4mo ago

There It Is: RFK Jr. Suggests Best Strategy For Combatting Measles Is For Everyone To Get It

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4mo ago

There It Is: RFK Jr. Suggests Best Strategy For Combatting Measles Is For Everyone To Get It

www.techdirt.com /2025/03/17/there-it-is-rfk-jr-suggests-best-strategy-for-combatting-measles-is-for-everyone-to-get-it/

19 comments

And there is a way to do this, it is called vaccines.
The measles vaccine uses a small, weakened dose of the virus.
Antivaxxers like RFK Jr seem to forget this.
- 🤦
- But does the measles vaccine make your body forget your immunity to all the other viruses out there? Nope, only measles does that! Checkmate!
- That helps too many people. It doesn't serve the purpose of getting to laugh at the little people running around afraid and crying over dead loved ones. It doesn't cull people who disgust you, like the disabled. It doesn't beat people down — so, to a conservative, what good is it?
I got an idea, let's give everyone measles! Small damaged amounts of the virus!
Hell, that's genius, it could be a patent.
- Most of us technically did get the measles at one point so yeah. Mission accomplished!
Every time Republicans advance a plan that reduces to 'do nothing and the problem will solve itself' I hear FDR warning us again from beyond the grave
Man that was so fast.
Godspeed to the immunocompromised. This fucking sucks. You now have to live with the threat of measles because we've developed a society so safe and cozy that these dipshits take that safety for granted.
From The Lancet:
The MMR vaccine is highly effective with 93% protection after one dose and 97% after a second. MMR is a live attenuated vaccine and is not recommended for pregnant people, very young children, and immunocompromised individuals, and thus, these groups are at particular risk. Measles causes pneumonia in 1 of 20 cases, encephalitis in 0·5–1 per 1000, and is fatal in 1–3 per 1000. By contrast, adverse events after vaccination are usually mild and self-limiting; 1 per 3000–4000 vaccinated children develop febrile seizures, 1 in 40 000 develop immune thrombocytopenic purpura, and three cases of inclusion body encephalitis have been reported after vaccination. Overall, the rate of serious adverse events after vaccination is substantially lower than after infection. Furthermore, measles infection leads to broad immune amnesia—that is, diminished immune responses to other pathogens. The virus can directly infect memory B and T cells, and studies in children 2 months after measles infection have found that 11–73% of the preexisting antibody repertoire vanished.
"The most effective strategy to end the war is surrender and let them have their way with us!"
You first, cocksucker.
“It used to be, when I were a kid, that everybody got measles. And the measles gave you lifetime protection against measles infection,” he said, then taking a swipe at the vaccine. “The vaccine doesn’t do that. The vaccine is effective for some people for life, but for many people it wanes.”
- But measles carries a significant risk serious long-term illness or death, unlike the vaccine. And when everyone has the vaccine, very few people get the disease due to herd immunity, which worked fine for decades. Why can these people not hold two facts in their mind at the same time?
  
  If they did they’d have to stop mouth breathing.
- I guess when you're dead, you do get lifetime protection.
- That’s why you get….. holy shit…. 15-20 years later….. a second shot! My gawd the woke inconvenience of it all!
- Except that none of that is accurate and leaves out the crucial detail that getting measles destroys your body's antibody memory used to fight all the other diseases your body had already learned to fight. It also ignores the horrific and totally avoidable deaths that also resulted.
Wasn’t this his suggestion a week or two ago?

19 comments