Measles Is Back
A measles outbreak in Philadelphia in the early 1990s might be a window into the future.
On February 13, 2024, National Geographic published a book I wrote called, TELL ME WHEN IT’S OVER: AN INSIDER’S GUIDE TO DECIPHERING COVID MYTHS AND NAVIGATING OUR POST-PANDEMIC WORLD. For the next few months, I will be writing about various issues discussed in that book.
On April 4, 2024, the CDC reported 113 cases of measles in 18 states and jurisdictions. These outbreaks were consistent with a CDC survey showing that more parents are choosing religious exemptions for their children. Because measles is the most contagious of the vaccine-preventable diseases, it’s always the first to come back. It’s the “canary in the coal mine” for fraying vaccine rates.
A single-dose measles vaccine was first introduced in the United States in 1963. Before that, every year measles would infect 3-4 million people causing 48,000 hospitalizations and 500 deaths. With the enforcement of school vaccine mandates and the recommendation for two doses of measles vaccine in the early 1990s, we eliminated measles from the United States in 2000. A remarkable accomplishment for such a highly contagious disease. But measles has come back. One can only hope that an outbreak in Philadelphia in the winter of 1990-1991 isn’t a window into the future.
In Philadelphia, by November 29, 1990, measles had infected 96 children; by December 7, the number had risen to 124; and by December 31, to 258. The 1990 outbreak was larger than anything the city had seen in more than a decade. Then an 18-month-old unimmunized boy from North Philadelphia died from measles pneumonia. It was the first time a Philadelphia resident had died from measles in 20 years. Then another unimmunized child in North Philadelphia died from measles. In response, city health officials asked parents to vaccinate children beginning at six-months of age.
The measles outbreak centered on two fundamentalist churches in the city: Faith Tabernacle and First Century Gospel, both of which refused vaccines on religious grounds. After another unimmunized child in the church school died, Dr. Robert Ross, Commissioner of Health for the City of Philadelphia asked Reverend Charles Reinert of the Faith Tabernacle Church to immunize his students. Reinert refused. Ross had no choice but to close the school, which did nothing to slow the advancing epidemic.
By Friday, February 15, 1991, five children had died in ten days. Philadelphia was the center of the worst measles epidemic in the United States. At Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, 82 children had been treated in the emergency department and 28 had been hospitalized. At St. Christopher’s Hospital, which was closer to the homes of church members, 250 children had been treated in the emergency department and three were being hospitalized every week. Philadelphia had become a feared destination. Two nearby schools cancelled trips to the city.
On Wednesday, February 27, 1991, Mayor Wilson Goode directed the City Solicitor’s office to obtain a court order to forcibly vaccinate children against their parents’ will. Goode had crossed the line from mandatory vaccination to compulsory vaccination. With mandatory vaccination, people are asked to receive a vaccine or pay some sort of societal price, such as being excluded from work or school. In compulsory vaccination, people are vaccinated whether they want to be or not. In the history of the United States, children had never been forcibly vaccinated against their parents’ will.
On Friday, March 1, 1991, Charles Reinert asked lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to represent his church in its fight against compulsory vaccination. Because a right to refuse vaccines based on religious beliefs was afforded by state law, everyone assumed that ACLU lawyers would rush to his church’s defense. But the ACLU declined. “There is certainly a free exercise of religion claim by the parents,” said Deborah Levy, executive director of the Philadelphia chapter of the ACLU, “but there is also a competing claim that parents don’t have the right to martyr their children.”
By Friday, June 7, 1991, the Philadelphia measles epidemic had subsided. Among church members, 486 people had been infected and 6 killed by measles. Among non-church members, as measles spread into the surrounding communities, 938 people had been infected and 3 killed. All nine deaths were in children. Because they hadn’t been vaccinated, the attack rate among church members was a thousand times higher than that in the surrounding community.
Forty-five states now grant religious exemptions to vaccination. In July 2023, Mississippi became the most recent state to offer a religious exemption. In response, more than 2,000 parents in the state immediately chose to exempt their children from vaccination. It’s a dangerous game we play.
Measles is a completely preventable highly infectious disease that can kill children. The live attenuated vaccine works and is safe.
I have noticed that the pro vaccine front has adjusted their position on some hard facts about vaccines since Covid.
Vaccines are accepted now to not stop catching or spreading diseases.
Advocates are more careful now saying what mortality from disease is, as an example they aren’t stating any longer that measles are a death sentence citing example from 1900 era. The CDC’s graphs showing mortality rates dropping more than 90% prior to vaccine introduction are too wide spread now, they had to concede that.
Areas for the vaccine crowd to still work on. From COVID we learned the concept of dying with a disease rather than from a disease, the same will be true for chickenpox, measles etc. there is no kid that died with chickpox that wouldn’t be susceptible to almost anything, basically a health impaired person. These people are the ones that vaccines should be reserved for, the 1/1000 immune compromised person.
Another area for the vaccine crowd to work on is understanding that natural infection provides superior health benefits, as an example those with natural chickpox infection having lower rates of shingles later in life compared to the vaccinated.
Another item is the area of harms / adverse events from vaccines, the risk could be worth it for an immune compromised person but it’s not for a perfectly health person. Understand that the 1 or 2 cases per million adverse events claim if you follow it through is the number of awarded vaccine injury claims divided by the total number of vaccines given. If you’ve ever asked a question about a kid’s neurological ticks that followed MMR as an example you learn real quick there are significant barriers to reporting a concern and being taken seriously. They did the same thing to people that first asked, you think maybe this lung cancer is from smoking? Point is for every injury claim that is paid out it is the tip of the iceberg, the one or two per million claim is ridiculous.
The other thing we learned from Covid is that there are viable prophylactic and therapeutic steps that can be taken with disease. As an example vitamin D was not therapeutic for Covid but if you took it regularly before being exposed it seems to have been useful as there was basically no one in the ICU that had good vitamin D levels. And as documented in the 2005 paper in the national library of medicine that Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1232869/
But they told people do nothing, wait till you get really sick before coming to the hospital, after there is anything we can do for you, very strange that guidance wasn’t given to minimize health complications from infection.
Let’s face it pharma has been misleading us for decades and as they play a more dominate role in everyone’s lives (an increasing percentage of GDP is being spent on health than ever before) our health continues to decline. Ever increasing rates of chronic disease go hand in hand with ever increasing use of drugs and vaccines. There’s other factors like processed food, but come on, so many of these health problems are autoimmune related and the one thing that absolutely can’t be included on the list of potential causes are the very products that intentionally stimulates your immune system. And now with mRNA it’s your own cells internationally growing a protein to be attacked by your own immune system.
Vaccines and drugs have been over used, there’s just too much money at stake to prevent that from happening, one day that will be accepted. Pharma knew vaccines were inherently dangerous, they were going to exit the business in the early 80’s because of it. That resulted in Reagan agreeing for the govt to take on the liability in the 1986 Vaccine Act, and ever since then pharma’s enthusiasm for vaccines can’t be stopped. Moderna’s vision with their DART plan is 48 hours from virus detection to mRNA shot ready for injection, what could possibly go wrong.
https://youtu.be/Ee5TNSIOeEI?si=1xpj7w_QWr6SYMhX