Measles: Parties and Amnesia
Taking a page out of the ‘Chicken pox party’ playbook, apparently ‘measles parties’ are starting in the USA. The principle is of bringing infected children together with their healthy peers to infect them so they develop the ‘natural’ infection and therefore develop immunity without needing vaccination.
It was a bad idea for chicken pox but it is even a worse one for measles. Measles is one of the most contagious childhood infections, each infected person infects an average of about 18 others (remember Covid was about 2 – 3). In fact, if you are unvaccinated, you will catch it if you are anywhere near the infected.
So you get measles, with a characteristic rash, sore throat, and fever. However some get very sick with pneumonia, brain infection or other complications (2 children have already died in the US so far). But most will get over it in a few days, though they will continue to pass it on for four days before the rash and for four days after.
But there’s more.
About ten years ago medical research turned up a surprising and nasty after-effect. It was noted that for years after the measles, children were getting sick from an increased number of other infections and some were losing their lives.
It seems that the measles virus tends to burrow inside the body and kill the ‘Plasma B’ cells stored in the bones. These cells are an important part of our immune system and are called ‘memory cells’, they remember how to produce antibodies from past infections and vaccines and they protect us for a lifetime.
So when measles wipes them out you develop what is called immune amnesia. Your immune system has forgotten how to make the protective antibodies and you again become vulnerable to infections you have previously had, or been vaccinated against.
This phenomenon doesn’t happen with the vaccine. And it’s worth repeating that this vaccine has never had any relationship with autism at all. It’s safe and very efficient.
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