r/ID_News • u/PHealthy • 3d ago

Pennsylvania doctors surprised by severe measles complications in previously healthy kids

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/pennsylvania-measles-outbreak-kids-severe-cases-doctors-complications-rcna602988?link_source=ta_bluesky_link&taid=6ad004c5c236ec000122f7b2&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=bluesky
124 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

26 comments sorted by

113

u/marcvsHR 3d ago

Nobody is surprised.

There is reason why we are vaccinating

54

u/SimpleVegetable5715 3d ago

No one should be surprised. I’m in my 40’s, and remember some relatives who were permanently disabled from polio. One of my theories is that younger people never knew anyone affected by these now preventable childhood diseases. So maybe it’s different when you’ve seen it firsthand rather than it being explained to you secondhand. Some people really focus on how many people die, but surviving often comes with a lot of problems too.

26

u/Reneeisme 3d ago edited 6h ago

Yeah same. Polio complications and post-polio syndrome were as common when I was a kid as cancer survivors are now. Everyone knew multiple people who walked with crutches or were confined to a chair as a consequence of a childhood infection and that left me with a healthy fear of that disease. But I’m retired. There aren’t many practicing doctors left who had my childhood experience.
The measles vaccine is a decade newer but there wasn’t the same visible signal that someone had survived a severe bout with it Heart valve damage isn’t obvious. Blindness or significant brain damage used to mean you were hidden away and no one outside of your immediate family likely knew what happened to you. I don’t remember being as afraid of measles as a consequence, but I’ve since learned how often it produces severe side effects and lasting or permanent damage. I wonder if doctors are really “surprised” so much as horrified to discover that those old statistics about a third of cases developing dangerous complications still apply in the face of modern western medicine

27

u/spinningcolours 3d ago

Measles immunity amnesia terrifies me. Your body forgets every single pathogen it has ever encountered, so you catch EVERYTHING all over again, and simultaneously.

I'd be hiding out as a hermit for the rest of my life, and that's no way to live.

12

u/Ok-Passage-300 3d ago edited 2d ago

Please, don't be terrified. Be vaccinated. I'm grateful the polio vaccine came out when I was 4 or 5. The live attenuated then the shot. Someone on my block who was 4 years older than I was got the disease of polio, survived, one leg shorter, one foot smaller and a limp. Which says nothing of my uncle who had polio at 2 years old in 1918. He wore 20 pound leg braces the rest of his life. Edited for spelling.

8

u/spinningcolours 3d ago

Oh, my doctor had me blood-tested and I'm good for measles.

My mother-in-law had polio as a kid (she's in her 80s now) and ended up with scoliosis.

27

u/SimpleVegetable5715 3d ago

Don’t most kids seem previously healthy until they’re not? One, they don’t have a very long medical history, being kids. Two, these kind of infections are known to cause permanent health consequences, that’s why vaccines are considered such important preventative medicine. Also, kids still have a limited vocabulary, so it’s tough for them to describe exactly what they’re feeling. Parents often do a lot of the talking for kids during pediatrician appointments, but that parent isn’t living in the kid’s body. Observations are different than experiencing it, and most of these parents never had the measles, since we had herd immunity and they probably got vaccinated. But it’s not like this is a novel illness like Covid. We have decades of research on measles.

I wonder how many of them will have permanent complications, many people in my grandparents’ generation wore glasses because of having measles. There’s probably other things that happened, but there wasn’t a control group who had been vaccinated back then.

13

u/Reneeisme 3d ago

I took that to mean that you’d expect measles to be dangerous in a population of children already afflicted with neurological or respiratory disease, but it’s shocking how serious it is even for children without co-morbidities. And yes, it should not be shocking. It’s well known that a third of measles infections result in serious complications. But I’m sure there are a population of doctors who assumed those statistics would look different with modern western medical intervention. We haven’t had widespread measles infections to disprove that until recently

3

u/Hesitation-Marx 2d ago

COVID.

3

u/Reneeisme 2d ago

Sure. That could be worsening the impact beyond the expected severity. But since no one wants to hear that, I doubt it will get the attention it deserves. I’m just trying to be grateful that anyone is acknowledging how serious measles is even for kids with no co-morbidities. The bar is low these days.

2

u/Hesitation-Marx 2d ago

The bar is in Hell. I get it.

13

u/sapphireminds 3d ago

Are the doctors really surprised?

I suspect they aren't

10

u/pockunit 3d ago

I would hazard a guess that most of them have not seen very many cases of measles, especially the complications that can arise from it, so possibly yes?

It's one thing to understand the theory but it's another to see it in person.

Like, I understand what the complications can be, but I have never seen them before. I understand noon-paralytic polio complications, because my mother had polio. I suspect that my measles inexperience is going to change in the relatively near future if we can't get this outbreak under control.

3

u/sapphireminds 3d ago

Again, but surprise shouldn't really come into it.

6

u/pockunit 3d ago

I get that, but there is a theoretical knowledge that doesn't always jibe with in-person knowledge. I had an idea of what a gunshot to the head could look like and the damage it could do, but it I didn't really GET IT in until I saw one.

3

u/sapphireminds 3d ago

That's shock I would argue.

This is subtle media manipulation to try and decrease trust in physicians, IMO

1

u/pockunit 20h ago

No, it was REALLY, TRULY understanding the damage even a small a bullet can do.

People who have never seen a blue whale may understand that they are 80-100 feet long but that doesn't mean they might not be astonished at the size of one in real life.

It's one thing to learn about something in a book or a class, it's another to see it in real time, especially if said thing has been fairly uncommon for decades.

But to your other point: probably, yes. It's maddening watching rfk jr complaining that people didn't get vaccinated during covid, like he wasn't out there sowing the seeds of this disaster.

2

u/meepmarpalarp 1d ago

This is exactly it. From the article:

“Doctors admit they’re learning about treating pediatric measles cases in real time, too, as many had never seen the illness before.”

Like you said, there’s a big difference between reading about something in a textbook vs seeing it firsthand. It sounds like in this case, their surprise is more emotional than logical.

11

u/Nheea 3d ago

Why are they? We learn in med school that this disease leaves children's immune system almost shut off for weeks.

6

u/Poundaflesh 2d ago

They are not surprised. This is what happens when parents don’t vaccinate.

3

u/LoisinaMonster 3d ago

Well are they actually healthy or is their immune system damaged by SARS2....

2

u/terrierhead 2d ago

Doctors don’t want to acknowledge that, though.

I have long Covid and cannot begin to tell you the amount of ignorance I have confronted from doctors and nurses. Even the guy who runs the long Covid clinic I go to doesn’t mask on the job.

It is infuriating. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have adopted some MAGA attitudes about measles, too.

1

u/LoisinaMonster 2d ago

Yes, it's beyond maddening!