the world was like. Forgetting like this on a civilizational level is probably adaptive unless it’s catastrophic and a measles epidemic is eminently survivable as a civilization if incredibly tragic for the families affected. I had measles as a child, too. Fortunately, my p…

> Quite interesting to see. No, the article is a shitshow. Ben Dowse is an MD, not a pediatric nurse. The family ended up accepting the antibody treatment before leaving the hospital. The Daily Mail article bizarrely implies that they never accepted the treatment. Both journalistic mistakes are clear from reading the beginning of the Wired article linked in the error-laden Daily Mail article. Did you notice these err…

The Daily Mail is a trashy tabloid, so it's not surprising. Weird to see it posted here as though it's a credible source for anything.

Re: Measles surge in Utah sparks fears US could undo decades of progress

#77

Post by Arodex »

arjie wrote: post #6

Quite interesting to see that measles is coming back. I suppose there is a notion of generational memory. Two generations out, people forget what the world was like. Forgetting like this on a civilizational level is probably adaptive unless it’s catastrophic and a measles epidemic is eminently survivable as a civilization if incredibly tragic for the families affected. I had measles as a child, too. Fortunately, my p…

It is not "generational memory", it is an active campaign of lies and FUD by crooks, grifters and idiots.

Re: Measles surge in Utah sparks fears US could undo decades of progress

#78

Post by arjie »

Avshalom wrote: post #25
madaxe_again wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like there’s a pretty strong parallel with the failure of the screw worm eradication programme. It just became a thing we did, rather than the absolute miracle it was - like vaccination - and then from complacency grows suspicion, for again, as you say, few people alive remember how it was.

Well the screw worm thing happened because Elon Musk hired a bunch of twitter nazis to put the government through a wood chipper. This is the end result of decades snake oil moguls empowered by orin hatch and then turbo charged by people being furious that they weren't allowed to go to TGI Fridays for six months.

I don't think that's true. Supply-chain issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and response were probably a big factor - or so I've read, I'm not an expert. In any case, by 2024 (pre-DOGE), new-world screw-worm fly had breached the Panama boundary where we can feasibly keep it contained with a fixed on-going effort. I remember because some time during the pandemic I learned about the thing from someone linking a much older article in the Atlantic[1].

0: https://web.archive.org/web/20240218010527/https://www.fas.u...

1: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/05/flesh-ea...

Re: Measles surge in Utah sparks fears US could undo decades of progress

#79

Post by jdw64 »

coryrc wrote: post #62
jdw64 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with Isaac Asimov on that point. The reason is that professors and universities have failed to communicate that knowledge persuasively to the public. In other words, it's establishment science. They ignore opinions that oppose corporations, and they give grants to research that suits corporate tastes. This pattern keeps appearing in the United States. So it seems that public experience and word of mouth ha…

The Scopes trial? What was "corporate" about evolution? The Salem witch trials. McCarthyism And "Universities" are the mouthpieces of corporations? The people keep electing politicians who are anti-worker-protection laws. They're purposely choosing corporation-owner-friendly legislators. This is not the fault of universities. Of course it's a complicated issue, but it's not my University friends doing public outreach…

In a society flooded with knowledge, we cannot know everything, so we construct our arguments from fragmented information. In that regard, an example that supplements my argument is the case of the Trump administration and Columbia University in 2025. Harvard resisted, but I don't think every university did.

Re: Measles surge in Utah sparks fears US could undo decades of progress

#80

Post by cptroot »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #60
Avshalom wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the screw worm thing happened because Elon Musk hired a bunch of twitter nazis to put the government through a wood chipper. This is the end result of decades snake oil moguls empowered by orin hatch and then turbo charged by people being furious that they weren't allowed to go to TGI Fridays for six months.

> This is the end result of decades snake oil moguls empowered by orin hatch What did Hatch do (I mostly know him as the paid servant of the copyright industry)?

This is likely about Orin Hatch's dedication to the idea of a "balanced federal budget", to be paid for with program cuts instead of taxation.
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