Where are all the Measles Coming From and Why Aren't People Getting Vaccinated?
The other day I saw an article in the Winnipeg Free Press with a striking headline that immediately made me think of the headlines I saw every day during the covid panic.
Whoa. Sounds ominous. I figured I'd check it out because, why not? I went to the site only to find the article was paywalled. Instantly thoughts arrived unbidden in my mind and almost as quickly I wrote them down and posted them to my social media account because again, why not?
Thank you, Free Press. Thank you so much for informing me that there was indeed ONE case of measles detected from a person who was traveling through my province. Did he stop for gas? Did he eat somewhere? Is it even a "he"? Or is it a "she"? Or is it something else? I just don't know because your article is paywalled. So I only know that some crazed measles-infected traveler is now IN OUR PROVINCE. TRAVELING.
The other thing I wouldn't know from not reading your article (and likely not from reading it either) is that mortality from measles is approximately one tenth of one percent. And that's generally just if you also happen to have one or two comorbidities.
But thanks. Thanks for the info just in case I decide I’d like to have a measles party for my kids like my parents used to do. It's nice to be able to plan for these sorts of things.
Obviously this was meant to be in jest (mainly) but of course (as these things are wont to do) it did manage to start a bunch of discussion about the seriousness of measles and the reasons for the current outbreaks.
Thankfully there are a number of reasonable people who read my posts and so I usually come away a little bit smarter than I was. Actually I tend to learn the most when someone vehemently disagrees with me because it forces me to check my work, which I did.
Here's what I found:
In Canada (at the time of this writing) we've had seven deaths in the last 25 years from measles. Seven.
In the United States up until a week or two ago, there had been three deaths in the last 25 years due to measles. Not thirty-three. Not three hundred and three. Three. I believe there has also been at least three additional deaths this year from measles in the States. So I guess compared to the last 25 years, it's a "severe" outbreak. No one is minimizing the few people who die or the families affected. But to pretend this is another crisis and that we all need to start following the daily case counts and keeping track of strangers and what-have-you is ludicrous. It's just the measles. Doesn't mean the odd person won't die from it, but it's just the measles.
It seems that a big part of the reason for all these current outbreaks is that many kids missed their Routine Childhood Immunizations (RCIs) during the government imposed covid lockdowns because people were either too scared to leave the house or they just didn't want to deal with all the red tape involved in showing up at a clinic. And for the record, I said this was going to happen immediately when I saw the kind of fear they were pushing on the population in 2020.
In January of 2023 the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) did a study called Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Routine Childhood Immunizations: Tracking Parental Attitudes and Behaviours
According to our government's own report, up to 25% of Canadian children who were scheduled for their routine immunizations (RCIs) during covid missed them because of "a number of barriers" - barriers that had a "sizeable influence on the likelihood of missing or delaying a vaccine."
The report also found that:
Though most Canadians have high vaccine confidence and intention to routinely vaccinate their children, this study found evidence suggesting that concern about RCIs has increased since March 2020.
Hmmm, I wonder what might have occurred in the spring of 2020 that would have caused that...
Also:
Though vaccine confidence was generally high among sampled respondents, there are some signs that this may be shifting. Vaccine confidence was measured using a scale derived from the 2019 childhood National Immunization Coverage Survey (cNICS 2019). While agreement with positive statements such as “In general, vaccines help to protect my child’s health” was high (90%), there was a marked increase in agreement with statements with a negative valence relative to pre-pandemic data. For example, 24% of parents agreed that “In general, the use of alternative practices, such as homeopathy or naturopathy, can eliminate the need for vaccination”, a rate of agreement that is more than twice what was observed by cNICS in 2019.
An article in the Globe and Mail from November 2024 (Canada’s worrying decline in vaccination rates) had this to say:
"A new study that compared vaccination rates in 2019 through 2023 in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, New Brunswick and Yukon found a concerning decline over that five-year period. For instance, coverage for one dose of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine in two-year-old children decreased to 82.5 per cent from 89.5 per cent.
Health officials say part of that decline might be attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some parents reported in the 2021 childhood National Immunization Coverage Survey (CNICS), a survey done by the Public Health Agency of Canada every two years, that the lack of available doctor's appointments and the fear of catching COVID prevented them from getting their children vaccinated in 2020 and 2021."
“Part of that decline might be attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic.” You don't say? I'm willing to bet that it's more likely than not, and probably a much bigger part than they're willing to admit. Also, please know that whenever you hear anything blamed on Covid (other than people actually getting sick), what they're really referring to is our official response to covid. Covid didn't make people stay home - government policies, messaging, and headlines like the one above did that.
Anyway, here we are, and the vast majority of these cases are kids - kids who didn't get the MMR vaccine. And it's pretty much the same in the US as it is here.
Now remember, this study was done in January of 2023 and in the preceding two years, Canadians had been through highly controversial vaccine mandates; unintelligible rules from every level of government resulting in the most serious curtailment of freedoms in a generation, including lockdowns; a very contentious and divisive election; the Freedom Convoy; and then had about 10 months to digest it all, argue about it with friends, and hopefully come to their own conclusions.
Evidently what this study represents is some of those conclusions.
The situation is no different in the US. Even the New York Times, always ready to blame the latest catastrophe on Donald Trump, had to grudgingly concede that Childhood Vaccination Rates Were Falling Even Before the Rise of R.F.K. Jr.
As the pandemic strained trust in the country's public health system, more families of kindergartners formally opted out of routine vaccines, citing medical, philosophical or religious reasons. Others simply didn't submit proof of a complete vaccination series, for any number of reasons, falling into noncompliance.
Once again, there is the dutiful declaration that it was the pandemic that was responsible for the public's lack of trust in the health care system. I mean, it couldn't possibly have been the fault of anyone in charge or working in the health care system, could it?
It's also interesting to note that people can have a myriad of excuses for “noncompliance” but when they all show up around the same set of circumstances, it doesn't take much effort to read between the lines.
This fiasco is now five years old and we're beginning to see the results of it play out in real time.
So before you start blaming the dirty unvaccinated for the latest outbreak, think about why some these vaccinations didn't happen.
In the following piece from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, from November 2022, Dr. Kevin Bardosh asks, Are we ready to learn the right lessons?
COVID vaccine mandates in Canada were a mistake: Are we ready to learn the right lessons?
I'd like to think that after this measles thing has run its course, we will be. Then I'm reminded that as long as we can just blame the unvaccinated, there really is nothing to learn.
