by When the American health and human services – secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Recently it wrote that vitamin A “measles mortality can be dramatically reduced,” he noted what happens after Someone gets infected, not before.
Kennedy knows, as he wrote in the same Op-ed, that what actually occurs is measles a vaccine. Toch is Kennedy, bij het bespreken van de uitbraak van fatale mazelen in West-Texas, snel om dat feit te benadrukken, in plaats daarvan te vertellen dat Fox News is dat gezondheidsfunctionarissen in Texas “zeer, zeer goede resultaten krijgen” met patiënten door het gebruik van leverolie, waarvan hij zei dat ze hoge concentraties van vitamine A en vitamine D hadden, samen met een antibioticum van clarithromycine en een steroid, Budesonide.
The secretary and the skeptic of the vaccine referred to people who had already fell ill with the deadly virus – not as a prevention measure. But his choice of words could easily confuse that problem, experts say. And at a time when the accuracy feels crucial, with a second death in the growing US outbreak that was reported on Thursday, that is a point of enormous care.
“I think what he does as Minister of Health and Human Services, as head of the largest public health agency of the nation, misleads the audience about vaccines and about measles treatments at a time when there is an outbreak of Mazling,” says Paul Offit, director of the Vaccin Education Center in Philadal in Philadal.
“With measles there is a way to prevent this: vaccines,” says Offit. “It would be nice if [Kennedy] Was clear and final and simple that vaccines were the best way to prevent measles. “
The World Health Organization recommends two doses of vitamin A for all children or adults with measles, because the infection itself can exhaust vitamin A in the body. But that recommendation is for those who are already infected with the virus; The vitamin prevents no infection in the first place.
“There is a connection with incorrect information about measles that are circulating on social media, especially with regard to vitamin A,” says Lesley Mother, university teacher pediatrics at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. “Because of the wrong information, we are concerned that parents go to the store and buy vitamin A to give their children for prophylaxis. Vitamin A does not Prevent measles. “
Community immunity versus personal choice
In the OP-ED, Kennedy noted that vaccines protect individual children against measles and contribute to the immunity of the community. But instead of emphatically encouraging vaccination and promoting their effectiveness, he added that the decision to vaccinate ‘is a personal’. Kennedy also wrote that improvements in sanitary facilities and food had eliminated 98% of the deaths by measles prior to the development of the vaccine. Although there is any evidence, Kennedy has not shared that, according to the federal centers for disease control and prevention, “widespread use of measles vaccine drastically reduced the disease rates in the 20th century.”
“It’s interesting because he started talking about the importance of community immunity and then talked about what it’s your personal choice,” says Offit.
According to the update of 28 February of the CDC, the vast majority of the total cases of 164 documented measles in the US had not been vaccinated this year so far. The science about measles, mumps and rubella (mmr) vaccin is now surprisingly clear: the CDC says that a single MMR dose is 93% effective against measles and two doses – the recommended course – are 97% effective.
“There must be a ringing confirmation that every child, unless they have real medical contra -indications, must be vaccinated against measles,” says William Schaffner, former medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. “I couldn’t say that stronger.”
Instead, Kennedy has only approved half -hearted vaccination, while he is effectively discussed after infection treatments. Even then, experts say, the claims of the secretary are either urgent need for context or just wrong.
Studies have shown, they say that in the developing countries where children who contract measles are often malnourished, so that they get doses of vitamin A, the more serious aspects of the disease can prevent and save lives. “But there is no clear evidence that is true in the United States,” says Offit, to a large extent because there have not been enough cases of measles to justify such a study.
In the US, the CDC mentions vaccination ‘the best defense’ against contaminated measles. A new update offers vitamin A as a potential supporting care for an already infected child or child. The National Institutes of Health notes that taking too much additional vitamin A can, among other things, lead to blurry vision, dizziness and liver damage.
In addition, “there are a number of studies that show that it is of marginal benefit or not much benefit against measles, and it is certainly not a replacement for vaccination,” says vaccine scientist and pediatrician Peter Hotez.
“The most important thing that people have to understand is that measles are a virus,” says Tina Tan, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and a professor in pediatrics at Northwestern University. “There are no antiviral means that have a permit for the treatment of measles.”
This includes antibiotics such as Clarithromycin and the steroid Budesonide, about which Tan says that there is “zero (scientific) evidence” of effectiveness against measles but a lot of potential risk. “They just pull things out of the sky and say this and that,” says Tan.
Revolution in public health
Turned on since Kennedy three weeks ago: two important meetings of the Advisory Committee for Vaccin were canceled; A large, millions of dollars funded by the government with Vaxart to test its oral Covid pill vaccine, was stopped, a spokesperson for the company confirmed Fortune; Kennedy announced that he intended to revise the schedule of the vaccine of children; The CDC was reportedly ordered to stop his ‘wild to mild’ publicity campaign that promoted the flu port beer; And in the midst of an outbreak of bird flu, American health officials evaluate a contract of $ 590 million that the Biden administration with Moderna Inc. Closed to help develop a mrna-based bird flu vaccine, by Bloomberg.
The experts are not only in their concern. On March 3, the American senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Who loudly against Kennedy’s confirmation at HHS, sent Kennedy a letter that demanded that he clarified his “intentions regarding vaccine policy”, CNN reported.
“These are dangerous times for public health,” Warren wrote, according to the news agency. “Your irresponsible and reckless efforts to undermine the vaccine policy of the nation are in danger of wishing the flames of a disaster.”
The outbreak of Texas, who has claimed all the lives of a non-vaccinated six-year-old child, offers a dark-working example of the worries around Kennedy. From March 4, the Texas Department of State Health Services had registered cases of the virus since the end of January, in total, health officials is probably an undercount because of the remote and historically under-unvaccinated Mennonite Community Area in Gaines County where most cases are identified.
The second death, announced Thursday, was an adult of New Mexico who just lived across the State Border from Gaines County, Texas. Although the cause of death is being investigated, the New Mexico Department of Health said that the person who was not vaccinated had tested positively for measles. The person did not look for medical care before he passed.
Researchers, virologists and other experts say that they are concerned that Kennedy’s term of office at HHS will bear comparable characteristics that are comparable if he has shown when tackling the growing measles problem. Repeatedly tested and proven science can very well be avoided in favor of an anti-vaxideology and public health could therefore suffer enormously.
‘This will be in the long term’
This is all at a time when the nation can have a different outbreak. Virologists follow all the bird flu virus, about which they are concerned that combinations with seasonal flu can bring it closer to widespread human infection. The flu season itself is the most intense in more than a decade in the US, according to CDC data.
Although cases of measles have been reported in nine states, West Texas is the home of the overwhelming majority of them. With an undercount probably partly because the Mennonite community generally avoids traditional healthcare services, the outbreak can become good – and become – more serious than the time documented.
“I think it will be months (before the check is determined), when you look at other descriptions about other outbreaks,” says Katherine Wells, director of public health in Lubbock, about 75 miles of the epicenter. “I prepare my staff that this is not just a few days. This will be in the long term and work on it. “
Wells says that she and her employees will argue for residents to become vaccinated if they are not yet, adding, ‘I want to remind people that we have been giving this MMR vaccine for more than 50 years. “But even the first recorded death from the virus in a decade, that of the child in West-Texas, Kennedy did not encourage a clear recommendation about vaccination.
Perhaps the closest to his Op-ed was, where he wrote that vaccines ‘should be easily accessible to all those they want’. His department, which, together with the CDC, did not respond to a series of questions from Fortune, Although the CDC confirmed the New Mexico case. The HHS sends 2,000 doses from the measles vaccine to Texas health officials, provides vitamin A and promising “extensive support” of their efforts on the spot.
Every dose can be very necessary. The consequences of not having a very vaccinated population against measles?
“You see it. This is what happens, “says Offit. “The last death of the child by measles in this country was in 2003. That was 22 years ago.”
Now the child’s death is not even the most recent in the country associated with an outbreak that offit and others say scream for an unambiguous pro-vaccine message. They won’t get it.
This story was originally visible on Fortune.com
