Measles Emergency.

With the pertussis epidemic of 2010 behind us, the public health community is scrambling for some new contrivance with which to scare the American public. They appear to have found it. Their latest propaganda efforts surround a few cases of measles scattered across the nation. To rational human beings it's the measles; to the public health community it's "an emergency"

Yesterday I posted a little comment on a story out of Iowa in which it was reported public health fanatics were declaring an "emergency" over one, yes one, case of the measles. I thought that was the end of it until I saw a story even more absurd than the original. It began with the same news reported yesterday:

State health officials declared a “public health emergency” Tuesday after a test confirmed a case of measles in an unvaccinated Dallas County baby who apparently picked up the disease in India.

The piece then went from humorous to absurd with a statement that is among the most ridiculous I've ever come across; and it comes from a doctor: the person parents are told to talk for unbiased credible answers about vaccination. Anyway here's (witch?) doctor Patricia Quinlisk on the measles:

 “I get asked by medical students, ‘Which disease are you most afraid of?' And they expect me to say Ebola or SARS or something like that – but, it’s measles,” she said. “I don’t think people understand how bad it can be, how many people can get seriously ill and, unfortunately, how many people can die from this disease. It’s bad and it’s probably the most spreadable disease we have in our society.”

Nothing could be farther from the truth. In the pre-vaccine era, there were three to four million cases of the measles each year with only about four hundred and fifty reported deaths. And those deaths likely occurred in a subset of the population that were at increased vulnerability due to nutritional deficiencies or inadequate living conditions. The fact that naive medical school students are subjected to fabrications such as the one put forth by doctor Quinlisk perhaps explains the fanaticism that drives some pediatricians to discharge patients who decline the vaccine for this mild illness.

Those who were parents back when the measles was prevalent didn't think much of the illness and saw it as just another part of childhood. Much like those of us who've gone through the chickenpox with our own children. This fact is however antithetical to Quinlisk's goal of fear mongering so, in the same story, she's reported as engaging in this odd attempt at historical revisionism:

Dr. Patricia Quinlisk, medical director for the Iowa Department of Public Health, said many Americans falsely recall measles as a benign childhood illness.

Quinlisk's attempt to redefine the past to serve her establishment is eerily is reminiscent of the tactics used by the totalitarian regime portrayed in George Orwell's novel 1984. "The Party," as it was called, famously believed that the past needed to be recreated in a way to serve the needs and desires of the regime. (The novel's famous quote "Those who control the past control the future" summarizes that philosophy) But sadly for the good doctor her assertion about America's experience with the measles is as fictitious as Orwell's novel. Unfortunately, for readers of the Register, the fiction continues with this statement:

Two to three people die out of every 1,000 who come down with the disease, health authorities say.

We did two pieces on this recently bandied-about statistic, debunking it here and showing the CDC can quote no basis for it here.

The piece winds down revealing:

Most Iowans are either vaccinated against measles or are immune because they had it as children.

So what's the emergency then? The rational person, not having a vested interest in either  vaccines or the promotion of an irrational fear of infectious illnesses, would say there is none. But the vested interest driving this story are not interested in the truth, they're interested in advancing an agenda that solidifies their power and reinforces a system upon which they depend. This story of a measles "emergency" and the blatant attempts at historical revisionism further demonstrate that the entire vaccine program is simply a contrivance built to serve the needs, not of us, but of the Machine and those who comprise it.